Stress Biomarkers:Attaching Biological Meaning to Field Friendly Salivary Measures

Cortisol is a stress hormone that can be measured in saliva. This has provided a convenient way to evaluate the biological impact of day-to-day stressors that people encounter as they go about their lives, since saliva is so easy to collect. However, the biological meaning of saliva cortisol measures has never been carefully examined. The goal of this study is to collect saliva from a large group of people as they go about their every-day lives, to measure their cortisol levels, and then study them in the laboratory where Investigators can learn more about how their stress response system (which produces cortisol) is really functioning. Investigators can then determine much more precisely what saliva cortisol levels really mean in terms of stress system biology. This will allow investigators to obtain much more useful information from the next decade of research on naturalistic stress and its biological impact using saliva cortisol measures, helping investigators to understand how stress undermines health and how to combat this effect.