walker texas ranger tears

As I sat and ate my grilled cheese sandwich on my lunch break not long ago, Walker Texas Ranger played on the TV. Walker’s girlfriend, Alex, has survived being kidnapped and almost killed, and is now lying in a hospital bed while he lovingly comforts her in all his ginger glory. He tells her how much she means to him, and then pulls a ring out of his pocket. And there it is… “Alex, will you marry me?”  It pans to the highlights of their relationship. In typical cheesy 90’s slow-mo style, Alex and Walker stroll through fields hand in hand, laugh together, cry together, and share loving looks into each other’s eyes as their perfectly teased Texas hair blows in the breeze.

And suddenly, I am bawling.

The credits begin to roll and I brush my tears off of my grilled cheese and wipe my eyes. Something isn’t right- I should be laughing hysterically, not crying hysterically. I look at my calendar on my phone and then it makes sense.

Let me tell you folks, hormones are very real. They don’t only control your mood- they control things like sleep, friskiness, stress response, fight or flight response, puberty, hunger, parenting, and in-utero develepment. Pretty much every process or event your body undergoes is driven by hormones in one way or another

But how do they work? Having to direct things from slow-paced things like ovulation to fast-acting processes like adrenaline rushes, how do they make things happen? Where do they come from? Where do they go? How do they get there?

Hormones are little molecules that are manufactured by your body. They can come from individual cells, organs, or more frequently from glands (think thyroid, testes, ovaries, adrenal, etc.). Different glands manufacture different hormones.

Major glands  (wikicommons)

To name a few: Testes and ovaries manufacture sexy hormones that influence puberty, ovulation, parenting, menopause, and male machoism. Your adrenal glands sit on top of your kidneys and produces adrenaline- key in stress response, fight or flight, and cell metabolism. Your thyroid gland in your neck manufactures a variety of hormones, mainly affecting metabolism. The big daddy gland- the pituitary- is buried at the base of your brain and is perhaps our most primitive gland. It regulates just about everything from sleep to sex drive. The pineal gland, also of primitive origin, plays a role in light detection and internal calendar regulation.

From their respective glands, hormones are released into the bloodstream in order to travel to their target tissues. Let’s take adrenaline, for example. Say you’re walking down a dark alley and all the sudden a man steps out in front of you with a knife and says “give me your money!” Time for fight or flight response. Your brain immediately sends signals down to your adrenal glands, which then flood your whole body with adrenaline. But you only need certain tissues to respond, right? Your cardiac muscles need to quicken, your pupils need to widen, your blood vessels need to dilate so you can haul ass. Well, nature has it so that only these target tissues have receptors to recognize these hormones. So while your pinky toe is getting the same dose of adrenaline, it don’t give a $h*t. But the cells of your heart and blood vessels certainly do- and respond to help you get out of this hairy situation. This is how the whole hormone system can be so refined- receptors only exist where their hormones are meant to act.

The guy with a knife is still standing in front of you. You kick him in the balls and run. You make it safely away and stop to catch your breath. That jittery feeling that makes you ready to punch somebody in the face is the adrenaline coursing through your body. Within the next few minutes, you’ll start to feel more normal. This is because the adrenaline is being cycled out of your cells and metabolized to the point of no longer being hormones.

The system is pretty much the same for slow-release events like ovulation and puberty. Your pituitary regulates your internal calendar, activating the right tissues at the right time.

When you break it down like this, it all sounds so scientific and straightforward. But when you’re sitting next to a lady with a baby on an airplane and are desperately hoping she’ll ask you to hold it, or crying at Walker Texas Ranger, it doesn’t feel so scientific or straightforward. Makes you wonder how much of the human experience is just molecules binding to receptors. But then again, maybe that makes it that much more extraordinary.