Can We Measure Stress? The Research That Could Transform Objective Testing

How do you measure the stress that gets under your skin? At Stanford University School of Medicine, our founder, Dr. Ishan Shivanand, sat down with Dr. Kanwaljeet (Sunny) Anand to talk about research that reads stress and connection in a small sample of hair. Questionnaires capture how people feel at the moment they answer, and those feelings can shift from one hour to the next. Dr. Anand's Child Wellness Lab adds a measure of what the body itself records. Hair grows about a centimeter a month, and as it grows it holds cortisol, the hormone released under stress, and oxytocin, the hormone of bonding and support. His lab has developed methods to measure both from a small lock trimmed close to the scalp, without plucking. This conversation revolves around why objective measurement matters for anyone offering wellbeing programs, from schools and universities to hospitals and workplaces, and the eight-week study of Compassion Based Resilience Training (CBRT), designed by our founder, which Dr. Anand's lab is running with hair samples and surveys over time. The conversation was recorded on August 30, 2026, at the study's halfway mark. In this conversation Dr. Ishan Shivanand, academic, philanthropist and founder of Compassion Unites Dr. Kanwaljeet (Sunny) Anand, Professor of Pediatrics, and of Anesthesiology, Perioperative and Pain Medicine, Stanford University School of Medicine; Director, Child Wellness Lab Chapters 0:00 Can we measure stress? 0:31 At Stanford with Dr. Sunny Anand 1:13 Why psychiatry research keeps being overturned 2:30 The stress that gets under your skin 3:29 Your hair keeps a record 4:13 Cortisol: a moment in saliva, a month in hair 5:08 Measuring the positive 5:45 A hug, and back in the game 6:20 Oxytocin, the connection signal 7:06 Two signals in one strand of hair 8:36 Subjective and objective testing 10:31 Can AI bring the cost down for schools? 11:03 Two thousand people tested, and automating the test 13:00 From hospitals to every workplace 13:45 How do we know resilience training works? 14:35 Mental health stigma in South Asian families 15:29 The CBRT study Research mentioned Hair cortisol, oxytocin and burnout in pediatric residents during COVID-19: Tawfik, Anand et al., Comprehensive Psychoneuroendocrinology, 2023. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science... Follow Compassion Unites for more of these conversations, and learn more at compassionunites.com #MentalHealth #StressResearch #CompassionUnites