Phy-Sino-Logy : Hormone

I dedicate this phy-SINO-logy-汉字生理学 to my juniors who madly in love with Hormone(激素/荷尔蒙).

From the chinese letter 激素，激 means "to stimulate" and 素 means "element" and indeed hormone is an "element" used by our body as a mean of communication other than nervous system "to stimulate" an action. your Endocrine organ(内分泌器官) send out a "love letter hormone" to "stimulate" the effecter cells that are far apart apart through "silk road "of our body, the cardiovascular system (心血管系统)

The three dots of " 氵" in blue color means there are 3 main types of hormone in our body, the amine , the peptide and the steroid hormone, this is one way of classification. the "氵" also carry the meaning of fluid which in this case i would like to refer it to blood. and did you realise that there is a "放" in red color inside the word 激 which mean "to release" and indeed a hormone of any types are produce in an endocrine organ and release into blood stream!

the word 白 is located above. i would imagine that it is a pituitary gland which have 2 lobes and a stalk, quite similar to the "dot" and the 2 compartments of 白. The location of 白is quite high up because pituitary gland is the master gland of the endocrine system which quite high up in the hormonal axis control hierarchy of Hypothalamo-pituitary-effector organ axis. But thou art always remember that there are some hormone that are not under control of master, you can call them traitor/叛徒. For example the control of blood glucose by pancreatic gland and control of calcium level by parathyroid gland.

However you must also remember that master endocrine gland is not that "powerful" also, it is under control of his bigger CEO, the hypothalamus(下丘脑). while the pituitary is purely serve for hormonal function, hypothalamus has function other than hormonal control, namely thermoregulation, satiety , thirst , sleep wake cycle and so on.

Hope you have got the excitement of EndoCrine!