스트레스 척도, 귀지가 알려준다? Earwax may reveal how stressed you are
Earwax may reveal how stressed you are
By Stephanie Pappas - Live Science Contributor 14 hours ago
How stressed are you? Your earwax could hold the answer.
A new method of collecting and analyzing earwax for levels of the stress hormone cortisol may be a simple and cheap way to track the mental health of people with depression and anxiety.
Woman cleaning her ear with a cotton swab.(Image: © Shutterstock)
스트레스 척도, 귀지가 알려준다? 호르몬 코티솔,우울증 불안감으로 지속적으로 상승 스트레스 호르몬인 코티솔의 수치에 대한 귀지를 수집하고 분석하는 새로운 방법은 우울증과 불안을 가진 사람들의 정신건강을 추적하는 간단하고 값싼 방법일 수 있다. 코티솔은 사람이 스트레스를 받으면 급상승하고 긴장을 풀면 감소하는 결정적인 호르몬이다. 단기적으로는 호르몬이 '싸움이나 비행' 반응에 책임이 있기 때문에 생존에 중요하다. 그러나 코티솔은 종종 우울증과 불안감을 가진 사람들에게서 지속적으로 상승하며, 지속적으로 높은 수준의 코티솔은 면역 체계, 혈압, 그리고 다른 신체 기능에 부정적인 영향을 미칠 수 있다. 쿠싱병(코티솔의 과잉생산에 의한 것)과 애디슨병(코티솔의 미생산에 의한 것) 등 비정상적인 코티솔을 수반하는 다른 질환도 있다. 쿠싱병에 걸린 사람들은 비정상적인 지방 퇴적물, 약해진 면역 체계, 부서지기 쉬운 뼈를 가지고 있다. 애디슨 병에 걸린 사람들은 위험할 정도로 저혈압이다. 황기철 콘페이퍼 에디터 Ki Chul Hwang Conpaper editor curator |
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Cortisol is a crucial hormone that spikes when a person is stressed and declines when they're relaxed. In the short-term, the hormone is responsible for the "fight or flight" response, so it's important for survival. But cortisol is often consistently elevated in people with depression and anxiety, and persistent high levels of cortisol can have negative effects on the immune system, blood pressure and other bodily functions.
There are other disorders which involve abnormal cortisol, including Cushing's disease (caused by the overproduction of cortisol) and Addison's disease (caused by the underproduction of cortisol). People with Cushing's disease have abnormal fat deposits, weakened immune systems and brittle bones. People with Addison's disease have dangerously low blood pressure.
Tracking cortisol levels
There are a lot of ways to measure cortisol: in saliva, in blood, even in hair. But saliva and blood samples capture only a moment in time, and cortisol fluctuates significantly throughout the day. Even the experience of getting a needle stick to draw blood can increase stress, and thus cortisol levels. Hair samples can provide a snapshot of cortisol over several months instead of several minutes, but hair can be expensive to analyze — and some people don't have much of it.
The Conversation
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Andrés Herane-Vives, a lecturer at University College London's Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Institute of Psychiatry, and his colleagues instead turned to the ear. Earwax is stable and resistant to bacterial contamination, so it can be shipped to a laboratory easily for analysis. It also can hold a record of cortisol levels stretching over weeks.
But previous methods of harvesting earwax involved sticking a syringe into the ear and flushing it out with water, which can be slightly painful and stressful. So Herane-Vives and his colleagues developed a swab that, when used, would be no more stressful than a Q-tip. The swab has a shield around the handle, so that people can't stick it too far into their ear and damage their eardrum, and a sponge at the end to collect the wax.
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