Cortisol is important for several reasons. It is a very powerful anti-inflammatory and is sometimes used systemically or locally for that purpose. Problems begin when its level is elevated and is secreted for a prolonged period within our body systems. Remember the soldiers mentioned earlier?
The troops would continue to fight and use unnecessary energy although the enemy was defeated. In other words, they would begin to fight with each other, destroying themselves. This is what happens when cortisol is released at an elevated level and begins to poison the human body.
The biochemical effects of the secretion of the hypothalamus, the pituitary gland, and adrenals play their part in the preparation of the nervous system, the muscles,
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When this takes place, very different changes occur in the nervous system and other target tissue. The hormones involved in this occurrence have a pharmacological effect on the target tissue. Pharmacological effects can be therapeutic, toxic, or lethal.
The term “therapeutic effect” describes a situation whereby a drug successfully treats a given condition. Toxicity, on the other hand, results from harmful pharmacological effects. Lethal or deadly effects are often related to dosage. One common pharmacological effect is the inhibition of inflammation around injuries or infections.
This is essentially why large doses of cortisol, or its synthetic form cortisone, are administered in cases where the infections, allergies, arthritis, and similar inflammatory conditions have reached a dangerous level. Inflammation in most cases is of great value and a normal response to injury.
This is how the body floods the area with oxygen, nutrients, antibodies to fight off invading organisms, and fibroblasts to carry on the wound-healing processes to the injured area. You may, however, see how sustained levels of cortisol in the bloodstream may actually interfere with the natural healing process and progressively decrease the body’s resistance to infections, swelling, and tumors of all