Today’s wearables generally depend upon your pulse and heart rate to gauge your fitness and health. A team of scientists from Stanford is taking a closer look at another metric: sweat.
Researchers from the California institution have created a flexible wearable that senses cortisol levels in your sweat. Cortisol, a stress hormone, is often an accurate indicator of athletic performance and potential disease, as it effectively communicates the activity of your adrenal and pituitary glands. Measuring cortisol levels has traditionally required several days of lab tests — but this new wearable reduces the wait time to just a fraction of that.
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While sensors generally detect a molecule’s positive or negative charge, cortisol is particularly difficult to track because it is neutral – that is to say, it has no charge. But materials scientist Alberto Salleo created an elegant solution: a stretchy sensor around a membrane that will bind only to cortisol. When this sensor is worn on the skin as a patch, it brings in sweat through small holes at its bottom. Charged particles like sodium and potassium (also found in sweat) will seamlessly pass through the membrane. They’ll be blocked, however, if cortisol is in the way. As such, the sensor can still detect these charged ions, but only if cortisol is present as well.
“We are particularly interested in sweat sensing, because it offers noninvasive and continuous monitoring of various biomarkers for a range of physiological conditions,” said Onur Parlak, a post-doctoral scholar in the Salleo lab and lead author of the paper detailing the team’s findings. “This offers a novel approach for the early detection of various diseases and evaluation of sports performance.”
As it stands, a user only needs to be sweating enough to glisten in order for the patch to work. From there, measuring cortisol levels is just a matter of a few seconds. Of course, the technology has not quite been perfected. Currently, if you’re sweating too profusely, the sensor isn’t quite so effective, which defeats its purpose. Researchers also want to better the general reliability of the data, and are looking into a saliva sensor, so you don’t have to work up a sweat every time you want to track your cortisol levels.
Ultimately, the team hopes to create a device capable of tracking several biomarkers simultaneously, giving folks a clearer and more unique idea of what is happening in their bodies.
GlassesUSA Black Friday Sale: Get 30% off prescription glasses
Need a new pair of glasses? Want to stock up for your holiday trips before you head to meet up with your relatives? Typically, you'd have to wait until the official Black Friday event, the day after Thanksgiving, or maybe even Cyber Monday, but that's not the case this year. Alongside a variety of the best online glasses deals, GlassesUSA is hosting a huge Black Friday sale early, allowing you to save big on prescription glasses and frames with no waiting necessary. Of course, we always recommend browsing the sale of your own accord to see what's discounted because we couldn't possibly cover everything, nor could we know precisely what you're looking for. That said, we've called out quite a few of the best deals below.
What to shop in the early GlassesUSA Black Friday sale
Rightfully dubbed the Black Friday Early Bird sale, now's an excellent time to save up to 30% on prescription glasses. Moreover, GlassesUSA is truly dedicated to helping you find the perfect pair. Not only are there a ton of brands and styles to choose from, but you'll benefit from free shipping and returns and a money-back guarantee if you're not satisfied. You can even take to find the correct pair for your face. Ray-Ban, Oakley, DKNY, Prada, Ottoto, Muse, they are all here and available to shop, most discounted even. Men's and Women's eyewear are on sale, too, so there's something for everyone.
The best DNA testing kit Black Friday deals you can shop now
DNA tests are awesome holiday gifts for your family. Together you can all build your family tree and discover your genetic makeup. Unfortunately the tests are pretty expensive, but at least you only need to test once. There are some nice Black Friday deals going on today that will save you a significant amount of money on single tests or bundles. Check out our favorite below, then more more deals worth checking out under that.
The best DNA testing kit Black Friday deal
AncestryDNA Genetic Test Kit -- $59, was $99
The single person AncestryDNA Genetic Test Kit is our pick for the best Black Friday deal already available. The kit normally costs $99, but right now it's down to just $59. That's a nice discount of $30 on one of the best DNA tests available. We're not sure how long this deal will last, so you should grab it soon.
We spit in a ton of test tubes to find the best and most unique DNA tests
Despite the fact that tons of competitors have sprung up in recent years, 23AndMe still makes the best DNA test on the market. It's the quickest, it's very comprehensive, and the way the company presents your genetic data is simple and easy to digest. However, depending on what kind of information you're looking for, there are other, more specialized DNA tests that might be better suited for you. Whether it's ancestry, fitness, disease risk, or something else entirely, there's likely a DNA kit that'll uncover that data.
With the rising popularity of these tests, we decided to take a closer look and see which ones are worth the investment. To do this, we secured a mail-in kit from as many DNA testing services as we could find, then shipped them a spit tube full of our precious genetic code for analysis. After looking through all the data and personally trying all of these services, there were a few that stood out from the pack. Here are our favorites:
The best DNA test kit in 2024