When a stressful situation occurs and your heart begins to race, your hands begin to sweat, and you start looking for an escape, you have experienced a textbook case of fight-or-flight response. This response stems from the hormone adrenaline. Also called epinephrine, this hormone is a crucial part of the body’s fight-or-flight response, but over-exposure can be damaging to health. Because of this, adrenaline is a hormone worth understanding.
Adrenaline is produced in the medulla in the adrenal glands as well as some of the central nervous system’s neurons. Within a couple of minutes during a stressful situation, adrenaline is quickly released into the blood, sending impulses to organs to create a specific response.
What is the function of adrenaline?
Adrenaline triggers the body’s fight-or-flight response. This reaction causes air passages to dilate to provide the muscles with the oxygen they need to either fight danger or flee. Adrenaline also triggers the blood vessels to contract to re-direct blood toward major muscle groups, including the heart and lungs. The body’s ability to feel pain also decreases as a result of adrenaline, which is why you can continue running from or fighting danger even when injured. Adrenaline causes a noticeable increase in strength and performance, as well as heightened awareness, in stressful times. After the stress has subsided, adrenaline’s effect can last for up to an hour.
Problems associated with adrenaline
Adrenaline is an important part of your body’s ability to survive, but sometimes the body will release the hormone when it is under stress but not facing real danger. This can create feelings of dizziness, light-headedness, and vision changes. Also, adrenaline causes a release of glucose, which a fight-or-flight response would use. When no danger is present, that extra energy has no use, and this can leave the person feeling restless and irritable. Excessively high levels of the hormone due to stress without real danger can cause heart damage, insomnia, and a jittery, nervous feeling.
Medical conditions that cause an overproduction of adrenaline are rare, but can happen. If an individual has tumors on the adrenal glands, for example, he/she may produce too much adrenaline; leading to anxiety, weight loss, palpitations, rapid heartbeat, and high blood pressure. Too little adrenaline rarely occurs, but if it did it would limit the body’s ability to respond properly in stressful situations.
Questions for your doctor
Adrenaline rarely causes problems, but ongoing stress can cause complications associated with adrenaline. Addressing these problems starts with finding healthy ways to deal with stress. Consider asking your doctor:
- How can I tell if I am dealing with excessive adrenaline?
- How can I reduce stress in my life?
- Could adrenaline be causing my symptoms?
- What affect is adrenaline function and stress having on my overall health?
What happens if I have too much adrenaline?
Overproduction of adrenaline is very common. Most people are exposed to stressful situations on occasion and so most of us are familiar with the typical symptoms of adrenaline release, such as: rapid heartbeat, high blood pressure, anxiety, weight loss, excessive sweating and palpitations. However, this is a normal response of the body which is intended to help us respond to a stressful situation; once the acute stress is over, the symptoms quickly disappear as adrenaline hyper-secretion stops. Some people with obesity and untreated obstructive sleep apnea may be exposed to high levels of noradrenaline/adrenaline each night as they struggle to breathe; this might play a role in the development of high blood pressure in such people.
Very rarely, overproduction of adrenaline/noradrenaline may be caused by an adrenal tumour called pheochromocytoma or a paraganglioma (if it is located outside the adrenal but along the nerves of sympathetic nervous system that run through the chest and abdomen). Such tumours may run in families as well. The symptoms can include the typical symptoms of adrenaline excess on an intermittent basis but, in some cases, the symptoms can be quite mild so as to be barely noticeable.
What happens if I have too little adrenaline?
Suffering from too little adrenaline is very unusual, even if you have lost both adrenal glands through disease or surgery. Since 90% of the body’s noradrenaline comes from the nervous system, the loss of 10% via the adrenal glands is not really significant. ‘Adrenaline deficiency’ therefore does not really show up as a medical disorder except perhaps in exceedingly rare and unusual genetic catecholamine enzyme deficiencies.
sources: yourhormones.info,hormones.org