What exactly is pituitary gland and how does it exactly control the secretion of growth hormone?
Pituitary gland is a small gland located at the base of the brain. It consists of two different lobes – anterior and posterior pituitary. Its anterior pituitary produces numerous hormones, including the most important growth hormone. Nevertheless, pituitary gland can not be seen as the master gland of the endocrine system, because its activities are directly controlled by a region of the brain called hypothalamus. So strictly speaking, it is not pituitary gland, but hypothalamus which controls the secretion of growth hormone. By detecting the blood concentrations of growth hormone and Insulin-like Growth Factor-1 (IGF-1), hypothalamus secretes Growth Hormone Releasing Hormone (GHRH) or Somatostatin (SS) to stimulate or inhibit pituitary gland’s activities of producing growth hormone. The blood concentrations of growth hormone and IGF-1 are in turn regulated by a mechanism called Negative Feedback Circuit in your body: when there is little growth hormone or IGF-1 present in blood, hypot
