Saliva tubes

They will be colour-coded so you know which order to do them in.

All you need to do is select the right tube, put the white cotton wool under your tongue for around 1 minute and then put the cotton wool back in the tube and put the lid back on.

We will ask you to do three separate saliva samples, all in one day. The first one is done when you wake up, the second one half an hour after the first, and the final one is done around 9pm. This will allow us to plot your stress-hormone pattern. 

Saliva facts

• The body produces between one and two pints of saliva per day.
• Cows make 200 times as much saliva as humans do!
• Without saliva, we could not taste, eat or swallow solid food (kind of makes you look at "spit" with new respect, doesn't it)?
• Saliva is 98 percent water. Enzymes, mucus, antioxidants, proteins, electrolytes and other important substances comprise the other 2 percent.
• Spit protects and strengthens our teeth by buffering them against acid in food and drinks.
• We produce less saliva when we sleep
• If lost in a cave without any light, you would produce up to 40 percent less saliva. Wearing a blind fold would produce the same response, studies show.  This might be because forced-darkness simulates the conditions in which sleep normally occurs.