Science behind the Stress Monitor
The
Stress Monitor provides means to continuously measure and monitor the body's stress level.
Stress is important aspect when it comes to looking at health in general. There are many negative factors affecting our life every day, which cause our body to generate stress response. Stressful episodes may be short or long. Our exposure to stress causing factors (stressors) is inevitable but in many cases they are not significant and their effect is relatively harmless. Only very frequent or extremely strong stressors may exhaust human body so that may trigger developing health problems.
Regardless of the type of stressor (emotional, physical or their combination) the body's physiological reaction has common traits. All physiological processes happening in the body during stress are well-studied and described in the literature.
Under the influence of a stressor a sustained focus of excitation is formed in the brain cortex which begins dominating all body's functions and initiates a chain reaction to prepare the body for a "fight or flight" response. It ignites a sequence of biochemical reactions throwing stress hormones into the bloodstream. They cause increase in heartbeat, blood pressure, blood sugar level and speed up metabolic processes to increase energy production. As a result of this the body is ready to fight for survival. If the effects of stressors remain sustain, an excitation in the brain cortex persists and stress hormones keep being released into bloodstream.
This physiological mechanism of stress response has been developed by the nature in humans and other animals to survive. However humans in modern world do not quite use their muscular power in stressful situation so natural stress response does not occur as it was designed by evolution so the problems get inside. Good rest and relaxation now would work much better to resolve stress than initiate a typical "fight or flight" response. However our body acts like it meant to be by the nature so stress hormones circulate in the bloodstream keeping the body’s organs and functions in agitated state.
The natural mechanism of stress was developed by evolution as a short-term protective measure. If the effect of stressor remains for a long time, stress mechanism goes into exhaustion phase. It drains all reserves of energy, vitamins and minerals, which leads to lowering body functions responsible for healthy stress reaction, causing extreme fatigue and even trigger developing various stress related health problems, such as cardiovascular, neurological, autoimmune diseases, cancer, asthma, digestive problems and many more. It has been found that up to 80% of health problems are stress related. It is also found that the first most likely victim of unresolved chronic stress is immune system, which failure leads to colds and various inflammations. That is why having information about stress levels is extremely important in everyday's life to maintain good health.
The Stress Monitor is not unique from scientific point of view. Elevated stress level can be detected based on known typical reactions to stressors such as:
- Increased salivation and sweating
- Decreased skin temperature
- Increased heart rate, stroke volume and blood pressure
The first type of reaction is used in galvanic skin response (GSR) devices, which measure skin conductance dynamically changing under effect of stress.
The second type of reaction is used in so-called stress cards or mood rings. These devices have embedded liquid crystals, which change their color based on skin temperature when are in contact with the skin.
However these two types of stress measurement have significant disadvantage. They significantly depend on ambient temperature. Besides it is virtually impossible to build a calibrated scale well representing stress level because both skin temperature and galvanic skin response significantly vary from person to person. They can be used to assess the degree of change of body's reaction compared to their initial baseline level but not to assess the level of stress.
Using reaction of cardiovascular system to stress is the most effective approach to evaluate stress level. The Stress Monitor utilizes this approach. Our scientists have developed a unique algorithm based on a mathematical model of the individual stress level caused by any physical or psycho-emotional factors. This algorithm is based on specific analysis of heart rate variability of the cardiac intervals recorded for a short period of time or continuously. The algorithm contains special means for automatic adjustment of its performance to establish a method of self-learning and increasing its performance by taking into account individual physiological properties.