The stereotype of women is that each and every female is at the mercy of their hormones. But this isn’t actually true – while hormones obviously have a big part of play, there’s no reason why anyone needs to be a slave to theirs. The more you understand about your hormones, the better equipped you are to minimise the effect they have on your mood, whether you’re trying to reduce the negative or enhance the positive. We generally associate hormones with puberty, but they actually can affect us in childhood. New born babies, both boys and girls, may have an enlargement of one or both breasts in addition to a little milk production in some cases. It’s often been thought that this is because of the female hormones in the mother’s body which passes through the placenta, which stimulates the breast development in the baby. But some scientists believe that the falling level of oestrogens in the mother causes the baby’s brain to produce a hormone called prolactin which can produce a certain degree of breast development. While this usually disappears after a few weeks, some children find it lasts for longer if the breast tissue is stimulated, such as by squeezing the breast to try to express the milky discharge. In female infants, the mild breast enlargement may reappear within the first two years of their lives due to the child’s own hormones which affects the breast tissue. This will disappear in childhood, but some children find it comes and goes depending on their hormone productivity.
In puberty, the hormones will begin to make more lasting changes to the body. A girl’s breasts will begin to develop, her periods will start, and she will develop underarm and pubic hair. The process of puberty takes at least four years, though naturally this varies between each person. Unsurprisingly, some girls experience difficulties with these changes, as it is a lot to cope with – the changes in mood, emerging sexuality, the onset of fertility and the emotional turbulence. The part of the brain known as the hypothalamus begins to release increasingly large and more regular pulses of a hormone known as gonadotrophin, which stimulates the pituitary gland to cause the ovaries to develop and release other hormones. The most important hormones that the ovaries produce are the female sex hormones, which are mainly oestrogen and progesterone. In women, there is even a small amount of testosterone. These are responsible for the growth spurt we associate with puberty, as well as the development and maturity of the sexual organs.
These hormones play the most vital role in creating and regulating the menstrual cycle, which results in a period and enables her to become pregnant. When a woman is pregnant, the rush of hormones is enormous. The oestrogen and progesterone fall that is normal at the end of a menstrual cycle doesn’t occur, so no periods are seen during the pregnancy – this isn’t always the case, but is for most women. A new hormone known as HCG (human chorionic gonadotrophin) is produced by the developing placenta to stimulate the ovaries to produce more hormones which are required to sustain the pregnancy. It is this hormone which pregnancy tests check for in a woman’s urine – they pick up on even small amounts, just days after a missed period. By the fourth month of pregnancy, the placenta takes over from the ovaries and become the main producer of hormones. A woman will experience her menstrual cycle until into her late 40s or 50s, when the amount of hormones produced drops dramatically and eventually stops, ending her menstrual cycle in a stage known as menopause.
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