workplace assessment

SALPATH offers hormonal analysis as part of a workplace assessment framework through our partners the Stress Management Institute. We are the only private laboratory offering saliva and hair analysis for workplace stress assessment purposes. Our innovative service is offered together with current paradigms of workplace stress assessment and provide a complimentary objective measure of stress levels.

It is well established that stress hormones in blood and saliva follow a circadian pattern and can be very dynamic with acute changes within minutes depending on stressors one is exposed to. This makes single sample measurement of stress hormones from blood or saliva very challenging to interpret when used as a screening tool. For example, an individual normally not prone to stress may present with higher levels of cortisol due to increased physical activity or the “white coat syndrome” at the time of saliva sampling and therefore be seen as a false positive. Repeated measures over several days can reduce these concerns, however, multiple sampling over several days can be not only inconvenient, disruptive, but very costly.

SALPATH has developed reliable stress hormone measurements from hair samples that provide a reliable complimentary screening tool to current workplace stress assessment tools. Hair typically grows 1cm/month and hormones are continually deposited and embedded into the hair shaft at a constant rate. If we extract hormones from a 3cm length of hair we would see a historical average exposure of hormone over that period of time. If one is stressed we would see higher levels of hormone and if one is not stressed we would see on average a lower level of stress hormone regardless of the stress level of the individual at the time of sampling. SALPATH has performed over 7000 individual analyses allowing for the development of a set of norms against which individual results can be compared against.