What Are Hormones? Function & Types
What are hormones and what do they do for women's health? Hormones are chemical messengers controlling everything from energy and mood to reproduction and stress response. Your body produces over 50 different types of hormones, each carrying specific instructions through your bloodstream. Hormones for women like estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone orchestrate your menstrual cycle, but all hormone production starts in your brain. Your hypothalamus and pituitary gland send signals that regulate every endocrine gland in your body. Understanding what are hormones means recognizing that supporting your body's natural regulatory systems through neuroplasticity, light exposure, and stress management creates the foundation for better hormonal health throughout your cycle.
What Are Hormones and How Do They Affect Women?
Hormones are chemical messengers that control nearly everything happening in your body. From the moment you wake up to the quality of your sleep at night, hormones for women orchestrate energy levels, mood, appetite, reproduction, and how you handle stress.
Scientists have identified over 50 types of hormones in the human body. Each carries specific instructions through your bloodstream to organs, tissues, and cells. When hormones reach their targets, signals trigger changes that affect how you feel, think, and function throughout your day and across your menstrual cycle.
At Samphire, we focus on a truth that's often overlooked: every hormonal change starts with signals from your hypothalamus and pituitary gland. When addressing women's health, the nervous system is the missing link.
How Do Hormones Work in Your Body?
Hormones act like a complex communication system. Specialized glands produce and release hormones directly into your bloodstream. Once in circulation, hormones travel throughout your body until reaching specific target cells.
Here's how the process works: hormones only affect cells that have matching receptors. Think of a hormone as a key and the cell receptor as a lock. Only when the hormone fits perfectly into the cell's receptor can the message be delivered and action taken.
Your body uses hormones for two main types of communication:
- Gland-to-gland communication: One endocrine gland releases a hormone that signals another gland to change hormone production. For example, your pituitary gland releases thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH), which triggers your thyroid gland to release thyroid hormones that affect metabolism throughout your body.
- Gland-to-organ communication: An endocrine gland releases a hormone that directly affects target organs. When your pancreas releases insulin after you eat, the hormone acts on your muscles and liver to help process glucose from your meal.
The hypothalamus and pituitary gland orchestrate much of your hormonal activity. What are hormones and what do they do for cycle health specifically? Your hypothalamus releases gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH), which signals your pituitary to release follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) and luteinizing hormone (LH). These hormones then affect your ovaries, creating the cascade of events we call the menstrual cycle.
Because hormones are so potent, only small amounts create significant effects. Minor changes in hormone levels can cause major shifts in how you feel and function, which explains why hormones for women can have such a dramatic impact across the menstrual cycle.
What Are the Different Types of Hormones Your Body Makes?
Your endocrine system consists of several glands, each producing different types of hormones with specialized functions. Understanding these glands helps you see where hormonal changes originate.
Hypothalamus and Pituitary Hormones
Your hypothalamus, a small region in your central nervous system, serves as the master controller. The hypothalamus produces several hormones that regulate your pituitary gland, including gonadotropin-releasing hormone, growth hormone-releasing hormone, and thyrotropin-releasing hormone.
Your pituitary gland, located at the base of your skull, releases hormones that control other endocrine glands. The anterior pituitary produces adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH), follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH), growth hormone (GH), luteinizing hormone (LH), prolactin, and thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH). The posterior pituitary releases antidiuretic hormone and oxytocin.
Thyroid and Adrenal Hormones
Your thyroid gland controls metabolic rate through thyroxine (T4), triiodothyronine (T3), and calcitonin. Your parathyroid glands release parathyroid hormone (PTH), which regulates calcium levels.
Your adrenal glands, sitting on top of your kidneys, produce hormones essential for stress response: cortisol, aldosterone, DHEA, adrenaline, and noradrenaline.
Reproductive Hormones for Women
Your ovaries produce hormones for women that control menstrual cycles, fertility, and more. Estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone work together to regulate your monthly cycle and support overall health.
How Do Hormones Change Across Your Menstrual Cycle?
For women with menstrual cycles, hormones create a monthly rhythm that affects far more than just reproduction.
Follicular Phase: Rising Energy
After your period starts, estrogen levels begin rising. Higher estrogen affects neural connectivity and can boost learning, memory, and mood. Research using functional MRI shows that estrogen influences neural network patterns in regions linked to memory and emotional regulation.
Many women report feeling more energized and focused during the follicular phase as estrogen climbs.
Pre-Ovulatory Phase: Peak Performance
Just before ovulation, estrogen peaks while luteinizing hormone surges. Studies using high-resolution neuroimaging show that dynamical complexity, a measure of how flexible neural activity becomes, reaches its highest point during the pre-ovulatory phase.
Women often report feeling sharpest during ovulation. Neural networks operate in their most responsive state, making concentrating and multitasking easier.
Luteal Phase: Shifting Gears
After ovulation, progesterone rises while estrogen fluctuates. Progesterone promotes pregnancy, but also affects nervous system function differently than estrogen. Research shows that progesterone influences emotional processing, with some neural regions showing increased activity during emotional tasks.
While progesterone can have calming effects for some, others experience mood shifts, anxiety, or irritability as progesterone and estrogen levels change.
For women with premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD), the nervous system reacts abnormally to hormonal shifts, leading to severe mood changes, anxiety, and physical symptoms.
Late Luteal: Recalibration Mode
As progesterone and estrogen drop before menstruation, many women experience fatigue or low mood. Your body isn't malfunctioning. Rather, neural activity recalibrates in response to hormonal withdrawal.
Track your cycle with the Samphire app to spot patterns between your hormone phases and how you feel.
Why Does Your Body's Control Center Matter?
Here's where women's health gets interesting: hormones don't just affect your nervous system. Your hypothalamus and pituitary control hormone production.
The hypothalamus serves as the command center for your endocrine system. When your hypothalamus detects changes in your body (like low thyroid hormone or dropping blood sugar), the gland releases specific hormones that trigger a cascade of responses.
For menstrual cycle hormones for women, the process starts centrally:
- Your hypothalamus releases GnRH (gonadotropin-releasing hormone)
- GnRH signals your pituitary gland to release FSH and LH
- FSH and LH travel through your bloodstream to your ovaries
- Your ovaries respond by producing estrogen and progesterone
- Estrogen and progesterone then affect your entire body
What are hormones if not messages? And every message starts with a signal from your hypothalamus. When we talk about hormonal imbalances or cycle-related symptoms, we're really talking about how your nervous system processes and responds to hormonal signals.
At Samphire, our focus centers on the neuroscience of women's health because to truly understand and improve hormonal wellbeing, we need to start where hormones start: with central regulation (learn more about our science).
What Causes Hormonal Imbalances in Women?
When hormones fall out of balance, symptoms follow. Hormonal imbalances can stem from various causes:
- Endocrine gland dysfunction: Tumors, damage, or autoimmune conditions can affect glands like your thyroid, pituitary, or ovaries.
- Genetic factors: Some women inherit genetic mutations that affect endocrine gland structure or function.
- Environmental disruptions: Exposure to endocrine-disrupting chemicals, chronic stress, or extreme diet changes can throw hormones off balance.
- Life stage changes: Puberty, pregnancy, postpartum, and perimenopause bring natural hormonal shifts. Sometimes transitions trigger lasting imbalances.
- Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS): Women with PCOS produce higher levels of androgens than normal, leading to irregular periods, excess hair growth, acne, and fertility challenges.
- Stress and cortisol: Chronic stress elevates cortisol, your primary stress hormone. High cortisol can disrupt reproductive hormones for women, affecting cycle regularity and worsening symptoms like PMS.
Common hormone-related conditions affecting women include type 2 diabetes and insulin resistance, thyroid disorders, irregular menstruation, PMDD, endometriosis, dysmenorrhea, and fertility challenges.
Can You Support Hormones Without Medication?
Many women search for ways to support hormonal health without medication or hormonal birth control. While some hormonal conditions require medical treatment, science-backed approaches can help manage symptoms and support your body's natural regulatory systems.
Light Exposure and Circadian Rhythms
Your circadian system responds to light cycles, regulating sleep, mood, and hormonal patterns. Research shows that women working night shifts have more irregular menstrual cycles because disrupted light exposure affects the systems controlling your cycle .
Supporting your circadian rhythm through consistent sleep schedules, morning light exposure, and limiting blue light at night can help optimize hormonal function.
Neuroplasticity and Lifestyle Factors
Your nervous system's ability to change and adapt, called neuroplasticity, offers another avenue for managing hormone-related symptoms.
While you can't directly "change" your hormone levels through willpower, you can change how your body processes hormonal signals and responds to symptoms like pain, mood changes, or fatigue.
Activities that boost neuroplasticity include:
Exercise: Physical activity increases brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), supporting new neural connections. Exercise also helps regulate cortisol and insulin.
Mindfulness and meditation: Studies show meditation increases grey matter in regions that process emotions and control stress responses. Better stress regulation supports hormonal balance.
Quality sleep: During sleep, your body consolidates memories and clears metabolic waste. Poor sleep disrupts cortisol rhythms and can worsen hormonal symptoms.
Neurostimulation Technology
Non-invasive neurostimulation represents a breakthrough approach for managing hormone-related symptoms without adding medications or altering your natural cycle.
Lutea™, Samphire's North American product, uses gentle neurostimulation to support your body's pain and mood regulation systems. Unlike hormonal treatments that suppress your cycle or medications with systemic side effects, Lutea™ works with your body's own regulatory mechanisms.
Just 100 minutes of use per cycle can help ease menstrual pain and mood symptoms. Lutea™ is not a medical device but rather a neurotechnology tool designed to support your body's natural ability to regulate pain and mood through neuroplasticity.
How neurostimulation works: Lutea™ delivers gentle electrical stimulation to areas involved in pain processing and mood regulation. Repeated use helps strengthen neural pathways that reduce pain signals and support emotional balance.
Because Lutea™ works through neurostimulation rather than adding hormones, you avoid side effects common with hormonal treatments. You maintain your natural cycle while experiencing relief.
Take Control of Your Hormonal Health
Whether you experience PMS, PMDD, painful periods, or simply want to optimize how you feel across your cycle, science-backed solutions offer a new path forward.
Start tracking your cycle to uncover your unique patterns. Try Lutea™ for hormone-free, drug-free relief that works with your body's natural regulatory systems.
At Samphire, we're closing the gender gap in cycle health by putting neuroscience first. Ready to feel your best in every phase? Explore our science-backed solutions and experience the difference when you support the control center of your hormonal health.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are hormones made of?
Hormones are made from various chemical building blocks. Most reproductive hormones for women (estrogen, progesterone, testosterone) are made from cholesterol. Other hormones, like insulin and growth hormone, are proteins made from amino acids. Thyroid hormones are made from the amino acid tyrosine plus iodine.
Your body synthesizes hormones from nutrients you consume, which means adequate nutrition supports hormonal health.
How do hormones affect mood and emotions?
Hormones profoundly impact mood through direct effects on neural chemistry and structure. Estrogen influences serotonin, a neurotransmitter that regulates mood. When estrogen drops (like before menstruation), some women experience low mood or increased anxiety.
Progesterone affects GABA receptors, which can have calming effects. However, rapid progesterone changes can trigger anxiety or irritability in sensitive individuals.
For women with PMDD, the abnormal response to normal hormonal fluctuations causes severe mood changes. The issue isn't abnormal hormone levels but rather how the nervous system processes hormonal signals. Science-backed interventions target neurological sensitivity to help regulate mood regardless of hormonal phase.
Can stress really affect your hormones?
Yes. Chronic stress elevates cortisol, which can disrupt reproductive hormones for women. High cortisol can suppress GnRH release from your hypothalamus, affecting downstream reproductive hormones, interfere with progesterone production, worsen insulin resistance, disrupt thyroid function, and affect sleep.
Stress management isn't just about mental health. Reducing stress supports your body's hormonal balance allowing your hypothalamus and pituitary to function optimally.
What role does the nervous system play in hormone-related pain?
Your nervous system doesn't just receive pain signals. Your body processes, interprets, and can amplify or reduce pain intensity.
When addressing menstrual pain, hormones like prostaglandins trigger uterine contractions. However, how intensely you feel that pain depends partly on how your nervous system processes the signals.
Research shows that chronic pain can sensitize neural pathways, meaning your nervous system becomes more reactive over time. The system keeps amplifying pain signals even when the original trigger diminishes.
For women with endometriosis or severe dysmenorrhea, addressing pain where signals are processed and amplified can provide relief even when hormonal or physical causes remain.
How does Samphire's approach differ from hormonal treatments?
Rather than focusing solely on adding or blocking hormones, Samphire helps you understand and support your nervous system's role in your cycle. Your menstrual experience is ultimately regulated through your hypothalamus and pituitary because these structures are the control centers for how your body reacts to hormonal changes.
Lutea™ uses gentle neurostimulation to support your body's natural neuroplasticity, helping it better regulate pain and mood responses. Combined with cycle tracking through our app, you get personalized insights based on your actual patterns.
Does understanding hormones help manage symptoms? Yes. When you recognize that every hormonal change originates centrally and that your nervous system mediates symptoms, you can address issues at their source.
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