Читать книгу Pure Health - Henri Chenot - Страница 10

To keep the machine running, we’re equipped with chemical messengers that operate away from their sites of production in the endocrinal glands. Hormones are our ‘switches’: as soon as the brain gives an order, the hormones get busy and allow all the vital processes to take place inside our bodies. In women, a switch is turned on at puberty, another at the start of the menstrual cycle, another during pregnancy. At menopause, the switch turns down the intensity due to a shortage of hormones.

Primary molecules, precursors to hormones called eicosanoids, draw on the nutrients in food: they are partial to fatty acids. Without a fatty acid source, we wouldn’t be protected from fluctuations of and disruptions to hormonal levels, as is the case with anorexia: the absence of periods is due to a hormonal imbalance, because the body isn’t producing enough oestrogen and progesterone. There are also psychological disorders that bring about a lack of adrenalin.

When they are well fed, eicosanoids differentiate themselves and mutate into hormones. Transported by the blood, the hormones fix themselves on to their specific receptors in order to respond, with unparalleled precision, to all sorts of stimulations. Hormones aren’t exclusively linked to sexuality or procreation, of course; besides oestrogen and progesterone in women and testosterone in men, the hormones for the thyroid are very important for circulation levels, immunology and the heart; the ones for the pituitary gland aim to help growth and harmony within the body; those for the pancreas aim to release insulin; and those for the suprarenal gland create adrenalin and corticoids. An excessive or limited production of hormones produces a characteristic disease for each hormone.