Cortisol is considered to be a stress hormone. Its secretion is increased during times of stress. Traditionally it’s been measured in serum, urine and saliva, but that only shows stress at the time of measurement, not over longer periods of time. Cortisol is also captured in the hair shaft.

“Intuitively we know stress is not good for you, but it’s not easy to measure,” explains Dr. Koren, who holds the Ivey Chair in Molecular Toxicology at Western’s Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry. “We know that on average, hair grows one centimetre (cm) a month, and so if we take a hair sample six cm long, we can determine stress levels for six months by measuring the cortisol level in the hair.”

In the study, hair samples three cm long were collected from 56 male adults who were admitted to the Meir Medical Centre in Kfar-Saba, Israel suffering heart attacks. A control group, made up of 56 male patients who were hospitalized for reasons other than a heart attack, was also asked for hair samples. Higher hair cortisol levels corresponding to the previous three months were found in the heart attack patients compared to the control group.  Read article.

Editors note: It seems that if you are serious about your health, then you need to learn to manage stress.

‘Mindfulness,’ which means consciously bringing awareness to our experience, boosts well-being in teenage boys, finds a recent study. Read article.

 Editor notes: You might be interested in our free workshops for schools.

At the University of California, scientists have found that when rats have a new experience, like exploring an unfamiliar area, their brains show new patterns of activity. But only when the rats take a break from their exploration do they process those patterns in a way that seems to create a persistent memory of the experience. Read article.

When you sign up for one of our resilience workshops in October 2010, we will provide a free workshop to the school of your choice.

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Personality has no effect on cancer risk or cancer survival, concludes a new study based on the largest and most relevant dataset to date. Other recent studies have also found no link or have been inconclusive. Read article.

An acupuncturist’s communication style may influence the patients’ level of pain reduction and satisfaction, although no benefit was observed for traditional Chinese acupuncture (TCA) compared with sham acupuncture in patients with osteoarthritis of the knee, a new study has found. Read article.

A group of professional couch potatoes, as one researcher described them, has proven that even moderate exercise,  in this case walking at ones own pace for 40 minutes three times a week,  can enhance the connectivity of important brain circuits, combat declines in brain function associated with aging and increase performance on cognitive tasks. Read article.

“When two people working together can discuss their disagreements, two heads can be better than one,” explains Professor Frith. “But, when one person is working with flawed information – or perhaps is less able at their job – then this can have a very negative effect on the outcome. Being able to work together successfully requires that we know how competent we are. Joint decisions don’t work when a member of the team is incompetent, but doesn’t know it. Read article.

In the first study of its kind, researchers have found compelling evidence that our best and worst experiences in life are likely to involve not individual accomplishments, but interaction with other people and the fulfillment of an urge for social connection.  Read article.

While success is surely sweeter than failure, it seems failure is a far better teacher, and organizations that fail spectacularly often flourish more in the long run, according to a new study by Vinit Desai, assistant professor of management at the University of Colorado Denver Business School.

Desai’s research, published in the Academy of Management Journal, focused on companies and organizations that launch satellites, rockets and shuttles into space b an arena where failures are high profile and hard to conceal.

Working with Peter Madsen, assistant professor at BYU School of Management, Desai found that organizations not only learned more from failure than success, they retained that knowledge longer.

“We found that the knowledge gained from success was often fleeting while knowledge from failure stuck around for years,” he said. “But there is a tendency in organizations to ignore failure or try not to focus on it. Managers may fire people or turn over the entire workforce while they should be treating the failure as a learning opportunity.”

Read article.