The value of recovery-stress monitoring for athletes' well-being

BACKGROUND: The demanding working conditions of teachers make them susceptible to stress. Monitoring temporal changes in recovery and stress may provide a valuable approach for maintaining well-being. OBJECTIVE: This exploratory study followed a two-stage approach aimed at: a) collecting data about the potential effects of holidays on stress in teachers, and b) utilizing these findings to provide tangible feedback to teachers. METHODS: Thirty-seven German teachers completed online questionnaires over six months (eight measurements) which included two holiday periods (Easter break, Summer break). Sociodemographic data regarding recovery and stress were gathered using the Recovery-Stress Questionnaire Work. Interested teachers received individual feedback sessions. RESULTS: The results, inter alia, indicated significant time effects for the dimensions Overall Stress (F(7,119) = 5.31, p < 0.001) and Overall Recovery (F(3.7,67.7) = 4.33, p = 0.004). Significant positive changes were identified over the Summer, but not the Easter break. In the feedback sessions, group-based findings were connected with the individual recovery-stress values. Notable scores were highlighted in a matrix. CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrates an approach to monitoring and providing group and personalised feedback to raise teachers’ awareness and sensitivity of psychological health status in relation to their working environment.

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WiStress

Proceedings of the ACM on Interactive Mobile Wearable and Ubiquitous Technologies ◽

10.1145/3478121 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 5 (3) ◽

pp. 1-37

Author(s):

Unsoo Ha ◽

Sohrab Madani ◽

Fadel Adib

Keyword(s):

Stress Level ◽

Critical Role ◽

Well Being ◽

User Participation ◽

Daily Activities ◽

Stress Monitoring ◽

Ultra Low Power ◽

Ubiquitous Sensing ◽

Active User ◽

Stress Levels

Stress plays a critical role in our lives, impacting our productivity and our long-term physiological and psychological well-being. This has motivated the development of stress monitoring solutions to better understand stress, its impact on productivity and teamwork, and help users adapt their habits toward more sustainable stress levels. However, today's stress monitoring solutions remain obtrusive, requiring active user participation (e.g., self-reporting), interfering with people's daily activities, and often adding more burden to users looking to reduce their stress. In this paper, we introduce WiStress, the first system that can passively monitor a user's stress levels by relying on wireless signals. WiStress does not require users to actively provide input or to wear any devices on their bodies. It operates by transmitting ultra-low-power wireless signals and measuring their reflections off the user's body. WiStress introduces two key innovations. First, it presents the first machine learning network that can accurately and robustly extract heartbeat intervals (IBI's) from wireless reflections without constraints on a user's daily activities. Second, it introduces a stress classification framework that combines the extracted heartbeats with other wirelessly captured stress-related features in order to infer a subject's stress level. We built a prototype of WiStress and tested it on 22 different subjects across different environments in both stress-induced and free-living conditions. Our results demonstrate that WiStress has high accuracy (84%-95%) in inferring a person's stress level in a fully-automated way, paving the way for ubiquitous sensing systems that can monitor stress and provide feedback to improve productivity, health, and well-being.

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Mindfulness, recovery-stress balance, and well-being among university dance students

Research in Dance Education ◽

10.1080/14647893.2021.1980528 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-14

Author(s):

Peta Blevins ◽

Gene Moyle ◽

Shona Erskine ◽

Luke Hopper

Keyword(s):

Well Being ◽

Recovery Stress

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Sweat and saliva cortisol response to stress and nutrition factors

Scientific Reports ◽

10.1038/s41598-020-75871-3 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 10 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Paul Pearlmutter ◽

Gia DeRose ◽

Cheyenne Samson ◽

Nicholas Linehan ◽

Yuqiao Cen ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Dietary Intake ◽

Well Being ◽

Cortisol Concentration ◽

Machine Learning Algorithms ◽

Stress Monitoring ◽

Recreational Athletes ◽

Psychological Distress Scale ◽

Positive Correlations ◽

Cortisol Release ◽

Distress Scale

Abstract Cortisol is a biomarker for stress monitoring; however, the biomedical and clinical relevance is still controversial due to the complexity of cortisol secretion mechanisms and their circadian cycles as well as environmental factors that affect physiological cortisol level, which include individual mood and dietary intake. To further investigate this multifaceted relationship, a human pilot study examined cortisol concentration in sweat and saliva samples collected from 48 college-aged participants during aerobic exercise sessions along with mental distress and nutrition surveys. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays determined highly significant differences between apocrine-dominant sweat (AP), saliva before exercise (SBE), and saliva after exercise (SAE) cortisol concentration (AP-SBE: p = 0.0017, AP-SAE: p = 0.0102). A significantly greater AP cortisol concentration was detected in males compared to females (p = 0.0559), and significant SAE cortisol concentration differences were also recorded between recreational athletes and non-athletes (p = 0.044). However, Kessler 10 Psychological Distress Scale (K10) scores, an examination administered to deduce overall wellness, provided no significant differences between males and females or athletes and non-athletes in distress levels, which statistically signifies a direct relationship to cortisol was not present. For further analysis, dietary intake from all participants was considered to investigate whether a multiplexed association was prevalent between nutrition, mood, and cortisol release. Significant positive correlations between AP cortisol, SAE cortisol, K10 scores, and fat intake among female participants and athletes were discovered. The various machine learning algorithms utilized the extensive connections between dietary intake, overall well-being, sex factors, athletic activity, and cortisol concentrations in various biofluids to predict K10 scores. Indeed, the understanding of physiochemical stress response and the associations between studied factors can advance algorithm developments for cortisol biosensing systems to mitigate stress-based illnesses and improve an individual’s quality of life.

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Physiological and Perceptual Recovery-Stress Responses to an Elite Netball Tournament

International Journal of Sports Physiology and Performance ◽

10.1123/ijspp.2020-0317 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 1-10

Author(s):

Suzanna Russell ◽

Marni J. Simpson ◽

Angus G. Evans ◽

Tristan J. Coulter ◽

Vincent G. Kelly

Keyword(s):

Heart Rate ◽

Stress Responses ◽

Perceived Exertion ◽

Negative Influence ◽

Recovery Stress ◽

Stress Monitoring ◽

Ratings Of Perceived Exertion ◽

Stress Markers ◽

Negative Emotional State ◽

Measurement Units

Purpose: To investigate and explore the relationships between physiological and perceptual recovery and stress responses to elite netball tournament workloads. Methods: Nine elite female netballers were observed across a 3-day (T1–3), 4-match tournament. Participants provided salivary samples for cortisol and alpha-amylase analysis, completed the Short Recovery Stress Scale (SRSS), and reported session ratings of perceived exertion. Inertial measurement units and heart-rate monitors determined player load, changes of direction (COD), summated heart-rate zones, and jumps. Results: Analysis revealed 6 significant SRSS time effects: (1) decreased recovery markers of physical performance (P = .042), emotional balance (P = .034), and overall recovery (P = .001) and (2) increased perceptual stress markers of muscular stress (P = .001), negative emotional state (P = .026), and overall stress (P = .010). Salivary cortisol decreased over the tournament (T1–3) before progressively increasing posttournament with greater salivary samples for cortisol on T+2 compared with T3 (P = .014, ES = −1.29; −2.24 to −0.22]) and T+1 (P = .031, ES = −1.54; −2.51 to −0.42). SRSS overall recovery moderately negatively correlated with COD (r = −.41, P = .028) and session ratings of perceived exertion (r = −.40, P = .034). Cumulative workload did not relate to posttournament perceptual or salivary responses. Percentage change in salivary variables related (P < .05) to total player load, total COD, and overall recovery across specific cumulative time periods. Conclusions: During and after an elite netball tournament, athletes indicated increased perceptual stress and lack of recovery. The SRSS is a valuable tool for recovery–stress monitoring in elite tournament netball. It is recommended that practitioners monitor COD due to its negative influence on perceived overall recovery.

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A Review of Wearable Solutions for Physiological and Emotional Monitoring for Use by People with Autism Spectrum Disorder and Their Caregivers

Sensors ◽

10.3390/s18124271 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 18 (12) ◽

pp. 4271 ◽

Cited By ~ 21

Author(s):

Mohammed Taj-Eldin ◽

Christian Ryan ◽

Brendan O’Flynn ◽

Paul Galvin

Keyword(s):

Autism Spectrum Disorder ◽

Behavioral Interventions ◽

Life Experience ◽

Internal State ◽

Reliability And Validity ◽

Well Being ◽

Autism Spectrum ◽

Spectrum Disorder ◽

Emotional States ◽

Stress Monitoring

The goal of real-time feedback on physiological changes, stress monitoring and even emotion detection is becoming a technological reality. People in their daily life experience varying emotional states, some of which are negative and which can lead to decreased attention, decreased productivity and ultimately, reduced quality of life. Therefore, having a solution that continuously monitors the physiological signals of the person and assesses his or her emotional well-being could be a very valuable tool. This paper aims to review existing physiological and motional monitoring devices, highlight their features and compare their sensing capabilities. Such technology would be particularly useful for certain populations who experience rapidly changing emotional states such as people with autism spectrum disorder and people with intellectual disabilities. Wearable sensing devices present a potential solution that can support and complement existing behavioral interventions. This paper presents a review of existing and emerging products in the market. It reviews the literature on state-of-the-art prototypes and analyzes their usefulness, clinical validity, and discusses clinical perspectives. A small number of products offer reliable physiological internal state monitoring and may be suitable for people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). It is likely that more promising solutions will be available in the near future. Therefore, caregivers should be careful in their selection of devices that meet the care-receiver’s personal needs and have strong research support for reliability and validity.

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Unobtrusive Continuous Stress Detection in Knowledge Work—Statistical Analysis on User Acceptance

Sustainability ◽

10.3390/su13042003 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 13 (4) ◽

pp. 2003

Author(s):

Johanna Kallio ◽

Elena Vildjiounaite ◽

Julia Kantorovitch ◽

Atte Kinnula ◽

Miguel Bordallo López

Keyword(s):

Structural Equation ◽

Knowledge Workers ◽

Knowledge Work ◽

Well Being ◽

User Acceptance ◽

Sensor Data ◽

Equation Modeling ◽

Stress Detection ◽

Stress Monitoring ◽

Monitoring Technologies

Modern knowledge work is highly intense and demanding, exposing workers to long-term psychosocial stress. In order to address the problem, stress detection technologies have been developed, enabling the continuous assessment of personal stress based on multimodal sensor data. However, stakeholders lack insights into how employees perceive different monitoring technologies and whether they are willing to share stress-indicative data in order to sustain well-being at the individual, team, and organizational levels in the knowledge work context. To fill this research gap, we developed a theoretical model for knowledge workers’ interest in sharing their stress-indicative data collected with unobtrusive sensors and examined it empirically using structural equation modeling (SEM) with a survey of 181 European knowledge workers. The results did not show statistically significant privacy concerns regarding environmental sensors such as air quality, sound level, and motion sensors. On the other hand, concerns about more privacy-sensitive methods such as tracking personal device usage patterns did not prevent user acceptance nor intent to share data. Overall, knowledge workers were highly interested in employing stress monitoring technologies to measure their stress levels and receive information about their personal well-being. The results validate the willingness to accept the unobtrusive, continuous stress detection in the context of knowledge work.

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The Relationship Between Hearing Loss Self-Management and Hearing Aid Benefit and Satisfaction

American Journal of Audiology ◽

10.1044/2018_aja-18-0130 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 28 (2) ◽

pp. 274-284 ◽

Cited By ~ 6

Author(s):

Elizabeth Convery ◽

Gitte Keidser ◽

Louise Hickson ◽

Carly Meyer

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Hearing Loss ◽

Hearing Aids ◽

Clinical Decision Making ◽

Hearing Aid ◽

Well Being ◽

Self Report ◽

Self Management ◽

Hearing Aid Benefit ◽

The Relationship

Purpose Hearing loss self-management refers to the knowledge and skills people use to manage the effects of hearing loss on all aspects of their daily lives. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between self-reported hearing loss self-management and hearing aid benefit and satisfaction. Method Thirty-seven adults with hearing loss, all of whom were current users of bilateral hearing aids, participated in this observational study. The participants completed self-report inventories probing their hearing loss self-management and hearing aid benefit and satisfaction. Correlation analysis was used to investigate the relationship between individual domains of hearing loss self-management and hearing aid benefit and satisfaction. Results Participants who reported better self-management of the effects of their hearing loss on their emotional well-being and social participation were more likely to report less aided listening difficulty in noisy and reverberant environments and greater satisfaction with the effect of their hearing aids on their self-image. Participants who reported better self-management in the areas of adhering to treatment, participating in shared decision making, accessing services and resources, attending appointments, and monitoring for changes in their hearing and functional status were more likely to report greater satisfaction with the sound quality and performance of their hearing aids. Conclusion Study findings highlight the potential for using information about a patient's hearing loss self-management in different domains as part of clinical decision making and management planning.

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Inclusion of Transgender Voice and Communication Training in a University Clinic

Perspectives of the ASHA Special Interest Groups ◽

10.1044/persp2.sig10.109 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 2 (10) ◽

pp. 109-115 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Jennifer Oates ◽

Georgia Dacakis

Keyword(s):

Training Program ◽

Clinical Education ◽

Well Being ◽

Evidence Base ◽

Communication Training ◽

Speech Language Pathology ◽

Transgender People ◽

Language Pathology ◽

Effectiveness Of Training ◽

Negative Impacts

Because of the increasing number of transgender people requesting speech-language pathology services, because having gender-incongruent voice and communication has major negative impacts on an individual's social participation and well-being, and because voice and communication training is supported by an improving evidence-base, it is becoming more common for universities to include transgender-specific theoretical and clinical components in their speech-language pathology programs. This paper describes the theoretical and clinical education provided to speech-language pathology students at La Trobe University in Australia, with a particular focus on the voice and communication training program offered by the La Trobe Communication Clinic. Further research is required to determine the outcomes of the clinic's training program in terms of student confidence and competence as well as the effectiveness of training for transgender clients.

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Improving Feeding Outcomes in the NICU: Moving From Volume-Driven to Infant-Driven Feeding

Perspectives on Swallowing and Swallowing Disorders (Dysphagia) ◽

10.1044/sasd19.3.68 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 19 (3) ◽

pp. 68-74 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

Catherine S. Shaker

Keyword(s):

Intensive Care Unit ◽

Dynamic Systems ◽

Neonatal Intensive Care ◽

Well Being ◽

Dynamic Systems Theory ◽

Feeding Problems ◽

Care Giving ◽

Extremely Preterm ◽

Extremely Preterm Infants

Current research on feeding outcomes after discharge from the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) suggests a need to critically look at the early underpinnings of persistent feeding problems in extremely preterm infants. Concepts of dynamic systems theory and sensitive care-giving are used to describe the specialized needs of this fragile population related to the emergence of safe and successful feeding and swallowing. Focusing on the infant as a co-regulatory partner and embracing a framework of an infant-driven, versus volume-driven, feeding approach are highlighted as best supporting the preterm infant's developmental strivings and long-term well-being.

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