Jaiwant Rangi, MD, FACEEndocrinologist | Founder, Lower The Dose® | Speaker

Understanding Stress: The Brain, Glands, and HPA Axis

15 May 2026 · 1 min

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0:38

Dr. Jaiwant Rangi walks through how stress triggers your HPA axis: the hypothalamus signals your pituitary gland, which tells your adrenal glands to release cortisol and adrenaline. These hormones spike your heart rate, blood pressure, and blood glucose in seconds, your body's built-in alarm system.

Chapters

When we experience stress, our brain activates the hypothalamic-pituitary axis. There's a small gland up here called hypothalamus, and there's pituitary, and they talk to each other. And then the pituitary hormone goes to our adrenal gland, which is like caps sitting on top of our kidneys. So during stress, the brain activates the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, our internal alarm system. Now cortisol and adrenaline are made in your adrenal gland. They flood the bloodstream, raising your heart rate, raising your blood pressure and your blood sugar because they are the stress hormones.