The Importance of Cortisol

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Cortisol

Cortisol is a type of steroid hormone known as a glucocorticoid (helps body deal with stress), and is produced in the outer section of the adrenal glands known as the adrenal cortex. It is essential for sustaining life and it has many functions. Cortisol may directly initiate some of these functions or it may be permissive in that it allows certain processes to take place by increasing enzyme activity, promoting enzymes, or by regulating the actions of other hormones. This powerful hormone affects nearly all body systems with binding sites on practically all body cells. Secretion of this hormone is cyclic with higher levels of secretion in the morning and lower levels at night. Because higher levels of cortisol are secreted in times of stress, it is called the “stress hormone. In the fight or flight stress response, cortisol is considered the most important hormone because it affects many of the changes that take place in the body that are essential for coping with stress. In fact, all the functions of cortisol are too numerous to mention for the purpose of this discussion, but I will try to describe some of major functions of this amazing hormone.

Release of cortisol occurs as response to a set of chain reactions. Stress stimulus activates the nervous system which in turn stimulates the tropic hormone CRH in the hypothalamus. CRH stimulates the pituitary secretion of the hormone ACTH, which travels in the bloodstream to the adrenal cortex and stimulates the secretion of cortisol. When the concentration of cortisol in the blood reaches a certain level, CRH in the hypothalamus is inhibited, which in turn inhibits the secretion of ACTH in the pituitary gland, thus shutting off the secretion of cortisol.

Cortisol is esse...

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.../mag2004/jul2004_report_cortisol_01.htm

http://www.medicineonline.com/articles/H/2/Hypocortisolism/Addisons-Disease.html

http://www.livestrong.com/article/95043-cortisol-functions/

http://www.livestrong.com/article/131399-effects-cortisol/

http://www.sabresciences.com/adrenalHormones.htm

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK26/

Works Cited

http://stress.about.com/od/stresshealth/a/cortisol.htm

http://www.adrenalfatigue.org/cortisol-and-adrenal-function.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cortisol

http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag2004/jul2004_report_cortisol_01.htm

http://www.medicineonline.com/articles/H/2/Hypocortisolism/Addisons-Disease.html

http://www.livestrong.com/article/95043-cortisol-functions/

http://www.livestrong.com/article/131399-effects-cortisol/

http://www.sabresciences.com/adrenalHormones.htm

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK26/

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