Adrenal cortex?

Question

What is the adrenal cortex's role in times of stress?

Answer 1

Wikipedia: Adrenal cortex
... adrenal gland, the adrenal cortex mediates the stress response through the ... in all three layers of the adrenal...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrenal_cortex
Hormones and stress:The...
Hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal cortex relationships. Effect of stressors on hormones ... released from the adrenal cortex...
salmon.psy.plym.ac.uk/year1/stressho.h...
Adrenal
Excessive stress may contribute to the development of mild adrenal cortex insufficiency ... The adrenal cortex, the outer...
www.mbschachter.com/adrenal.htm

Answer 2

Adrenal cortex is the outer and larger part of the adrenal gland. It is derived from embryonic mesoderm, against adrenal medulla which is derived from embryonic ectoderm. Adrenal cortex is histologically distinguishable into three regions.Each region produces a hormone.All these hormones are steroids. First is mineralo corticoid, second, glucocoticoid, and third, androgen.
Mineralocorticoid is responsible for maintaining salt balance in the blood. Glucocorticoid promotes gluoconeogenesis, that is, the formation of glucose and glycogen from proteins.This hormone is partly anabolic and partly catabolic. This hormone is antinflammatory and immunorepressive.The latter action implies that at the time of stress there is decresed formation of antibodies and the person under stress is likely to catch infection more readily than he/she would under normal circumstances.

Answer 3

Physiologically, each time we are exposed to stresses, our adrenal glands respond by producing certain hormones. One part of the adrenal gland, the adrenal cortex, responds to long and short-term stresses, while the adrenal medulla responds to sudden or alarm situations, producing our "fight or flight" response. With the amount of stress we are exposed to each day, you'd think our adrenal glands were of considerable size, but that isn't the case. Our adrenals weigh about 5 grams each and reside in our bodies just above our kidneys in the low back area. For small glands, they play an enormous role in our health. Their function also tends to decline over a person's lifetime, leading some researchers to coin a new term "adrenapause" to define this loss. As such, we need to have ways in which we can keep our adrenal glands healthy.

Answer 4

The adrenal cortex secretes the hormones Aldosterone and Cortisol in times of stress. Aldosterone works at the kidneys, causing sodium retention, resulting in an increase of blood pressure (the retention of solute causes retention of water indirectly, increased water content in the blood causes the increase of blood pressure). Cortisol causes gluconeogenesis within the liver (production of glucose), the breakdown of adipose tissue in order to raise the fatty acid level within the blood, and it goes to many cells of the body and signals them to utilize fat for cellular respiration instead of glucose. These three things allow glucose to be conserved for use by the brain in times of increased need.