Loughborough University and Imperial College London Researchers Look to Breath to Identify Stress

The perennial stress-buster—a deep breath—could become stress-detector, claims a team of researchers from the UK. According to a new pilot study, published today, 28 February, in the Journal of Breath Research, there are six markers in the breath that could be candidates for use as indicators of stress. The researchers hope that findings such as these could lead to a quick, simple and non-invasive test for measuring stress; however, the study, which involved just 22 subjects, would need to be scaled-up to include more people, over a wider range of ages and in more "normal" settings, before any concrete conclusions can be made, they state.