Exclusive | Whos the most stressed? Reporter, 25, and boss, 58, compare cortisol levels with at-home test
Dan Greenfield has a lot on his plate.One glance at his calendar and it’s easy to see why.As The Post’s chief of staff, he spends his days racing between meetings, settling office disputes and juggling high-level projects far above my pay grade as a wellness reporter.“I’ve been stressed my entire adult life,” Dan, 58, admitted.
“I work in a very fast-paced, hard-driving environment, and I have been doing it for a very long time.”But as I contend with nonstop deadlines, the 24-hour news cycle and life as a young, broke New Yorker, I couldn’t help but wonder: Who’s really more stressed — the 25-year-old rookie reporter or the seasoned exec?To find out, we turned to Eli Health, a Montreal startup behind the world’s first at-home cortisol test, which delivers a snapshot of your body’s main stress hormone in minutes.Produced by the adrenal glands, cortisol fuels the body’s fight-or-flight response and helps regulate immunity, inflammation, blood pressure and blood sugar.It also plays a key role in the sleep-wake cycle, peaking in the morning to boost alertness and tapering off at night to help the body wind down for sleep.“It’s often referred to as the CEO of hormones,” Marina Pavlovic Rivas, co-founder and CEO of Eli Health, told The Post.“I’ve heard doctors say that hormones are not a democracy, it’s a dictatorship, and cortisol is always the dictator.”When cortisol levels fall out of balance, the effects ripple through the body.
Chronically high levels can lead to weight gain, muscle weakness, mood swings, skin problems and a higher risk of diabetes.Until recently, testing meant sending blood, urine or saliva samples to a lab — a slow, cumbersome process that made getting timely insights nearly impossible.“By the time you get the results, it’s already been a few days, weeks or months,” Pavlovic Rivas said.“Our goal was to create real-time visibility.”Eli Health’s at-home test, the “Hormometer,” looks like a ...