Gonad Information

What are gonads? In women, it’s your ovaries. In men, it’s your testes. They’re the parts of your body that produce gametes aka the stuff that come together to make babies aka the egg and sperm.

So the Gonadotropin Releasing Hormone heads out of the hypothalamus to the anterior pituitary.


This is the front of the pituitary in your head.

The pituitary then releases two hormones that head for the gonads. (There are two sexes, so it makes sense that there are two hormones.)


There’s the Follicle Stimulating Hormone and the Leutenizing Hormone.

The Follicle Stimulating Hormone goes to work first.

Because first you need an egg and you need sperm.

So the FSH stimulates these two to grow.

There are follicles in the male and female.

The female follicles secrete Estrogen, which is basically puberty: hair under your arms and the pubic area, growth of breasts and more fat around hips, thighs and buttocks.

The male follicles produce sperm. It doesn’t show the signs of puberty, it just makes sperm.

The LH does the puberty bit for the males.

LH produces testosterone in men. You know the signs, hair on the face, deeper voice, muscles and bones look a certain way. 
The LH in women causes ovulation. The follicles in the ovaries become the Corpus (body) Luteum (who knows what that means, but it’s got to do with the Leutinzing hormone, so they are related.) So the corpus luteum and the Leutenizing hormone are related. Nice, huh?

And the corpus luteum secretes progesterone which is basically making a very comfortable place along the uterine wall for any babies that might be made. (Progesterone protects the baby.)


So, it seems that the FSH is more important for women to maintain their “female-ness” because it is related to estrogen and LH for men to maintain their “male-ness” because it is related to testosterone.

What do you think?



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