haircut and a cortisol stress test

I read about this new stress test where they can take a sample of your hair and assess how much stress you've been under for the last 6 months. How cool is this? Since I am due for a haircut, maybe I can send a hair sample to the lab and figure out how much stress I've been under during the last semester.

Cortisol is a steroid hormone produced by the adrenal gland and can be tested with a blood, saliva or urine sample. It is released in response to stress, suppresses the immune system and increases the blood glucose level. Caffeine, lack of sleep, trauma can increase cortisol levels, and laughing(!), tea, and massage/music therapy can lower cortisol levels. Previous methods of cortisol tests can only assess cortisol levels secreted during the last hours/day, but this new method of cortisol hair tests can reveal stress levels over a longer period of time, six months and possibly more. Researchers at the University of Western Ontario measured cortisol levels from the hair of heart attack patients from an Israeli hospital and compared it to cortisol levels from that of non-hear attack patients from the same hospital. Over the past few years, hair cortisol has been found in additional studies to be a useful marker of how much stress/pain the individual is under, rather than using individual self-assessments of stress, which are not as reliable. See links here, here, and here.

Happy Monday! Back in home, sweet home after a long relaxing vacation looking at the sea. If I could swim 90 miles I would be in Cuba...