Splendid Communication Within The Body:
The Hormone System
Your hundred trillion cells work together in great harmony, just as if they were aware of one another. This harmony can be seen in the number of times your heart beats as you read these words, the level of calcium stored in your bones, your blood-sugarlevel, the amount of blood filtered by your kidneys every minute—in these, and thousands of other similar details.
Bearing all these systems in mind, you might compare the human body to a giant orchestra consisting of 100 trillion musicians, playing the most incomparable compositions 24 hours a day. The tempo sometimes speeds up, or slows down; sometimes with a fast tempo, and at others with a calmer melody. However, the musicians in the orchestra never fall out of tune with one another. So Who is it who conducts this matchless orchestra? How can millions of different musicians are able to play their common notes at the same time, with different instruments?
Hormones are proteins charged with carrying messages between the 100 trillion cells in the human body cells. Consider, for example, the secretin that starts being secreted during food digestion. Though you may be quite unaware of this hormone, it prevents your stomach from being harmed by acid. It’s impossible for you to prevent this or to protect yourself by any other means. And this applies to all the other organs, enzymes and systems in your body.
A perfect system in all aspects has been established in the human body, although people are unaware of what is taking place within them. Substances in your body issue instructions on your behalf and maintain your body’s equilibrium, directing you to eat or drink or move more quickly, even while you are unaware of these directions. Your body’s survival depends on a chain of command controlled by means of hormones.
How did this system come into being? How is it regulated? How do these hormones know where and when to act?
As you shall see in the pages that follow, it is essential for the hormonal system to have emerged in its entirety, all at once. It is impossible to imagine hormones acquiring all their properties over the course of time. Like all other systems in the body, the hormonal system emerged in a single moment. In other words, it was created. The details of this system, one of the proofs of Allah’s existence and infinite might, again encourage us to consider His creation. In verses, Allah commands people to think about the entities He has created, and to turn to Him:
It is He Who sends down water from the sky. From it you drink and from it come the shrubs among which you graze your herds. And by it He makes crops grow for you and olives and dates and grapes and fruit of every kind. There is certainly a Sign in that for people who reflect. He has made night and day subservient to you, and the Sun and Moon and stars, all subject to His command. There are certainly Signs in that for people who use their intellect. And also the things of varying colors He has created for you in the earth. There is certainly a Sign in that for people who pay heed. It is He Who made the sea subservient to you so that you can eat fresh flesh from it and bring out from it ornaments to wear. And you see the ships cleaving through it so that you can seek His bounty, and so that hopefully you will show thanks. He cast firmly embedded mountains on the earth so it would not move under you, and rivers and pathways so that hopefully you would be guided, and landmarks. And they are guided by the stars. Is He Who creates like him who does not create?
THE CONTROL SYSTEM IN THE BODY
Airplanes, spacecraft and even modern automobiles all now feature computers that monitor the vehicle’s status and capacity. Thousands of years before human beings developed these systems, however, perfect control systems were already in operation, inside the human body itself.
The body’s control and supervision mechanisms—the nervous system that stretches along an organic network, and the hormonal system that analyzes chemical signals—possess a technology far higher than any human can imagine.
To a large extent, both systems work according to classical reaction principles. A message sent from the control system causes the target organ to increase or reduce its activity. Analysis is performed at every moment, thanks to a constant flow of information, and new instructions are issued according to that analysis. Millions of pieces of information are processed every second. The nervous system permits information exchange by means of nerves that span the entire body.
The nervous system and hormone system work together at many points. For example, stimuli from the nervous system are needed in order for the hormone adrenalin to be secreted.
The hormonal system’s communications are delivered thanks to the bloodstream. A gland releases message-bearing hormones directly into the blood. These messages travel throughout the whole body, reach the target organ and set it into activity. But of course the hormonal system cannot function in the absence of the circulatory system. If we recall the link between the hormonal and nervous systems, then we face the fact that the hormonal-nervous-circulatory systems must have arisen at the same time.
The endocrine and nervous systems work together to maintain a balanced equilibrium in the body. The hormonal system plays a role in reproduction, the cells’ use of nutritional substances and in the establishment of salt and liquid levels. The harmony between this system of tissues, glands and all the other organs and cells in the body is striking. Most glands that comprise the hormonal system have no ducts, or channels. Glands release hormones into the tissues around them, where they are absorbed by capillary vessels and carried away by means of the blood. But the condition of the target tissues sets the hormones into action—and hormones may be specific to that tissue. For example, when the male hormone testosterone is secreted, it causes hair to grow on the cheeks and jaw but has no effect on the hairs on the scalp. In addition, other hormones affect the entire body. Thyroid hormone, for instance, stimulates all the cells in the body.
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