New techniques for augmenting saliva collection: bacon rules and lozenge drools.

Purpose: Saliva is a reliable, noninvasive, and cost-effective alternative to biomarkers measured in other biological fluids. Within certain populations, saliva sampling may be difficult because of insufficient saliva flow, which may compromise disease diagnosis or research integrity. Methods to improve flow rates (eg, administering citric acid, chewing gum, or collecting cotton) may compromise biomarker integrity, especially if the methods involve the presence of a collection aid in the oral cavity.

Hormones: commentary. Riding the physiological roller coaster: adaptive significance of cortisol stress reactivity to social contexts.

The authors conjecture that to understand normal stress regulation, including cortisol stress reactivity, it is important to understand why these biomarkers are released and what they function to accomplish within the individual. This perspective holds that high (or rising) cortisol has advantages and disadvantages that must be understood within a context to understand how individual differences unfold. This perspective is juxtaposed with a popular vantage point of this stress hormone or of stress exposure that emphasizes the deleterious consequences or problems of this hormone.