Kim, you need to learn more endocrinology because the leap you made
simply did not work. That's okay. Everyone needs to learn more
endocrinology, including endocrinologists. That and genetics are two
places in which the largest advances are currently being made in
biology and medicine, but both are extremely complex and a person can
not expect to just jump in and get lucky which is pretty much how your
first post on this topic read and your second clarification didn't add
anything helpful to your case.

If you want to make that leap then look for the missing pieces, but
first make yourself realize what sorts of pieces ARE missing and then
make sure all the gaps are filled before stating something as if it
were well demonstrated, which may not happen for quite some time, or
may never happen.

Till then you have a hypothesis which might or might not pan out over
time.

After the hormonal trigger for adrenal disease was first hypothesized
it took a great many years before the pieces were filled in, and some
of that work wound up being done to better understand a different
medical problem, so people watched abstract after abstract on a range
of related topics, a huge number of them over a great many years -- I
guess maybe 10 or 15 years after the hypothesis but don't have time
to look up past posts (which actually begin with epidemiological
melatonin/darkness work in Scandinavia and end with a study that was
Turkish if my memory is correct on one last aspect of LH (Luteinizing
Hormone) and tumor causing adrenal irritation) -- finally the last
missing piece existed to give the full mechanism and endocrinological
chains. (That actually might have happened earlier if a study which Dr.
Judi Bell wanted to do very early on had gotten funding.) Remember,
too, that the older the hormone is the more functions it turns out to
play a part in with what it triggers or enables, or blocks, and some of
them can even be opposing functions once the chains are complete. For
example, melatonin, which is an incredibly ancient hormone is actually
involved in some opposing functions in the pancreas.

You have to know how a deep a gap that cliff is over and then you have
to find the nicely firm steps along that cliff, or over time you have
to find who has already found the needed steps -- enough of them. You
need to do a heck of a lot less bungie cord work or less of whatever
aspects of faith are now involved because to make your case you need
to have something viable in which trust can be placed rather than a
hypothesis which does not really link Point A and Point B securely
together. Having an idea simply being possible with a decently possible
pointer or three is just a hypothesis, and I don't think that you have
so far made a good enough case even to call that idea a true hypothesis
though if you find enough more data that is good enough you might get
to having a hypothesis, and then can go forward in seeking data
further.

As Steve said about something else (but which applies, too, to when
leaps of logic are so large that they are no longer logical): "You
can go really fast if you just jump off the cliff.

The problem is not any misunderstanding by anyone about the functions
in which endocannabinoids play a part, it is the massive leap you made
afterward.

---

Why I sent a correction and a bit more

I accidentally put in "FSH" in my rush instead of "LH" in my first
sending of the above part of this post and hopefully corrected that
well enough here. [First post deleted since ths post replaced it. BIG]

Let me explain a very little bit about them and the history, and also
tell you all about a very, very neat new hormone.

First the adrenal work:

LH is luteinizing hormone which is produced by the same organ in
response to some of the same triggers as FSH (Follicle Stimulating
Hormone).

Melatonin is another hormone and it is produced by the body in response
to darkness. Blue light and green light especially reduce production;
amber has the least effect on melatonin production. Too little
melatonin production causes an increase in the production of both LH
and FSH which is why animals go into "heat" with that light exposure
from Spring or from artificial duplication. LH is the main one that
causes so much irritation to the adrenals that tumors can develop, but
FSH might play a smaller role in that. FSH can cause bone loss and some
other things when it continues to be produced in too high levels for
too long.

GnRH, Gonadotropin Releasing Hormone is yet another hormone and can
have a more powerful effect earlier, so is where the medication
treatment approaches and possible vaccination and implant preventions
for adrenal disease in ferrets are now centered. (Why our ferrets will
be getting Suprelorin implants each Spring till better is known for
sure.)

Melatonin can have an effect possibly on adrenal disease prevention
which is why so many of us try to provide a lot of darkness for ferrets
and others use Ferretonin implants. Melatonin also reduces the constant
LH and FSH production that the pituitary will churn out in altered
animals (no matter when they are altered, though there was some work on
a different aspect in female ferrets which *might* indicate a useful
change in the females after the age of one year and after the first
round of estrus is stopped) since there are no reproductive tissues to
yell back hormonally at the pituitary to stop. Melatonin has a huge
number of functions in mammalian bodies. It can act on the hair or fur
roots and skin which can stimulate production of fur or hair. It can
act on the marrow, helping it sometimes. It can help fight a number of
existing hormonal malignancies in mammals. There is a lot more. It also
can cause tiredness so can add to injury/accident rates. Oh, and in the
pancreas it can facilitate or trigger some opposing functions.

Second, the announcement of this neat new hormone, irisin, which has
brown-fat like actions so it may explain why exercise reduces some
hormonal malignancies, reduces rates of metabolic disease, and even
can have more effect on loss of bad fat/adipose tissue than the sheer
Calories burned would indicate. (BTW Calories with a capital C is 1,000
calories and the uncapitalized one really tends to not be used any
longer in most fields.) Oh, and fat is an active hormonal tissue, too,
and a pretty decent producer of some of the estrogens and more. In
mammal type after mammal type too low levels of exercise have been
linked to a range of health problems: diabetes, heart and circulatory
disease, a range of increased rates of malignancies (especially
hormonal ones), increased injury rates from accidents due to reduced
balance, poor bone mineralization, higher rates of some types of
dementia, and more.

BEGIN QUOTE

1. Nature. 2012 Jan 11;481(7382):463-8. doi: 10.1038/nature10777.

A PGC1-[alpha]-dependent myokine that drives brown-fat-like development
of white fat and thermogenesis.

Bostrom P, Wu J, Jedrychowski MP, Korde A, Ye L, Lo JC, Rasbach KA,
Bostrom EA, Choi JH, Long JZ, Kajimura S, Zingaretti MC, Vind BF,
Tu H, Cinti S, Hojlund K, Gygi SP, Spiegelman BM.

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston,
Massachusetts 02115, USA.

Exercise benefits a variety of organ systems in mammals, and some of
the best-recognized effects of exercise on muscle are mediated by the
transcriptional co-activator PPAR-[gamma] co-activator-1 [alpha]
(PGC1-[alpha]). Here we show in mouse that PGC1-[alpha] expression
in muscle stimulates an increase in expression of FNDC5, a membrane
protein that is cleaved and secreted as a newly identified hormone,
irisin. Irisin acts on white adipose cells in culture and in vivo to
stimulate UCP1 expression and a broad program of brown-fat-like
development. Irisin is induced with exercise in mice and humans, and
mildly increased irisin levels in the blood cause an increase in energy
expenditure in mice with no changes in movement or food intake. This
results in improvements in obesity and glucose homeostasis. Irisin
could be therapeutic for human metabolic disease and other disorders
that are improved with exercise.

PMID: 22237023  [PubMed - in process]

END QUOTE

Sukie (not a vet)

Recommended ferret health links:
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/ferrethealth/
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/
http://www.miamiferret.org/
http://www.ferrethealth.msu.edu/
http://www.ferretcongress.org/
http://www.trifl.org/index.shtml
http://homepage.mac.com/sukie/sukiesferretlinks.html
all ferret topics:
http://listserv.ferretmailinglist.org/archives/ferret-search.html

"All hail the procrastinators for they shall rule the world tomorrow."
(2010, Steve Crandall)
On change for its own sake: "You can go really fast if you just jump
off the cliff." (2010, Steve Crandall)

[Posted in FML 7345]