Understanding hormonal and metabolic diseases

Endocrinology deals with hormonal disorders and diseases of the internal glands. Hormones are messenger substances that are produced in specialised cells of the pituitary gland (hypophysis), the thyroid gland, the parathyroid glands, the adrenal glands, the islet cells of the pancreas, the sex glands (gonads) and other organs such as the gastrointestinal tract. Hormones influence our lives in many different ways. They regulate the water balance, blood pressure, length growth, sexual maturation and numerous metabolic processes such as bone metabolism or sugar metabolism. Disorders of these processes can be caused by a deficiency (insufficiency) or an excess (excess) of certain hormones, for example. Accordingly, endocrinology deals with a variety of diseases. The symptoms can be non-specific and therefore difficult to attribute to a disease.