Review of Estrogen and Progesterone (Nursing)

00:01 Hi, welcome to this video on women's health.

00:04 Now this is kind of an introductory topic to menstrual hormones.

00:08 Now let's take a look at estradiol and progesterone.

00:12 Now estradiol is the main endogenous estrogen.

00:15 Now that word endogenous just means it's from inside my body my body makes that.

00:21 So estradiol and progesterone is the main progestational hormone.

00:25 Okay, so most of us are familiar with those terms give you heard estrogen and progesterone.

00:30 And so let's take a look at what happens over the period of a month in a woman's body.

00:36 Now, we have those two phases.

00:37 You'll see our diagram right there.

00:39 You have the follicular phase and the luteal phase.

00:42 The green line represents the estradiol you can see how it peaks kind of early.

00:48 Then you got the blue line right down the middle that's ovulation when the egg is released and the follicular phase you see the kind of pinkish line there for progesterone.

00:57 So you see they kind of counteract each other.

01:01 The progesterone rises until ovulation it starts to drop off when the progesterone picks up and gets higher in the last half.

01:09 So estrogen is higher in the first two weeks progestin is higher in the last two weeks.

01:17 Both of these are produced by the ovaries and they cause changes in the uterus.

01:22 So as we're kind of going through this I want you to have this motion in mind, these two waves where first the estrogen is higher and then the progesterone is higher in the second half of the cycle.

01:33 Okay.

01:34 Now here's a question for you.

01:35 What is a follicle? Now, no shortcuts so you can come up with a definition that you heard from biology class.

01:43 What is a follicle? Okay, a follicle is a small fluid-filled sac, and it's in the ovaries.

01:57 It holds one immature egg or an oocyte.

02:00 So that word oocyte means an immature egg.

02:04 Now these follicles can secrete hormones and they impact the menstrual cycle.

02:08 Hey, don't let that all go by you.

02:10 That's so cool.

02:11 So a follicle is this small fluid-filled sac, with me? All right.

02:16 And in the ovary these were these small fluid-filled sacs hang out.

02:21 They hold one immature egg or oocyte per follicle.

02:25 Now these follicles do more than just carry around an immature egg.

02:29 They put out hormones in these are the hormones that impact a woman's menstrual cycle.

02:34 So how many follicles do you think the average woman has at puberty? Yeah when I actually looked at this I was shocked, but you write a number without looking ahead.

02:53 Yeah, is that not impressive women can have 40,000 follicles in their ovaries at puberty that kind of blew me out of the water? Okay so helps you understand how Wild that menstrual cycle can be, Doesn't it? Now you've seen this graphic before but I want you to just keep reinforcing it with you because repetition is a great way for your brain to learn.

03:16 First half follicular phase second half luteal phase.

03:20 Right down the middle is ovulation.

03:23 You see in the first half of the phase, estrogen the green line is going up, the second half of the face the green lines going down and now progesterone is higher.

03:34 Okay, so in the follicular phase it's the first half of the menstrual cycle, estrogens are produced by the maturing follicles.

03:42 And that's why you see them higher.

03:44 The dividing point is ovulation.

03:47 In the luteal phase it's the second half of the menstrual cycle, progesterone is produced by the corpus luteum and that's why you see that progesterone is higher than estrogen in the second half of the phase.