Yet skipping breakfast is rarely life-threatening.
Nervous control is electrical in nature and fast.
The endocrine system broadcasts its hormonal messages to essentially all cells by secretion into blood and extracellular fluid. Like a radio broadcast, it requires a receiver to get the message - in the case of endocrine messages, cells must bear a receptor for the hormone being broadcast in order to respond. As will be repeatedly demonstrated, the nervous and endocrine systems often act together to regulate physiology. Indeed, some neurons function as endocrine cells. Endocrinology is the study of hormones, their receptors and the intracellular signalling pathways they invoke.