It’s likely you have some awareness of your nervous system and endocrine glands. People talk about an adrenalin surge and testosterone driven behavior but it’s all rather juvenile. You need to know that through their hormone secretions your endocrine glands dominate your body and give direction to its activity in a most spectacular way.
For instance, they determine its size, shape and texture; make for intelligence or its lack; give courage or cowardice; imbue with ambition or saturate with laziness; prompt to moral actions or those immoral; and in general force the given outlook upon life.
These findings, that you appear and act as you do because of certain glandular secretions, are more than amazing. But of still greater importance is the knowledge that through their control you may learn to determine your appearance and actions, and perhaps, when more is known, your length of life.
That said, your nervous system is compared to telegraph wires over which messages are sent; and you can compare your endocrine system to a postal service, your blood stream acting as the common carrier.
A certain hormone has affinity for certain functions of your body only, and when posted in the blood it is carried to these functions, to which it delivers strict orders for the performance of a specific type of work.
Hormones are chemical messengers which move quickly from one portion of your body to another and exercise a tremendous control over its various functions.
The adrenal glands
One of the commonest examples of such control is that exercised by adrenalin, the secretion of the adrenal glands. Each adrenal sits like a cocked hat astride one of the kidneys. Each also is double, consisting of a cortex and a medulla.
Adrenalin, the secretion of the medulla, has control of the body’s emergency energies.
Now the pancreas which lies within the abdomen close to the solar plexus has an external secretion that plays so important a part in digestion and an internal secretion called insulin.
The liver is the principal fuel bin of your body, and sugar is the fuel. It’s stored as glycogen, or animal starch, but when released it becomes blood sugar. And the function of insulin is to store up and hold this sugar fuel. When there is a deficiency of insulin the body is unable to store, retain or burn sugar up as energy. The result is the disease called diabetes.
After insulin stores fuel it is released through the function of adrenalin.
Adrenalin
Reserve energies, to be used in fighting or flight, are needed in time of danger; and to meet such requirements, strong emotional excitement such as fear and anger or the stress of pain or intense exertion, cause adrenalin to be secreted into the blood.
Its function is to meet emergencies. It causes the liver to discharge its stored sugar into the blood and the activities of the alimentary canal to cease. The skin becomes moist and greasy, the hair tends to stand erect, the pupils dilate, and more blood is squeezed from the blood lakes of the liver and spleen.
It also causes the blood to clot readily, so that a person or animal wounded while in a passion or under stress of excitement has a much better chance of recovery than if not so aroused.
The secretion of adrenalin also explains the athlete’s second wind, by which, after reaching a state of exhaustion, they suddenly become refreshed and apparently possessed of more energy than they had at the start.
Exhaustion brought on by great exertion is an emergency, and to meet the demand for more energy adrenalin is secreted into the blood. This causes sugar to be released from the liver as a new fuel supply, restores the original tone of the nerves and muscles, and reinforces the activity of the brain.
As the controller of emergency energy, adrenalin is secreted under fear and anger and other emotions arising from a realization that an emergency must be met.
The effect is the same whether the emergency is real or merely construed from common everyday circumstance.
Anger and worry
Those who get angry a dozen times a day over the merest trifles secrete adrenalin and each time reserve fuel is poured into their blood, digestion ceases, the temperature rises, and the heart beats increase.
And those who worry quite as futilely secrete adrenalin. Worry is the fear that some situation will not be adequately met. It calls upon the precious reserve energies of the body when these are not needed, and as a consequence when they are needed in time of stress there are none to fall back on.
Those who get angry and those who are anxious have developed the habit of responding to their surroundings as if an emergency must be met and are squandering their reserve energies.
The insulin secreted by the pancreas endeavors to stem this tide of extravagance. But the repeated secretion of adrenalin overcomes such effort, and when the worry or overwork is excessive and long sustained the insulin becomes insufficient to counteract the adrenalin.
Fuel is no longer stored up, retained, or burned for energy. While not the only cause, for overeating may put a strain upon the pancreas that impairs its activity, yet it is well recognized that worry is a common cause of diabetes.
Worry, anger, sensation and excitement all place a strain on the adrenals and when excessive calls are placed upon them, they no longer secrete adrenalin in normal quantities.
Those afflicted have no reserve energy, not because it is not present, for the pancreas may be functioning normally, but because there is insufficient adrenalin to cause the reserve fuel to be poured into the blood.
They have the fuel, but it is locked up and they’ve lost the key. And because adrenalin is the great fatigue antidote, they easily become tired and discouraged, life no longer seems attractive, and they worry, perhaps weep, on the least provocation. They can suffer from a nervous breakdown, or become a neurasthenic – being irritable, depressed and suffering mental and physical exhaustion aka chronic fatigue syndrome.
Examination shows that those suffering nervous prostration have unimpaired nervous tissue so the disturbance is primarily in the mind, and there is nothing whatever the matter with their nerves.
There is a conflict of desires, conscious or unconscious, and this produces emotional stresses that cause endocrine secretions to find their way into the blood to produce definite physical symptoms.
Those who suffer a deficiency of adrenalin, due to excessive calls made upon it, are easily fatigued, have no reserve power, are mentally unstable, and are described as nervous.
A prodigious amount of work, either physical or mental, may be accomplished every day, one day after another, without impairing the health, if there is freedom from the mental states that cause excessive endocrine secretion.
Strain, worry, and driving yourself to a task, cause undue endocrine activity, and may be overcome by cultivating interest in the work. The work you do can be done better without prolonged strain; and when there is sufficient interest in a task it is no longer work, but play, with a far more valuable endocrine reaction.
Many people are the victims of ‘nerves,’ not because of the amount of work they do, but because they have cultivated adrenalin deficiency through constantly holding the thought, ‘hurry.’
Modern life and its anger, speed, excitement and constant worry cause endocrine damage. So, your mental attitude towards meeting the present standards of living, determines if you will become a nervous wreck.
And I believe that the activity of the other endocrine glands is largely determined by your mental attitude.
Appropriate thinking stimulates a gland, or glands, to secrete their hormones. Their influence is so great on your body that it pays to know how to think and the results of a given kind of thinking.
The thyroid gland
It’s the gland of energy production. United by a connecting strip, it consists of two masses of glandular tissue close to the larynx, lying either side of the neck above the wind-pipe. Its enlargement is known as goiter.
The hormone secreted by the thyroid is an iodine compound called thyroxin. It has a direct effect upon the combustion and construction of your body’s cell life. The more thyroxin presents the faster one lives, the less thyroxin the slower one lives.
Life is possible without it, but only a dull vegetative kind of life. Quick response to environment, sensibility, quick actions and quick thinking all depend upon the thyroid gland.
It also has a marked influence over the skin, the hair, the perspiration, the convolutions of the brain, and the bones of the skull and extremities.
Insufficient thyroxin causes a person to become clumsy. Their skin becomes dry and rough and can peel in sheets and their hair becomes shaggy and coarse. Their temperature drops, ambition disappears, their mind becomes dull, and their body becomes bloated and flabby.
This follows the diminution of energy production and the control exercised by the thyroid over the various functions. If, however, a person so afflicted is fed thyroxin, they soon become physically and mentally normal.
Thyroxin is an antidote to toxins and poisons, resists infection of any kind, and also acts as a differentiator. For instance, if the thyroid is removed from a tadpole, it grows to large size, but never becomes a frog. It still remains in the tadpole stage. On the other hand, a tadpole less than a day old may be transformed into a frog by feeding it with thyroxin. It will be a miniature frog, but a frog none the less.
Under normal conditions the endocrine glands, like the mind and muscles, are strengthened by a reasonable amount of exercise.
So, it is probably true that if there is not a normal amount of stress and strain placed upon the body the adrenals will fail to function sufficiently to properly meet an emergency when it does arise.
So, you should occasionally call upon your reserve energies, as athletes and mountain climbers do, to keep them responsive. In fact, a high degree of efficiency requires that all your endocrine glands be strong and secrete their hormones in proper amounts.
Mental states control endocrine activity
As the activity of the various glands is controlled almost exclusively by mental states, proper endocrine secretion depends upon proper thoughts and emotions.
In the case of the thyroid, because it’s an accessory sex gland, it depends to a great extent upon the feelings of love and affection.
The feeling of love for a child or for a parent, and the affection felt for a friend, as well as the pure love between man and woman, tend to stimulate the thyroid gland to healthful activity.
This, in turn, gives symmetry to the features and beauty to the hair and skin, brings alertness and keenness to the mind, resists infection and contagious diseases, speeds up the activity of the whole body, gives grace to the movements, and makes life buoyant, happy, efficient, and worth the living.
For two-thousand years we have had the teaching, ‘Love thy neighbor,’ and now we perceive that there is a sound physiological as well as a moral basis for it.
There is not only a gland of energy production, the thyroid, but a gland of energy use. It is the pituitary gland.
The pituitary gland
About the size of a pea, it’s situated a little behind the nose, in a small bony case at the base of the brain. Like the adrenals, it is really two glands, each with a function of its own.
The front pituitary has direct control of the judgment and reason, intellectual effort and the growth of the skeleton and supporting tissues.
An excess of its secretion during growth gives great length to the long bones, in extreme cases producing giants. And a deficiency of its secretion during growth gives shortness to the long bones, in extreme cases produces dwarfs.
It is the gland of energy transformation, and for continued effort its secretion must be present in normal amounts.
It may also be called the gland of intellect, since self-control and constructive intellectual work seem impossible without its aid. Yet, strange as it may seem, normal front pituitary function is impossible without a normal secretion of the interstitial cells of the reproductive gland.
Intellectual effort tends to give the front pituitary proper stimulation.
Cortisol
Courage is also related to the front pituitary in the sense that its activity assures calmness, self-control, and a reasoned course of conduct. But in order to maintain courage it must be supplemented by an adequate amount cortisol, secreted by the adrenal cortex.
Cortisol tends to promote masculinity and gives instinctive courage.
If the adrenal cortex is active, there is pugnacity and aggressiveness, and no feeling of fear. If the secretion of the cortex is moderately weak, fear will be experienced, but the front pituitary may be active enough to prevent panic. If, however, there is a marked deficiency of cortisol secretion, the person or animal will act cowardly in spite of will and reason.
The cultivation of thoughts of courage increases the activity of the adrenal cortex.
The back pituitary
The back pituitary, among other things, controls the imagination, sympathy, tenderness, and the material instinct. Its excessive secretion leads to delusion. Yet invention and art find imagination most useful.
Feelings of sympathy, and reliance upon the intuition, tend to give it proper exercise.
The parathyroids
Close to the thyroid are four little glands, each about the size of a grain of rice. These are the parathyroids. They control the amount of calcium in the blood and cells, and the steadiness of nerve and muscle.
Insufficient of their secretion, parathyrin, causes the bones to soften, the nails to become brittle, the teeth to fail, and the person to become excessively nervous and excitable.
A calm, self-confident outlook upon life tends to promote normal parathyroid action.
The thymus gland
A gland with a very different function is situated in the chest astride the windpipe and covering the upper portion of the heart. It is the thymus gland, the gland of childhood.
Its normal activity early in life prevents the undue hastening of maturity. As maturity is reached, a healthful life demands that its activity almost wholly cease.
If it doesn’t, the person, though grown, continues childish in their attitude towards life. They’re unstable with neither the stamina nor physique to meet the ordinary demands of environment.
Instead of facing disagreeable facts and duties, they try to avoid them by shiftlessly wandering about, by retreating into a realm of day dreaming, or by becoming addicted to drink containing alcohol or drugs.
Seeking the line of lease resistance and avoiding hard realities promotes an abnormal activity of the thymus gland.
With an activity similar to the thymus in that it prevents precocious maturity is a small cone-shaped gland in a tiny cave at the base of the brain, behind and above the larger pituitary.
The pineal gland
The pineal gland is the remnant of a third eye, which was an important organ in certain animal ancestors, and which still exists with a transparent scale over it in our common horned lizard.
Insufficient pineal activity in children causes undue hastening of maturity, and in adolescence prevents proper brain development. It is usually inactive in adult life, but there is considerable evidence to indicate that clairvoyant vision is facilitated by an active pineal gland.
Alertness to psychic impressions tends to increase the activity of the pineal gland.
The gonads
The gonads, the interstitial, or sex, glands – the testes and ovaries – influence the normal action of the other glands, as well as retaining youth and vigor.
Their secretions do more than stimulate, for their chemical action extends to all the cells of the body, tending to restore all the tissues, including those of the skin, muscle, nerve, and bone.
They strengthen the other glands and prevent the depletion that leads to senility.
If we are to believe the sacred writings of various lands, humans once lived to a much greater age than now. And the ancients placed great stress upon, pure affectionate relations as a means of preserving youth and lengthening life which the findings of modern-day endocrinologists and psychoanalysis support.
The repression and stifling of the love life and giving way to passion, profligacy and dissipation has dire results.
The true pathway to longevity and the regeneration and rejuvenation of mind and body is the sublimation and spiritualization of the affections.
Take home message
There’s no doubt the endocrine glands are the agents through which changes in your astral body, caused by vibrations reaching it from the planets, are so quickly reproduced in your physical body.
Yet, you need to know, that wisely directed mental and emotional states are the most powerful of all agents – even more powerful than planetary influence – to affect your life and destiny and they bring about their results in large measure by stimulating your endocrine glands.
Astrology for Aquarius – sharing our knowledge
