From the inside, it is not difficult to see if you are stressed. You may feel excited, notice that your shoulders or jaw are tense, have a headache or even lie awake at night.
But from the outside, it’s a little harder to measure stress objectively and in turn know how to deal with it. But that may soon change.
Scientists have just published a paper on the creation of a portable electronic chip that can analyze how stressed you are by detecting a specific hormone in your sweat.
“By having a reliable, portable system, physicians can help to objectively determine whether a patient is suffering from depression or burnout, for example, and whether their treatment is effective,” says senior author and Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, nanotechnology researcher Adrian Ionescu.
“What’s more, doctors would have the information in real time. This is an important step forward in understanding these diseases.”
The chip follows the hormone cortisol – a steroid hormone that we have known for a long time, is released by the adrenal glands in response to physiological stress, including physical stress or low glucose in your blood.
If your body releases cortisol and kicks off the stressed feelings we are all familiar with, it can be detected in saliva, sweat and pee.
“Cortisol can be secreted on impulse – you feel good and suddenly something happens that puts you under stress, and your body starts producing more of the hormone,” says Ionescu.
The patch works by using an elongated gate field effect transistor (EG-FET) of graphene to analyze small amounts of cortisol in our sweat. The transistor uses short fragments of DNA that bind to cortisol, which drags the hormone closer to the sensor.
Those who are fortunate enough to avoid persistent stress may sound like an agreement – after all, we are stressed from time to time. However, keeping stress levels high – also known as chronic stress – can lead to a variety of problems.
“Disorders such as obesity, metabolic syndrome, type two diabetes, heart disease, allergies, anxiety, depression, fatigue syndrome and burnout are often associated with dysfunctions of the stress axis,” the team wrote in their paper.
The team hopes that the patch can absorb cortisol levels throughout the day, which will indicate if the patient has a normal cortisol curve, or if something is wrong.
“The level of cortisol has a circadian rhythm in serum throughout the day, with the highest level in the morning (~ 30 min after waking up, 0.14-0.69 µM) and the lowest level at night (0.083 ‘0.36 )M) .tension can disrupt this rhythm and lead to an abnormal increase in cortisol level, ” the team wrote.
“Although the short-term activation of the hypothalamus – pituitary adrenal glands is as adaptable and essential for everyday life, both the high and low levels of cortisol, as well as the disrupted circadian rhythms, are involved in physical and psychological disorders.”
You may not get any of these stressful naps yet, but the team hopes to test the sensor in a hospital trial soon. Keep an eye on this space.
The paper was published in Communication material.