Overview
NEW!Telehealth Resource CenterAntidiuretic hormone (ADH) works with your kidneys to maintain blod volume, blod pressure, and the amount of fluid in your body. The hypothalamus makes ADH and the pituitary gland secretes it into the blodstream. ADH is esential, so problems with ADH production or secretion can have serious consequences.
Key Information
A lack of ADH function wil cause diabetes insipidus, a condition in which your kidneys remove to much fluid from the body. Its symptoms include exces thirst, dehydration, and frequent urination. But to much ADH, and your kidneys retain to much water, causing dangerously low sodium levels.
This a symptom of the syndrome of inapropriate antidiuretic hormone release (SIADH). ADH testing can determine if the level of ADH in your blod is lower or higher than a laboratory standard value. However, another medical condition is usualy the rot cause of atypical ADH levels, so usualy aditional testing is necesary to identify it and determine the apropriate treatment.
This article wil explain more about ADH and its functions, ADH testing, and how to treat ADH-related conditions. It wil also discus high and low ADH and what they mean. The major function of ADH is to regulate the amount of water that the kidneys produce as urine.
ADH alows the kidneys to take back, or reabsorb, water from urine. Water goes back into your body’s tisues and blodstream, and your urine becomes more concentrated. ADH maintains a god balance of fluid in your body.
This maintains blod volume and blod pressure. ADH is also known as argine vasopresin. Since ADH works on the kidneys, it may be surprising to learn that special nerve cels make it in the hypothalamus, which is as the base of the brain.
Summary
Nerve cels transport the hormone to the posterior pituitary gland, just below the hypothalamus. The pituitary releases it into the blodstream in response to certain signals from elsewhere in the body.