After an eight-hour work either at home or in the office, we may feel a sudden desire to lay down for a quick rest. Our body, in the meantime, tells that it is now time to relieve some stress from a laborious, whole day job. Sometimes, we will only perceive that we are nearing an "occupational burnout."
A group of Swiss researchers found out that wearable tech can be used to detect levels of the stress hormone, cortisol through our sweat. Find out how they arrived with the discovery.
Wearable Tech Can Detect Cortisol Levels If You are Nearing Occupational Burnout
According to a report by Daily Mail, the primary stress hormone cortisol can now be detected through a wearable sensor. The said hormone puts you in a situation whether to act or not to act about it.
The Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) engineers, together with Xsensio noted that the wearable can measure the stress levels of a person. Furthermore, for the person to use it, it should be worn onto the skin. In addition, the said device is highly sensitive and has very low detection limits.
Cortisol is a steroid hormone that belongs to the glucocorticoid class. It is produced through the adrenal glands. Moreover, it has the main function of regulating blood sugar levels, metabolism as well as blood pressure.
The hormone acts as an alarm when we are in tight situations. Some job tasks are taxing on other people, and when it happens, cortisol sends a signal to your brain, muscles, and heart to tap you about what you should do during the stressful scenario.
Adrian Ionescu, an expert from EPFL, said that the circadian rhythm is the mark when the hormones will be secreted. A circadian rhythm is a whole-day cycle that is part of a persons' internal body clock, so that means that the researchers will conduct 24-hour monitoring of a patient.
For a while, your body tells you that you are only doing fine. This fakes what you actually feel, and as a result, you are now suffering from stress so your body keeps on producing cortisol.
Ionescu continued that the hormone kicks off between 6 am and 8 am. As the day nears the night, cortisol levels decrease. However, be mindful that when cortisol levels are overproduced or underproduced, it might trigger health problems like burnout, obesity, cardiovascular disease, and even depression.
The device will be a convenient tool for the scientists since out of this, they could gather quantitative and qualitative data on diseases that are linked to stress.
"And they can do so in a non-invasive, precise and instantaneous manner over the full range of cortisol concentrations in human sweat," Ionescu concluded in a report by Atlanta News.
You can access the full research here.
Future Test Using the Wearable For Stress-Level Detection
The Swiss team will now move forward to test the wearables for patients suffering from Cushing's syndrome, an abnormal disorder when a body overproduces cortisol. On the contrary, those who are suffering from the underproduction of hormones or Addison's disease will also be put for clinical trials.
Similarly, the Gao Lab at Caltech also created a wearable tech that could detect stress. Watch the video below.
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Written by Joen Coronel
