HormonesSo you may be wondering what hormones are and why do I have them. Well, hormones are the messenger of the body. Think of them like your mail person who delivers your mail. They bring you your bills and that get a reaction from you. You know how the post office works. Most of the time great but they do screw up sometimes and sometimes they are so slow. 
Your hormones are important for so many bodily functions and they are all interconnected, a little problem with one of them will create havoc in another part of your body. The hormones that are important to fertility are produced by the endocrine system. The organs that are specific to produce these hormones are the pituitary, thyroid, adrenals, ovaries, testes, and pancreas. They are many other hormones that are produced by different organs and tissues but for the sake of discussion I will just go over the important hormones that are specific to problems with fertility. Remember, these processes are very complicated but not that hard for you to get a basic understanding. You will be able to know what is happening in your body with the illustrations that I will use. These hormones are:
The process of hormone response can be very complicated. I don't want to bore you will a biochemistry lesson but I want you to understand a few things about how hormones work. The hormones that we will be talking about are steroid hormones. These are all made from cholesterol. See you need cholesterol!The actual amount of hormone stored in the glands, such as the ovaries, is quite small. But the availability of the precursor to these hormones, cholesterol, is quite abundant. The chemical conversion will happen very rapidly and the gland producing the specific hormone will be ready to secrete almost immediately.
The hormones are the little yellow balls. Once the little yellow balls are absorbed then the reaction will occur. But the trick is that there has to be the right amount. Too much or too little will through the whole reaction off and then you will have a problem. This process happens very rapidly and at very specific times. Timing is everything with hormones because they are made to tell an organ to do a task. The timing has to be right or else the outcome will be off. That is why it is so important for the hormones to be in balance for your fertility. After the receptor cell absorbs all the hormone it tells the cells of the target organ to do something: " Hey, I want you to do your thing".
In the case of your ovaries, the hormone FSH will bring the message to start the development of the follicles. To be continue |
If you look at the picture to the left you will see how hormones are transmitted from the organ on the left to the receptor cells on the right. 
