Review of the Endocrine System (Nursing)

00:01 Hi, welcome to our video on Cortical Steroids.

00:04 One of the Endocrine medications.

00:07 Now, before we get going into the medication specifically, I wanna give you a quick review of the Endocrine System.

00:13 We’ve got the organs place for you up there on your nose so you can see there are lots of organs involved in the Endocrine System.

00:21 But we’re gonna focus on these three: The Hypothalamus, the Pituitary gland and the Adrenal gland.

00:29 So, we’re talking about the corticosteroid these are the three glands that are involved.

00:34 Okay, so the Endocrine System is incredible all that it can do.

00:40 But what do we need for to really function well? First of all, you need hormones.

00:46 So part one, hormones, those are chemical messengers.

00:50 Next, these special chemical messengers, the hormones travel through the body and bind with receptors they’re unique and they only fit with special hormones.

01:03 So, you need hormones and you need receptors.

01:06 The third piece is you need target cells, so when the hormones bind with the receptors they cause an action in the target cell.

01:14 So that’s why the Endocrine System can be so specific, raise blood sugar, lower blood sugar and a million other things in your body.

01:24 We have special hormones that fit in unique receptors and the target cells are what activate the reaction that we are looking for.

01:32 Yeah, look at nurse Natalie, maybe you're feeling like her right now.

01:36 “Why are we doing so much information on the Endocrine System? I thought this was Pharm?” Well, trust me. What we’re doing with these medications is kind of mimicking what your body naturally does.

01:48 So, at the end of this section you'll understand how corticosteroids work in the body.

01:54 Both the ones that your body makes and the ones we give you.

01:57 I’m gonna help you learn a simpler way to remember all their side effects and there are a lot of them.

02:04 I'll also help you know the difference between Cushing's and Addison’s disease and how we treat them.

02:10 Okay. Now, let’s get down to breaking down corticosteroids.

02:14 I want you to think about of American football.

02:17 So, endocrine was like a football game.

02:20 Now, I am the least athletic person in this room. Trust me on that.

02:26 I’m not coordinated and I’m not graceful what I enjoyed about football game is just hanging out with my friends and the snacks.

02:32 But I know enough to help you understand the endocrine system.

02:37 Now, I want you to think about a football game, the three important players, you've got a coach, you've got a quarterback and they're usually pretty fun to watch play and a receiver.

02:49 So, in American football you got a coach who’s looking over everything, he's kind of overseeing the whole field, seeing what needs to be done, reading what is going on in the field, he's getting information from guy’s upstairs, and he decides what play to call.

03:05 Now, with the quarterback, the coach sends a play in the quarterback, the quarterback knows what to do.

03:10 They’ll send the ball down the field based on the play that the coach sent in the game.

03:15 The receivers job is to catch that ball running across at the end zone.

03:21 So now, we’ve got the players, I told you I didn’t know very much about football.

03:26 That’s about the extent of my knowledge of football but it really works with the endocrine system.

03:32 Because you've got the organs in your body that work the same way.

03:35 The hypothalamus in your brain is like the coach, so you've got the central nervous system which is your brain and your spinal cord it goes right down the center of your body.

03:48 Now, the peripheral nervous system branches off that and it goes right all the way down to my body, to my fingers, and my toes.

03:54 The central nervous system is constantly getting messages back from that peripheral nervous system, bzzzzzz, going right up to the brain.

04:03 Just like the coach is getting information from all different parts of the field and other assisting coach is to know what’s the best play to call.

04:10 Hypothalamus receives information from the rest of the body, the peripheral nervous system, all the different kinds of levels and it decides to send something into the quarterback.

04:21 The anterior pituitary. When the anterior pituitary receives the signal from hypothalamus it sends something else down the field to the receiver.

04:32 In this example, the receiver is could be the thyroid, the adrenal glands, the reproductive glands: your ovaries and your testes; anyone of those.

04:40 But remember we’re gonna focus on adrenal gland.

04:43 So, the three players for our game are the hypothalamus, the anterior pituitary and the adrenal glands.

04:50 Okay. So, let’s go back and talk about the coach a little bit more.

04:54 The hypothalamus is located in the central part of your brain; you see it there in our drawing.

04:59 Now, it’s the main link between the endocrine and the nervous system.

05:04 Don’t miss that point.

05:06 This is an amazing part of your brain that the hypothalamus is one that kind of coordinates between your endocrine system when we dump hormones out and your nervous system.

05:18 So, it's critically important in managing all these responses.

05:22 Now, there are some nerve cells here that control the pituitary gland.

05:26 They produce chemicals that stimulate or they suppress hormones secretions from the pituitary gland.

05:31 Now, the hypothalamus is that coach.

05:34 Remember the main link between the endocrine and the nervous system.

05:38 So, if you have damage the hypothalamus it’s gonna have phenomenal effects in the rest of your body.

05:43 It's producing these chemicals and its stimulates hormones secretions from the pituitary gland.

05:50 Now, the pituitary gland is my kind of gland.

05:53 It's little, it’s short like me but it’s really, really bossy.

05:59 It’s a pea-sized gland located at the base of your brain just below the hypothalamus.

06:05 They're really close to each other, so it’s easy for them to communicate.

06:08 Now, the pituitary might be little.

06:12 We call it the pea-sized gland, but we also call it the “Master Gland”.

06:17 Have you ever seen like a little kid in the family, the youngest kid in the family, they got that little finger and they boss the whole family around, they're the littlest person but they have a lot to say about what needs to be done.

06:29 That’s what your pituitary is. It’s the master gland.

06:32 It makes hormones that controls several other endocrine glands.

06:38 So, hypothalamus gives info sensed by the brain temperature, light, exposure patterns, feelings to the pituitary.

06:46 So, I’m using a lot of repetitions as we go through this because I promise that’s the best way for all of our brains to work.

06:54 So, grab on to that repetitions and use it to keep asking yourself, why we are talking about this? Do I understand? Am I clear? So, we've got hypothalamus, gets that information sends it to the pituitary gland that’s like the quarterback, in this example.

07:09 And before we're going I want you to know, there are two glands to the pituitary gland.

07:13 There's anterior and the posterior.

07:16 Yeah, I think they run out of creativity when they thought about naming these but it pretty much got, anterior and posterior that’s what we will call them.

07:24 Now, we’ve got, in the anterior lobe it puts out all kinds of hormones.

07:30 Growth hormones that stimulates growth of the bone and other body tissues and helps handling nutrients and minerals.

07:37 We’ll talk about in some of our other videos what happens when you got too much of that.

07:41 So remember, we’re in the anterior lobe of the pituitary gland.

07:46 This one puts out much more hormone than the other lobe does.

07:51 Prolactin is one that activates milk production in breastfeeding.

07:54 Now, don’t miss what they did on this slide.

07:57 Do you see what each one of these hormones are listed in? They’re footballs. I love it.

08:04 So that will help you remember growth hormone, prolactin, now these are just background information for you.

08:09 We got thyrotropin. Thyrotropin stimulates the thyroid gland to produce thyroid hormones.

08:16 This is all good to know information for right now.

08:20 But the need to know information is the pink or red color football you see right there.

08:26 A-C-T-H. This is Corticotrophin.

08:31 This is the one that stimulates the adrenal gland to produce certain hormones.

08:36 This is the focus of our slide.

08:39 So, make sure you put a real star of this.

08:41 This is what we we’re focusing on going from hypothalamus to the pituitary gland and then it goes down to the adrenal cortex which is the receiver.

08:51 Now remember if you look at this picture it’s pretty good.

08:54 Now, I want you make sure you notice like the adrenal gland is that kind of cap that sitting on top of a kidney.

08:59 It’s not actually part of the kidney, but it does snuggle right on next to it.

09:04 They can also see the fat layer unfortunately, that we all have but that also protects your kidney.

09:09 So, the adrenal glands are the receiver.

09:11 This is the ones that going to receive that play from the pituitary gland.

09:16 You got two parts to this one too: Adrenal medulla which is in the middle and then you got adrenal cortex.

09:24 Now, the reason I'm enunciating is because that will help you keep straight remembering what comes from the cortex.

09:33 Because it's part of their name.

09:34 So you've got two parts to the adrenal gland: for adrenal cortex and the adrenal medulla that’s more in the middle.

09:43 Let’s look at the adrenal cortex because that’s our target.

09:46 Now, we know that each one adrenal glands is on top of your kidney, they produce corticosteroids.

09:54 That’s why we're remembering the cortex is important.

09:56 Now, that all influence salt and water balance so anytime we mess with your corticosteroids it’s probably gonna have some type of impact on your salt and water balance.

10:08 What do you think the problem is if you impact my salt and water balance? What other vital sign will that impact? Right, if I have more salt I’ll hang on to more water then I’ll have more volume, I’ll have blood pressure that’s going up.

10:26 Sometimes that’s an issue with certain medications.

10:29 Now, the cortex also is your body’s response to stress, it’s metabolism, the immune system, and some other sexual characteristics.

10:38 So, already relaying the ground work for you.

10:41 When we give you corticosteroids your body naturally makes them, they come from the adrenal gland but when we give you medications that mimic these things now all these things are gonna be exaggerated.

10:54 So, salt and water balance could be impacted.

10:57 And we can also mess with how you're dealing with stress, how your body is metabolizing things, how your immune system is working and some sexual characteristics.

11:07 So that was the adrenal cortex.

11:10 Now, we're gonna talk about the adrenal medulla, that’s the one in the middle.

11:15 It puts out catecholamines like epinephrine.

11:18 So that’s more of a sympathetic nervous system stimulator.

11:22 That’s a little messenger that when my body recognizes, “Hey, girl we're gonna need to run.” It squirts out -- squirts out those catecholamines like epinephrine.

11:32 They travel through my body, they connect and bind to my lungs, my lungs bronchodilate.

11:37 They connect and bind to my heart to the beta 1, then my heart beats faster and stronger.

11:43 That’s what comes out of the adrenal medulla.

11:46 But when we’re talking about corticosteroids we're talking about the ones we just discuss that come out of the adrenal cortex.

11:53 Now, it’s your turn, let’s supercharge your memory.

11:57 If you’ll study as you go with us, I want you to try to recall this information without looking at your notes.

12:04 That’s the way you really remember and learn what we’re talking about.

12:09 Okay. So, which three parts of the endocrine system are represented by the following? The coach, the quarterback and the receiver.

12:18 See if you can answer those without looking at your notes.

12:29 Good work. The coach, quarterback and receiver are the hypothalamus, the anterior pituitary and adrenal glands in your endocrine system.