Assessing the Effects of Stress Response on Glucose Variations.

Acute psychological stress (APS) induces neuroendocrine and metabolic responses that lead to increased risk of glucose dysregulation and cardiovascular complications in people with diabetes. Despite being a potent modulator of endocrine and metabolic pathways, APS is difficult to detect non-invasively and its effect on the glucose dynamics is not well quantified. An APS detection and assessment algorithm is developed in this work to quantify the levels of APS using physiological measurements from a wearable activity tracker. The APS assessments are used as inputs to a glucose prediction model to quantify the effects of the APS on the glucose values. The glucose prediction method considering APS assessment is evaluated through experiments involving standardized stress inducing techniques, and the results demonstrate an improvement in glucose prediction accuracy when APS is explicitly considered in the predictions.