It might not be something you need to know, but when has that ever stopped a scientist?
Rest easy, everyone. Rest easy. There’s a whole new way to figure out whether you’re stressed or not.
Never mind that gut-wrenching anxiety. Never mind that pounding heart, shoulder and neck pain, short temper, nausea and insomnia. Never mind that rising urge to shove your boss/colleague’s face through a plate-glass window.
No, no. All you need to do now is floss your teeth.
I KNOW.
Genius, right?
An interdisciplinary engineer with nothing better to do at Tufts University in the US decided to get his team to find a way of measuring stress without causing … stress.
“We didn’t want measurement to create an additional source of stress, so we thought, can we make a sensing device that becomes part of your day-to-day routine?” said Professor Sameer Sonkusale.
“Cortisol is a stress marker found in saliva, so flossing seemed like a natural fit to take a daily sample.”
The saliva-sensing dental floss looks just like a common floss pick, with the string stretched across two prongs extending from a flat plastic handle. The saliva is picked up by capillary action through a very narrow channel in the floss. The fluid is drawn into the pick handle and an attached tab, where it spreads across electrodes that detect the cortisol.
Cortisol recognition on the electrodes is accomplished with 30-year-old technology called electropolymerised molecularly imprinted polymers, or eMIPs.
Their versatile little buggers so cortisol isn’t the only thing they can detect.
We could even have dental floss sensors that detect estrogen for fertility tracking, glucose for diabetes monitoring, or markers for cancer. There is also potential for detecting multiple biomarkers in saliva at the same time, for more accurate monitoring of stress, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and other conditions.
“The eMIP approach is a game changer,” said Professor Sonkusale.
“Biosensors have typically been developed using antibodies or other receptors that pick up the molecule of interest. Once a marker is found, a lot of work has to go into bioengineering the receiving molecule attached to the sensor. eMIP does not rely on a lot of investment in making antibodies or receptors.
“If you discover a new marker for stress or any other disease or condition, you can just create a polymer cast in a very short period of time.”
Are they accurate? Apparently so, or at least not inferior to stuff already on the market or in development. And you don’t need training to use them.
You’ll be amazed to hear that the good prof and his team are establishing a start-up to try and monetise the whole enterprise, so stand by to find them on your chemist’s shelves before too long.
Of course, that whole “don’t want to stress you by knowing we’re measuring your stress” argument is complete bull-puckey.
You’re buying dental floss with “we can measure your stress” plastered all over its packaging (or why would you change from your normal brand?) Unless someone’s going to give them to you for Christmas without telling you why they’re special, of course you’re going to know they’re reading your stress levels.
But hey, why let a fact get in the way of a good grant application?
Send your common household item transformation stories to cate@medicalrepublic.com.au
