Hormones can have rapid effects, such as adrenaline increasing heart rate quickly, or slower effects like those of sex steroid hormones.

“Hormones generally have two categories of effects. They can either be very fast or they can be very slow. There are hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, which act very fast. Adrenaline can increase your heart rate very fast when secreted into the body. Cortisol can be a little bit slower, but it also can have some very fast effects. And then there are hormones like. Like testosterone and estrogen, which we refer to as the sex steroid hormones.”