The relationship between adrenal hormones and blood pressure

Adrenaline and blood pressure relationship

What does the urinary system include when viewed from top to bottom?

Let's take a look at these two things that everyone is familiar with. The kidneys are something that everyone should know about from various channels. Why? Kidneys are very important, right? You can hear all kinds of words about kidney deficiency in the media. There is a structure and an organ, but you may not have a clear concept of it. How is the connection between the kidney and the bladder? This part is called the ureter. The length of the ureter is about 20 to 25 centimeters, which is related to the height of each person.

It is connected to the bladder through the ureter. The outlet of the bladder is the prostate for men and the urethra for women. The functions of each organ here are different. What do we mean by urinary system? It means secreting urine.

The urinary system is a rigorous system of water purification, drainage and storage.

First, let's look at what role the kidney plays here. What is the kidney? It is a water purifier, a very important water purifier. The liquid filtered and purified by it, that is, urine, flows along the ureter. What is the ureter? It is a sewer pipe, so sometimes we also call ourselves plumbers. What is the sewer pipe that plumbers use to drain urine to the bladder? It is called a reservoir, and finally it is discharged through the opening of the urethra or the prostate, which is called a drain valve.

So the whole thing is related to the management of the water system. You can think of it as a very strictly and sophisticated system for water purification, drainage and storage.

What are endocrine and exocrine?

In addition to these important water-related characters, what other meanings does the word "miti" have? Endocrine, exocrine.

What is exocrine? It is something you can touch, see, and feel, such as your tears, saliva, sweat, digestive juices, and gastric juices. These are all considered exocrine, which means that these important organs secrete into the body cavity for digestion, moisture, and excretion. What does endocrine mean in turn?

Endocrine is something that you can't feel or see. Where is it secreted? We secrete exocrine into the pipes, but where is the endocrine secreted? It is secreted into the blood. Through the blood circulation, the secreted substances can reach any part of the body. What is this secreted substance? It is hormones.

What are the adrenal glands? Where are they and how big are they?

This word is very familiar to everyone. We often hear the word hormone. Which organ in the urinary system is so important? An endocrine function, which we did not mention just now is called adrenal gland. As the name suggests, there is a pair of glands on the kidney, even one on each side. Similarly, there is an adrenal gland on each kidney. The adrenal gland is very small in size. You can think of it as a potato chip. It is about the same size as a potato chip. Its thickness may be about four or five potato chips stacked together, and the color is also similar. Although the golden gland is small, the role it plays is very powerful.

What other endocrine organs are there besides the adrenal glands?

What other endocrine organs are included? We do more physical examinations now, and the reports often check for thyroid glands, right? What else are endocrine glands? Including the pancreas, there are also some endocrine glands. When we hear the word pancreas, we will think of the pancreas. We all know that it secretes pancreatic juice, right? Generally, abdominal pain after pancreatitis is because the pancreatic duct is blocked overnight and cannot secrete, resulting in a very dangerous symptom of infection.

What does the pancreatic endocrine system secrete? The pancreas has a very important basic unit structure called the islet. Therefore, the insulin secreted by the islet is related to diabetes. It regulates blood sugar. From this, we can see that a secreted hormone enters the blood and regulates the functions of various organs throughout the body. The same is true for the thyroid gland, which secretes thyroxine.

What hormones do the adrenal glands secrete? What are their uses?

The adrenal glands, but the adrenal glands secrete many more types of hormones than the thyroid gland and pancreas. What hormones can it secrete? It can secrete adrenal cortex hormones or cortisol, and then it can secrete aldosterone. It can also secrete a word that you should be more familiar with, called adrenaline.

Of course, there is another hormone that you may not think of. Some people say that androgen is very strange. Isn't androgen secreted by the testicles? In fact, the adrenal gland is also an important source of androgen, especially for women. Don't think that women's bodies are full of estrogen, there are also androgens. Our ancestors talked about the balance of yin and yang.

This makes sense and they are mutually transformative. If there is no androgen to balance women, there will be many problems. We will talk about this topic later. So how important are these hormones secreted by the adrenal glands to the human body? It can be said that they are hormones that maintain the most basic physiological needs of human life, maintain your stability, and regulate your biological clock.

In other words, your daily routine, you can wake up and sleep, your emotions can be excited or calm, you can be happy or angry, so if you miss the bus, you can run and your heart rate can go up in a hurry, including the recent exams such as the college entrance examination and the high school entrance examination, which require students to fully mobilize their brain power, energy and intelligence, all of which are inseparable from these hormones. Of course, they are all targeted. For some, corticosteroids may play a greater role, while for some, adrenaline may play a stronger role.

Why is hormone secretion related to blood pressure?

Generally speaking, the secretion of these hormones has a common feature. What are they related to? It is related to human blood pressure, which is a basic regulatory function. In other words, why are the hormones that maintain the most basic physiological life needs of human beings related to blood pressure? The reason is very simple. For a person to live, your blood pressure must be high enough. If the blood pressure is low, it is called shock. We generally stipulate that blood pressure is lower than 90, and the systolic pressure, which we commonly call high pressure, is lower than 90, then there is a manifestation of shock. Of course, some people may have low blood pressure at ordinary times, and blood pressure of about 90 is also acceptable. What we are talking about is that if the blood pressure of most people is normally around 120 or 130, and suddenly the blood pressure is lower than 90, it is very dangerous. So blood pressure is a manifestation of human life, which we call the most important indicator of vital signs.

What does blood pressure have to do with?

The first relevant factor is the amount of water in the body, or what we call blood volume in professional terms. You know how much percent of a person's body weight is water, it should be at least 60% to 70%, and the water content of women is lower than that of men, so men have more water. Why?

In fact, it is because men have more muscle content, and water accounts for a larger proportion in the muscle, while women have more fat. When there is more fat, the water content decreases, and the corresponding proportion decreases. Therefore, the water content in the body, especially the water content in the blood vessels, that is, the amount of blood is very important, so it is the first thing to regulate the amount of water.

Second, blood pressure is related to electrolytes. The common term is saltiness, and the professional term is electrolytes. You may often hear about replenishing electrolytes, such as potassium, sodium, and chloride. Many beverages also replenish electrolytes, right? After more exercise, the electrolytes lost are replenished in time, so it is also related to the saltiness of the body.

The third one is related to the pressure of blood flow. The heart is a pump, right? It continuously pumps blood from the heart to the whole body, and then back to the heart to form a cycle. Therefore, the pressure in the blood vessels throughout the body depends on the strength of the heart and the elasticity of the blood vessels. This is pressure. These three factors interact with each other and ultimately determine whether your blood pressure is stable or not.

Only a tiny amount of hormones can have a very big effect

Some people have asked whether the adrenal glands need to secrete a large amount of these hormones, or how much is needed to maintain such important basic human functional hormones. One characteristic of this hormone is that only a tiny amount is needed to play a very large balancing role, so you don't need too much, just a very small amount.

Hormones are a supplement to the nervous system

In fact, from the perspective of human evolution, this hormone is a supplement to the nervous system, because we know that the nervous system is interconnected, with various nerve fibers sent out from the brain to the spinal cord. Your feelings and reflexes, as well as your ability to move, are actually connected by visible nerve fibers.

If there is a message from Beijing that needs to be transmitted to all parts of the country, you can take the high-speed rail or the highway, right? There is no problem, but the efficiency of only taking these visible channels is not high enough, after all, it is congested and needs to occupy the width of the road surface. What is the role of hormones? You can understand Wifi and wireless network 5G in this way. A small amount of hormone particles are released into the blood and can circulate to various parts of the body with the blood, and are not restricted by its channels or bandwidth, and the speed of arrival is very fast. Why?

Because our blood flows very fast, it actually supplements the conduction of the nervous system. For example, let's take the classic example of Wu Song fighting a tiger, right? He was lying on a bluestone slab and fell asleep after drinking too much. Suddenly, a big tiger appeared and a gust of cold wind blew. What was his first reaction? He sat up immediately, and then he sobered up. His hair stood up and the muscles of his whole body were mobilized. In fact, it is the nerves that mobilize it, but before that, the hormones took effect first. After the adrenal glands secreted adrenaline first, the signals of the nervous system followed and played a stronger role. So hormones play a very important role in signal conduction here.

Why should adrenal gland diseases be treated by urology?

It is treated and managed in our urinary system. Why? The reason is that we are urology department. What does surgery mean? The diseases treated by surgery should be tangible and visible. Most of them can be solved by surgery. Most of the diseases that cause abnormal hormone secretion and blood pressure fluctuations in the adrenal glands may be related to tumors in the adrenal glands. Then this tumor can be treated by surgical removal.

I suddenly found that my high blood pressure was out of control. It might be caused by the adrenal glands.

We can imagine that a patient with hypertension may have a history of hypertension for many years, about 20 to 30 years, but in the past six months he suddenly found that his blood pressure was difficult to control. He used to take two kinds of medicine to control it at around 120 to 130, but in the past six months, he felt that he had to increase the dosage of the medicine. If he didn't increase the dosage, his blood pressure would soar to 150 to 160. He might have to take 3 to 4 kinds of medicine, and increase the dosage on the original basis.

At this time, I suggest that these patients should go to the internal medicine department for a checkup. During the internal medicine examination, it is very likely that you will find out the reason for your unexplained and uncontrollable blood pressure. It may be a small tumor growing in the adrenal gland, or there is another condition called adrenal hyperplasia, which is smaller than a tumor but may affect a wider range.

There are two situations. One is hyperplasia, which means the whole thing becomes thicker and swollen, with diffuse lumps and bumps. A tumor is a local bulge. These two are not quite the same. If you find these two situations, and you are indeed found to have hyperplasia or tumors through B-ultrasound or CT MRI, the internist will definitely recommend you what to do. The next step is to determine whether the high blood pressure is caused by hyperplasia or tumors, because there must be a link in the middle of the causal relationship. How to connect them together and establish a causal relationship is actually to check these hormones.

Because if adrenal hyperplasia or tumors do secrete one or more of these hormones excessively, then high blood pressure that is basically difficult to control and that suddenly changes can be considered to be caused by adrenal tumors or hyperplasia. In this case, most patients can have the tumor removed surgically, or even the hyperplastic adrenal gland on that side removed, which can help control your blood pressure, and may even control it better than before. This is the cause and effect relationship.

Young people with new unexplained hypertension should have their adrenal glands checked

We gave an example of a patient who had high blood pressure and then it became difficult to control. In fact, there is another situation that makes us feel more difficult to accept or has a greater impact on our daily lives? It is the group of younger patients, who are in their prime years, are full of energy in various jobs, and may even work overtime 24 hours a day. If they do not have any basis for high blood pressure, high blood pressure itself should not be a disease of young people. However, if these patients suddenly develop high blood pressure, and the high blood pressure is still relatively high, usually above 140 or 150, then we must be very vigilant and careful, because this is also considered new high blood pressure of unknown cause.

Just now, the elderly and middle-aged groups have unexplained blood pressure that is uncontrollable or difficult to control, right? Young people have another situation, called unexplained new hypertension, and they should also be highly alert to adrenal problems, because there are not many reasons that can explain this type of hypertension. Some may be vascular problems, some may be caused by nervous and mental stress, but more importantly, it is really necessary to check whether there is a problem with the adrenal glands.

Why young people should pay more attention to sudden unexplained hypertension

Why should we pay attention to the sudden onset of unexplained hypertension in young people? The first reason is that everyone is busy, right? They may have some awareness of health, but they don’t pay much attention to it. They don’t have time to take care of hypertension.

Secondly, everyone is used to it. Staying up late for socializing may cause higher blood pressure, faster heart rate and more panic. This is not normal. Anyone may have this feeling when they are tired. It is precisely because of this that it is easy to ignore more serious situations.