Dr. Sagen Zac-Varghese

I think she must have Googled what present to get your endocrinology consultant for Christmas.

And I didn't.

And I had to look it up.

I wasn't quite sure, but I was always very pleased.

And what the significance is, is there was a great Indian rhinoceros in London Zoo in the 1800s and it passed away.

And as a present, London Zoo gave it to an English biologist, Sir Robert Owen.

They gave him this dead rhinoceros and he dissected it and he found the parathyroid glands.

And he didn't know what they were, so they were named the glands of Owen.

No, it took another 75 to 100 years before people really understood what they did.

Really?

So the parathyroid hormone is my favorite hormone.

It's a brilliant hormone.

Basically, it defends your calcium level.

It protects us.

So every time you have a low calcium level,

the parathyroid gland releases the parathyroid hormone.

And that goes to your bone and it helps release the calcium from the bone so that we've got enough in our blood.

So the parathyroid gland, every time that happens, it releases the hormone.

It's kind of sitting there waiting for that signal and it's ready to go at any minute.

And if you have lots of episodes of the low calcium, you get changes in your genes.