Friday, October 22, 2010

Hair Reveals Stress Levels

Analyzing hair closest to the scalp can reveal secrets about a person's health, New Study reveals hair can determine stress levels.

About ten years ago a colleague of Dr. Gideon Koren, Israel-Canadian researcher, discovered that cortisol (also known as hydrocortisone, a steroid hormone or gluccocorticoid), which is produced by the adrenal gland is present in human hair, knowing this, Koren decided to study the relationship between cortisol levels and levels of stress.

Since cortisol, a known biomarker for stress, can leech into the follicles from blood vessels in the scalp, as hair grows, corisol moves up the hair strands. Knowing that hair grows approximately .4 inches per month, measuring chronic stress overtime could be achieved. Depending on hair length, a doctor could then determine how much stress a person has been under for the preceding six or more months, and whether or not those stress levels have increased recently.

Normally scientists relied on measuring cortisol levels in the blood or urine. To date, it turns out that the cortisol in hair is the most reliable measure of the hormone to be found by scientists.

Koren concluded, "My laboratory has long been interested in the way drugs and alcohol are incorporated into hair. In 1988 I published the first paper showing that when a mother used cocaine in late-stage pregnancy, elements of the drug are incorporated into the baby's hair. We later determined that almost every drug taken by the mother can be found in the baby. This study led to significant breakthroughs in enabling physicians to determine what a baby has been exposed to." source

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