Delay checking your phone until after the first hour of waking, keep it on do-not-disturb instead of letting every notification feel like an emergency, and breathe or put on music instead of reacting hot to the unexpected (traffic, spilled coffee) — these, the video says, are the habits of "low" rather than "high" cortisol.

noli's read

The video stacks a series of behavioral contrasts (checking your phone on waking vs. waiting, constant notifications vs. do-not-disturb, anger at the unexpected vs. breathing) as direct markers of "high" or "low" cortisol, without showing any biological measurement — it's an illustrative device, not an experiment. That said, the individual pieces have real grounding: cutting compulsive phone scrolling is linked to better mood and less disrupted sleep in a randomized trial that capped social media at about 30 minutes a day (Hunt et al.), and the physiological sigh or slow breathing measurably reduces short-term nervous-system activation in a controlled trial (Balban et al., Stanford). What's missing is any evidence that these specific behaviors actually lower cortisol biochemically in everyday life — the video borrows hormonal vocabulary for what is, underneath, reasonable advice about attention and reactivity. The shorthand "this reaction equals that cortisol level" is misleading as stated, even though the direction of the advice (less reactivity, more chosen calm) is sound. Verdict: mixed — solid behavioral advice dressed in biological language no measurement here actually backs.

the sources

1. 1Hunt MG, Marx R, Lipson C, Young J. 2018
2. 2Yang J, Fu X, Liao X, Li Y. 2019
3. 3Balban MY, Neri E, Kogon MM, et al. 2023
4. 4Fincham GW, Strauss C, Montero-Marin J, Cavanagh K. 2023
5. 5Zaccaro A et al. 2018