Stress Relieving: The Rat Race… It’s Your Choice
If you liked the book "Mindless Eating," by Brian Wansink, you'll love this!
The rat race is a mindset and it's your choice. Mindless Eating was written to explore our relationship with food, but reading it helped me understand why I've been getting so stressed at work lately. In the book, Wansink shows how he used his easy-to-replicate experiments to show that people eat more when they're tired, have access to junk foods at their desks, or are distracted while watching television. Ideally my project will help shift attitudes in the workplace towards a less stressful environment. In doing so we can change lifestyles and reduce obesity in record numbers.
I am a graduate student at the University of Guelph in Canada, studying Integrated Pest Management. Through my studies in entomology and ecology, I learned to measure the effect of stress on pest populations. In my opinion, people are a lot like insects. We respond differently depending on our work environment and more often than not this response is negative.
My project is an experiment that will demonstrate how stress levels vary according to different workplace conditions. By comparing these results with data from similar experiments that I ran last Fall, I hope to show that workplace changes can have a positive effect on workers' health and well-being by lowering stress levels – which may influence food choice as well.
To measure stress I will use a tool developed by my advisor, Dr. Michael P. Moore, at Guelph University's Department of Integrative Biology. It is essentially a modified weather station that measures air quality and sound levels in the environment and generates an overall stress score as well as separate scores for air quality and sound levels.
I have chosen three different types of workplaces to study: office cubicles (with no windows or natural light), open-concept offices (with few dividers and windows), and typical "cubicle farms" (with low ceilings, no windows, acoustic tiles on the walls, fluorescent lighting etc.). I will administer a questionnaire to the employees in each of the workplaces to determine their stress level and also collect blood samples at the beginning and end of a week-long period.
I know that measuring blood pressure and cortisol levels are common stress tests, but both test only whether or not a person is stressed at that moment. My project's goal is to show that the workplace environment produces stress in workers, which can lead to food choice, weight gain and other health problems down the road. The simplest way of showing this connection is to measure stress levels over time. This study will determine whether the effect of stress is immediate or not.
By comparing the results of my field studies with those of similar experiments conducted last Fall, I hope to show that workplace changes can have a positive effect on workers' health and well-being by lowering stress levels – which may influence food choice as well. This is a unique opportunity to create healthier office environments that can lead to significant health benefits, including eating better and reducing the incidence of diseases associated with poor dietary habits such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes.
I expect this research project to take roughly three months. I will collect the data, analyze it and write up a first draft that I'll submit to an academic journal for review by other scientists. If my results are accepted for publication in the journal, I'll complete a poster presentation on my project at a scientific conference.
Please support this project! I plan to share results as they become available on this blog and in future academic publications.
Thanks so much! I really appreciate it!
Title: Office Workers Experience Stress Response from Noise
Source: University of Guelph (Canada) press release, via EurekAlert!, January 11, 2008 http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-01/uog-nuo031208.php
The human stress response can be measured, in part, by monitoring levels of cortisol in the blood, a hormone whose levels remain elevated whether or not the body is under stress. University of Guelph researchers show that employees who work in an open-office environment (one where workers have easy access to each other and view the boss immediately) experience greater levels of cortisol compared to those who work in a traditional cubicle farm (in which workers are further away from their colleagues as well as their supervisor).
"When you're stressed "the brain releases more corticosteroids," explains Dr.
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