Your hair can now reveal how stressed you are. The largest study conducted on hair cortisol concentration (HCC) and perceived stress has shown that cortisol levels in your hair can estimate your current stress levels. Since hair grows at 1 cm/month on average, 3 cm of hair sample represented the prior three months of growth. The researchers divided the population according to the participants’ stress levels and scored them.
The self-reported Perceived Stress Scale was used to examine psychological stress. A correlation was found between the participants’ stress levels and the cortisol concentration in their hair— the more stressed they were, the more cortisol was found in their hair. In summary, hair cortisol levels can be used as a biomarker for estimating patients’ stress levels in the past three months. However, factors such as the use of certain medications or the presence of…
