Importance of the Pituitary Gland:
- The Pituitary Gland is often considered to be the most important part of the endocrine system because it produces hormones that control many functions of other endocrine glands. Without the production of these hormones, the Endocrine System would ultimately fail within the body. When the pituitary gland does not produce one or more of its hormones or not enough of them, it is called hypopituitarism.
- The Pituitary Gland is also very important, because it takes messages from the brain (through a gland called the hypothalamus) and uses these messages to produce hormones that affect many parts of the body, including stimulating all the other hormone-producing glands to produce their own hormones. For this reason it is often referred to as the ‘master gland’.