Tag Archives: adrenal

Depression: How Stress Takes Its Toll

ACUTE A response to imminent danger, it turbocharges the system with powerful hormones that can damage the cardiovascular system CHRONIC Caused by constant emotional pressure the victim can’t control, it produces hormones that can weaken the immune system and damage bones 1 A stress response starts in the brain… When the brain detects a threat, a number of structures, including the hypothalamus, amygdala and pituitary gland, go on alert: they exchange information with each other and then send signaling hormones and nerve impulses to the rest of the body to prepare for fight or flight 2 …and the body unleashes a flood of hormones…

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Medicine: Paprika Prize

In Stockholm last week a committee of Swedish doctors was deciding whether to give the 1937 Nobel Prize for Medicine to: 1> Biochemist Ibert Szent-Gyrgyi of the Hungarian University of Szeged who discovered that a certain acid in the adrenal glands of healthy men and animals had the same beneficial effect as Vitamin C contained in oranges and lemons; 2> Biochemist Walter Norman Haworth of Birmingham University, who analyzed the chemical structures of Vitamin C and the ascorbic acid which Professor Szent-Gyrgyi isolated; or 3> Biochemist Paul Karrer of the University of Zurich, Switzerland, who made Vitamin C artificially. While the world of scholars waited, the Nobel Prize committee took a quick last look at the accomplishments of Albert Szent-Gyrgyi.

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