Depression and hormones

There may be a biological reason why depression and other stress-related psychiatric disorders are more common among women compared to men. Studying stress signaling systems in animal brains, neuroscience researchers found that females are more sensitive to low levels of an important stress hormone and less able to adapt to high levels than males.

It has long been recognized that women have a higher incidence of depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and other anxiety disorders, said Valentino, but underlying biological mechanisms for that difference have been unknown. Her research focuses on corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF), a hormone that organizes stress responses in mammals.

Analyzing the brains of rats that responded to a swim stress test, Valentino's team found that in female rats, neurons had receptors for CRF that bound more tightly to cell signaling proteins than in male rats, and thus were more responsive to CRF. Furthermore, after exposure to stress, male rats had an adaptive response, called internalization, in their brain cells. Their cells reduced the number of CRF receptors, and became less responsive to the hormone. In female rats this adaptation did not occur because a protein important for this internalization did not bind to the CRF receptor.

What is hormones?
Most cells are capable of producing one or more molecules, which act as signaling molecules to other cells, altering their growth, function, or metabolism. The classical hormones produced by cells in the endocrine glands mentioned so far in this article are cellular products, specialized to serve as regulators at the overall organism level. However they may also exert their effects solely within the tissue in which they are produced and originally released.

As many women get older, they start to realize just how much of an impact their hormones play in their day to day life. An imbalance, or a lack of hormones can dramatically affect a women's out look on life, creating symptoms such as moodiness, depression, fluid retention, lack of sex drive & blood sugar problems - to name a few.

So what exactly are hormones? Hormones are chemicals that are manufactured and released by glands in the body. They carry messages from one part of the body to another and can be likened to chemical keys that turn vitally important locks in our cells. The turning of these locks stimulates activity within the cells of our brain, intestines, muscles, genital organs and skin.

So what causes PMS? The pituitary gland, found at the base of the brain, is the gland that "speaks" to the ovaries by sending chemical messages called Follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) and Lutenising hormone (LH) via the blood stream to the ovaries. FSH & LH stimulate the ovaries to manufacture both estrogen and progesterone. Ovulation occurs when the ovary releases a mature egg and the cells left behind in the ovary then form a small yellow gland called the corpus luteum, which sets to work and pumps out progesterone. It is after ovulation in PMS sufferers that their symptoms start. In a women without PMS, her levels of oestrogen and progesterone remain in adequate and balanced amounts between ovulation and her period. In a women with PMS, the levels of oestrogen and progesterone are out of balance between ovulation and her period. Researches believe it is the ratio between these hormones that is important, rather than the actual amounts of these.