Your sweat can tell your doctor about hydration, overall physiological and psychological wellness, and assist in assessing stress and nutrition conditions, a new Simon Fraser University (SFU) study says.
SFU researcher Woo Soo Kim said innovation in technology design has seen the rapid development of wearable sensors over the past decade. And, Kim has found, those sensors can assess an individual's health by analyzing the chemicals and other health information contained in sweat.
The research is being carried out in SFU's Additive Manufacturing Lab in collaboration with researchers from China's Zhejiang University.
Kim said sensors can assess a person's health by analyzing the chemicals and other health information contained in sweat.
"The chemical composition and physical information derived from sweat are of great value in terms of how it reflects human health status," he said. "Direct sweat collection from the skin surface is an easy-to-perform, straightforward method that avoids privacy concerns in physical implementation. These features mean that sweat has the potential to become a widely accessible sample type that can be monitored in a non-invasive manner."
Sweat metabolites can provide important information that can effectively evaluate the wearer's overall health condition, Kim said. However, he cautions that further research is needed to verify the correlation between information from sweat and blood, using in-vivo validation tests to advance meaningful bio-medical applications.
