Endocrine system

 

The Endocrine system is the inter-related set of organs that together comprise all those that control the hormones in our body.  Whilst the Physical nervous system has been designed to carry electrical messages around the body quickly and in a targeted way, the endocrine system is a chemical message based system.
Disease can occur to the following, all of which are classed as endocrine glands:

• Hypothalamus
• Pineal gland
• Pituitary gland
• Thyroid glands
• Pancreas
• Adrenal glands
• Reproductive system glands

The kidneys, liver, pancreas and stomach also secrete hormones but their function is not exclusively to do this.

All these chemical messengers travel in the blood stream and are not targeted or addressed. Having said this, however, because the blood vessels reach every cell in the body, potentially a chemical messenger can reach any and every  cell.   Whilst the nerves, -  the neurons  - are physically connected to the destination cells and the synapse produces the chemicals to target activity, the endocrine system simply sends out the appropriate chemical into the blood stream and it then finds its own way to the cells.

So instead of the chemical messengers being ‘addressed’, their shape acts like the address and the cell accepts them or rejects them depending on whether it is a cell that can process that message.

These chemical messages are produced in the body by the endocrine system.  We have a number of glands in the body that each produce different chemical messages.  For example, the pituitary gland, the thyroid gland, the pineal gland, the adrenal and so on.

Each chemical messenger conveys a different message and there are literally thousands of types of chemical messengers, and as a consequence thousands of types of receptor

The endocrine system is not adapted for fast responses.  In comparison with the nervous system it is extremely slow, seconds rather than milliseconds, however, these chemicals control a lot of very important processes – blood glucose levels, heart rate, gastric secretion, metabolism, growth rate, reproduction and water balance for example.Internally, the chemical messengers that are produced by the endocrine system are called hormones and some mechanisms to give you a spiritual experience act by binding to the same receptors as the hormones.

If we want pain relief, for example, which is a partial step towards stilling the senses, we can wait for our own endorphins to act – the body’s natural pain relief chemical.  They will then bind to opioid receptors [end = endogenous, orphine = morphine, or natural morphine] and give us pain relief or we can take an opioid based products such as codeine or morphine and it will give us pain relief instead.

Illnesses and diseases

There are a whole host of illnesses and diseases that can affect the various parts of the Endocrine system. [Remember please that this is not a medical web site as such I have gone into detail only with those that have caused spiritual experiences]. These include:

• Thyroid disease  - this section groups the various diseases affecting the thyroid
• Pancreas disease - this section groups the diseases affecting the pancreas
• Reproductive system disease - this section groups the diseases affecting the reproductive system
• Adrenal system disease - includes diseases such as Addison's disease
• Pituitary gland disease - this section groups the diseases affecting the pituitary gland , the principal disease here being Cushing's syndrome.
• Hypothalamus disease - usually manifests as Narcolepsy
• Pineal gland disease -  the pineal gland can become calcified - see Brain sand.  There is a very high correlation between brain sand and spiritual experience.