Sex steroids like estrogens and testosterone play a crucial role in puberty, facilitating the transition from childhood to adulthood but also causing issues like mood swings and skin changes. In menopause, a significant drop in estrogen levels leads to symptoms including hot flushes and increased risk of osteoporosis and heart disease. Steroid hormones have significant variations, more so in women than men. Men exhibit a circadian rhythm in their hormone levels. These variations are regulated by the hypothalamus and clock genes, controlling the release of hormones at different times of the day.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss some of the chemical signals coursing through our bodies throughout our lives, produced in separate areas and spreading via the bloodstream. We call these 'hormones' and we produce more than 80 of them of which the best known are arguably oestrogen, testosterone, adrenalin, insulin and cortisol. On the whole hormones operate without us being immediately conscious of them as their goal is homeostasis, maintaining the levels of everything in the body as required without us having to think about them first. Their actions are vital for our health and wellbeing and influence many different aspects of the way our bodies work.
With
Sadaf Farooqi
Professor of Metabolism and Medicine at the University of Cambridge
Rebecca Reynolds
Professor of Metabolic Medicine at the University of Edinburgh
And
Andrew Bicknell
Associate Professor in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Reading
Produced by Victoria Brignell
Reading list:
Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (first published 1962; Penguin Classics, 2000)
Stephen Nussey and Saffron Whitehead, Endocrinology: An Integrated Approach (BIOS Scientific Publishers; 2001)
Aylinr Y. Yilmaz, Comprehensive Introduction to Endocrinology for Novices (Independently published, 2023)