The experimental stress test that I subjected myself to is carefully controlled and deliberately designed to be an unpleasant surprise. I arrived at the university with no idea what I was in for. <\/p>\n
First, I was asked to sit, relax and listen to white noise through a set of headphones. <\/p>\n
So far, so calming. <\/p>\n
Then, the researcher who was running the test invited a panel of three strangers into the room. They all stared at me silently as the researcher informed that I now had three minutes to prepare a five minute speech about my “dream job”. <\/p>\n
As I felt the heat rise around my neck, the scientists captured my face changing colour through their thermal camera. My nose quickly dropped in temperature – turning blue on the thermal image – as I considered how to bluster my way through this unplanned presentation. (I decided I would take the opportunity to make my pitch to join the astronaut training programme!)<\/p>\n
The Sussex researchers have carried out this same stress test on 29 volunteers. In each, they saw their nose dip in temperature by between three and six degrees. <\/p>\n
My nose dropped in temperature by two degrees, as my nervous system pushed blood flow away from my nose and to my eyes and ears – a physical reaction to help me to look and listen for danger. <\/p>\n
Most participants, like me, recovered quickly; their noses warmed to pre-stressed levels within a few minutes. <\/p>\n
Lead researcher, Prof Gillian Forrester explained that being a reporter and broadcaster has probably made me “quite habituated to being put in stressful positions”. <\/p>\n
“You are used to the camera and talking with strangers, so you’re probably quite resilient to social stressors,” she explained. <\/p>\n
“But even someone like you, trained to be in stressful situations, shows a biological blood flow shift, so that suggests this ‘nasal dip’ is a robust marker of a changing stress state.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The experimental stress test that I subjected myself to is carefully controlled and deliberately designed to be an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":208993,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[102,1906,6623,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-208992","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mental-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-mental-health","10":"tag-mentalhealth","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom","13":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208992\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/208993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}