 Everybody, Dr. O here. We're going to talk about the adrenal glands and the hormones they produce here today. So here we see just a picture of the adrenal glands. You'll notice the two kidneys there and sitting right above the kidneys are the adrenal glands. It's basically if the kidney was wearing a hat, that's where the adrenal glands would be. That's where the other name of the adrenal glands come from. You don't hear it near as often, but it's called the suprarenal glands or sitting on top of the kidneys. So here's a quick review of the hormones that control the adrenal glands or these adrenal cortex that you see here that ACTH is at the bottom. So corticotropin releasing hormone is a regulatory hormone from the hypothalamus that tells the anterior pituitary to produce and release adrenocorticotropic hormone or ACTH. It's going to control the adrenal cortex. Before we talk about that, let's actually jump in and talk about the adrenal medulla first. The adrenal gland is basically two parts, this inner core called the adrenal medulla, like the medullary cavity where your bone marrow is inside your bone, and the adrenal cortex there on the outside. So the adrenal medulla is an endocrine organ because it produces hormones, but it's actually neuroendocrine and in most of it is your sympathetic nervous system. So it's a modified portion of your sympathetic nervous system. So when the fight or flight response kicks in, the adrenal medulla releases epinephrine and norepinephrine, which would be neurotransmitters if they were in your synapses, but it dumps them right into your bloodstream, and that's why they're hormones. So as you can see there, they produce epinephrine and norepinephrine, which would be adrenaline and noradrenaline. Both are important, but epinephrine is more powerful and also more common. Four or five times as much epinephrine would be released as norepinephrine. So epinephrine is adrenaline, and we all know what adrenaline does. Norepinephrine, it plays a role in focus, like helping to focus you under pressure hopefully to keep you alive, right? The stress response system is designed to keep you alive in emergencies. So that is going to be the adrenal medulla, and it's under sympathetic stimulation releasing epinephrine and norepinephrine. Now let's look at the actual adrenal cortex we've been talking about. So adrenal corticotropic hormone tells the adrenal cortex to release the hormones that are produced there. There are three groups here. I'm going to scroll right through them. The first group is called, I don't care about the zones, like zona glomerulositis. Don't think that's a big deal. But the mineral corticoids are going to be hormones that help regulate mineral activity and mineral balance. Now there are lots of them. There are dozens of minor hormones produced here, but we're just going to talk about the key examples. So the most important mineral corticoid is aldosterone. Aldosterone will cause the reabsorption of sodium at the kidneys, and osmosis says that water is going to follow solute, so water is going to be sucked back in. So aldosterone plays a big role in reabsorbing water to make sure we don't lose too much fluid. This is also why, we'll cover this in a separate video, but this is why aldosterone is part of the renin angiotensin aldosterone system, which is a huge system in your body that's designed to keep your blood pressure up, and it's a system that we counter with a lot of our blood pressure medications, like the ACE inhibitors. So we'll come back and talk about that later. One more interesting thing about aldosterone is it seems to be paired with insulin. As your insulin levels drop, your aldosterone levels go down too. This is why people that go on really low crash diets, which will bring insulin levels down, or people that go on low carb diets, which cause insulin levels to drop, will also see a drop in the reabsorption of sodium. They're going to lose more sodium in their urine. This is part of the reason you lose a lot of weight right away, because you lose a lot of water weight. You're basically peeing out extra water. This is also why people that go on low carb diets, especially, or fasting, need to worry about getting extra sodium, because you're going to be losing a lot of it. Okay, so that is aldosterone, the key mineral corticoid. The next group are the glucocorticoids that help keep your blood sugar levels where they should be, and where they should be is relative to the situation. So these are going to be cortisol, which is going to be the most common one, which can also be converted to cortisone, and then your body makes a little bit of this corticosterone. But we primarily just talk about cortisol. Cortisol is called your stress hormone. So cortisol's job is to inhibit building, inhibit growth, and to break down tissues to mobilize energy. Remember, when you're stressed, your body thinks, I need to fight or flee. So you're going to be propping up your blood glucose so you have the fuel you need to fight or to flee. So that's why cortisol does a lot of damage if you're under a lot of stress. It breaks your body down. That's what cortisol does. It breaks your tissues down to mobilize energy. So you have glucose and ketones, whatever else you need, to run from that bear or whatever you're looking at. So that would be cortisol. So that is your glucocorticoids. The last group of adrenal cortex hormones are the androgens. So these are going to be considered like your male sex hormones, but females have them too. So the key here is this appears to be where girls, women, and prepubescent boys get their androgens because we all need it. They play a role in libido, muscle building, all sorts of different things, whether you're male or female. Men, once men reach puberty, then the testicles will take over and they'll produce a whole bunch of it. So some of the androgens are going to be produced here as well. Okay. So that is the hormones of the adrenal medulla, which is part of your sympathetic nervous system, and the hormones of the adrenal cortex. I hope this helps. Have a wonderful day. Be blessed.