Researchers Develop Smartwatch That Measures Your Stress Levels

Scientists have developed a smartwatch that can measure stress levels. Health, fitness and wellness applications have been the most trending and rapidly advancing components of smartwatches. Apple, Samsung, Fitbit and others compete for the most novel ways of tracking health.

Smartwatches today can monitor sleep, heart rates, blood oxygen levels, blood pressure, and much more. In addition, some watches are specially designed for health and fitness. Known as Smart Fitness trackers or Smart Bracelets, they can be linked to phones and offer fitness-focused technology, while smartwatches provide the whole package and also act as a phone on a wrist.

A team of researchers from UCLA developed a novel smartwatch to measure stress levels. The watch specifically monitors and measures the cortisol hormone released by humans affected by stress. The hormone is present in sweat in similar proportions to blood levels. The wearable has specialized technology to measure the hormone. The team says that measuring stress is not only a new addition to smartwatches. It can be used to warn users and help diagnose stress-related diseases.

A Stress Doctor On Your Wrist

Stress is responsible for a wide range of diseases and affections. It can affect both the body and the mind. Depression, post-traumatic stress disorder PTSD, mood swings, burn-out, Alzheimer’s, can all be triggered by stress. In addition, respiratory diseases, fertility problems, weight loss or gains, heart-related disorders, high blood pressure, and gastroenteritis, no human organ is immune to prolonged exposure to stress hormones.

Cortisol is measured by doctors ordering blood exams to professional laboratories. While these exams are valuable for diagnosing patients, they only provide a limited view of cortisol levels in time. UCLA’s research team says that their device is a breakthrough in this sense. It is non-invasive and suitable to track stress over time. Stress can be a chronic disease like diabetes, asthma, or other conditions. Chronic diseases require constant monitoring and control for proper and efficient professional treatment. The UCLA team hopes the smartwatch industry will acknowledge the importance of their technology and implement it.

In their smartwatch, a unique thin strip of adhesive film collects tiny volumes of sweat. The small droplets are measurable in millionths of a liter. A sensor detects cortisol using engineered strands of DNA, called aptamers. “We’re entering the era of point-of-person monitoring, where instead of going to a doctor to get checked out, the doctor is basically always with us,” Sam Emaminejad, associate professor at UCLA and co-author of the new smartwatch study, says.

Source: Science Advances