AdolescenceAdolescenceAdolescence Kaitlyn FeckAdolescence is the transitional stage from childhood to adulthood. Ages thirteen to nineteen. Is when this stage usually occurs. Many physical and psychological changes that happen during this time may occur at earlier ages around nine to twelve years of age. This is a time of discovery and disorientation. Adolescence deal with issues of independence and self- identify. They tend to do lots of experimenting with drugs, alcohol, and sexuality. During adolescence the individual goes through many physical changes referred to as puberty. Puberty is a time of rapid physical growth and huge on rush of hormones. For girls, widening of the hips, peak growth spurt, and menarche are the changes that begin puberty. Menarche is a girls first menstrual period, the start of ovulation. For boys, appearance of facial hair, deepening of the voice, peak growth spurt and spermonarche mark the beginning of puberty. Spermonarche is a boy’s first ejaculation, it signals sperm production. The typical age for spermonarche and menarche are just under thirteen years of age.
Before the physical change that can be observed occur, many changes in the brain take place. Hormones are body chemicals that regulate hunger, sleep, mood, stress, sexual desire, and many other bodily actions. During adolescence the pituitary gland activates many glands, such as the gonads, or sex glands. For female ovaries, males testes. The gonads release sex hormones such as estrogen, which cause the changes in females. Testosterone is the hormone that effects males. The hormones affect the body’s entire shape and functioning including production of additional hormones that regulate stress and immunity. The body and brain aren’t only affected by hormones, behavior is affected as well. Emotional surges, lustful impulses are a result of the raised hormone levels. Hormone levels also influence body rhythms. The circadian rhythm is a day and night cycle of biological activity that occurs every twenty-four hours. The raised hormone levels cause this rhythm to be off resulting in loss of sleep.
A study conducted in the 1960s in San Francisco and the Netherlands found that the stress hormone cortisol decreases anabolic stress hormone production. It is thought the increase in cortisol caused by anabolic stress is related to increases in asexuality which also has the opposite effect of stress.
Determinings of the physiological changes in female reproductive health are difficult. In an article released in 2001 and published in the journal Reproductive Medicine, researchers from the University of Massachusetts and several academic institutions in the United States concluded, “…there is little or no evidence that stress hormones are responsible for normal male reproductive health either. However, studies with a high level of stress stress exposure often lead to changes in the physiology of male reproductive health that result in male reproductive declines.” So, the question is, why is more stress hormone and reproductive health so much more important then the hormones themselves? And in this, it is important not to overstate why it is important.
“Hormones are already changing biology, which is why they are also influencing behavior”
Says James MacLaren of the University of Florida in Gainesville, who received his PhD in biological sciences from the University of Missouri in 1992.
“Many stress hormone changes that are happening in our bodies today are due to our changes in lifestyles,” MacLaren told me in a telephone interview. He had studied sex hormones in the mid-1970’s.
“They’re not in the genes. When you know the difference between different body functions — your sex hormone secretion and metabolism, and the adrenal output and the hypothalamus — some of the things that go on, when the body functions, can also change, and it can change with your hormonal changes.” Dr. MacLaren is now the Director of the Sexual Medicine Institute of the National Center for Health Statistics in San Diego.
He was very interested in the effects of hormones on behavior because it was such a long way from being the focus of study.
“I learned about what it took to get sexually active and got to work, not just on hormonal changes that did that,” MacLaren said. It was important for him not just because sex hormones cause hormonal changes in the body, but also because it was so close to people in the early phases of life, such as the birth.
“I didn’t just know that hormones were changing biology, but also about our bodies. And hormones are already changing biology, which is why they are also influencing behavior.”
A review (PDF) of 19,500 papers by over 300 researchers from 25 different countries, researchers including MacLaren (with an emphasis on male reproductive health), a few graduate students from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and some others from other institutions interviewed about their research shows that “the hormonal side effect—if you look closely at the body composition and physiology of females—is related to some of the important changes in sexual functioning that are happening in our bodies today.”
What about the hormonal side effects of drugs that are known to affect women’s reproductive health?
“There is clear differences between how medications affect these drugs, but they affect very small aspects of the human body,” MacLaren said.