Your Spit May Hold Key to Predicting Burnout

By Wallace Immen
from CTV News
2/22/2011

Go ahead: Spit if you feel frustrated about your job. What your saliva reveals could alert doctors to whether you’re at risk of burnout at work, according to new Canadian research.

And testing saliva could also help people with symptoms of burnout avoid being put on medication that might actually make the condition worse, said Robert-Paul Juster, a doctoral student at McGill University in Montreal who helped design the research.

A clue that someone is suffering burnout is lowered levels of cortisol, often referred to as the “stress hormone” because it is secreted when we feel anxious or agitated. But if we are under continual stress, our bodies can shut down production of the hormone rather than try to keep up with the constant demand.

“We wanted to … find a simple way to find low levels of the hormone showing up in people who have not yet had problems, and how that may predict risk of burnout,” Mr. Juster said.

Normally, cortisol tends to spike in the morning as people wake up, which is the body’s way of revving up after a night’s sleep. Levels usually decline during the day. “But we find that people with high stress don’t have that boost of cortisol in the morning,” Mr. Juster said. “They report feeling exhausted in the morning, even though they’ve had a full night’s sleep.”

Burnout, clinical depression, or anxiety-related issues in the workplace affect at least 10 per cent of North Americans and Europeans, according to estimates prepared by the International Labour Organization.

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