(NEW YORK) — New York City began distributing free, at-home COVID-19 test kits across the five boroughs Monday.
Tests, made by the company Flowflex, will be available at 27 public library branches and 14 cultural landmarks including the American Museum of Natural History, the Brooklyn Children’s Museum and the Staten Island Zoo.
Across the city, there are 13 sites where tests can be picked up in Queens, 10 in Brooklyn, seven in Manhattan, six in the Bronx and five in Staten Island. More sites are expected to be added over the next few weeks.
“Our mission remains to make testing resources accessible for all New Yorkers to safely and confidently manage the pandemic,” Dr. Ted Long, executive director of the NYC Test & Trace Corps, said in a statement. “Distributing at-home tests at cultural sites and libraries provides familiar, prominent locations for people to pick up the resources they need to know if they have COVID-19 and to return to the beloved destinations that make our city so special.”
He continued, “I am grateful for our cultural and library partnerships and excited to see them lead New York City safely forward.”
Test & Trace will be delivering kits to the libraries and cultural sites once a week, and supplies are available on a first-come, first-served basis.
“We will have sent out over 350,000 tests by end of week. [Distribution] to each site varies, but we are confident that we can meet demand,” a spokesperson for NYC Health + Hospitals, which oversees Test & Trace, told ABC News in a statement.
Test kits are limited to one per person and, although distribution will be up to the individual site, Test & Trace is recommending one per day, the spokesperson added.
Test & Trace said its website will be updated daily with the hours and locations of sites where the tests are available.
The new program comes just two weeks after Mayor Eric Adams said the city will be offering free at-home, same-day delivery of COVID antiviral pills for those with mild to moderate symptoms.
The city is also pushing for more residents to get vaccinated. Over the weekend, Adams announced the return of cash incentives including a $100 gift card for anyone who gets their first dose or is boosted at a city-run or SOMOS Community Care site through the end of February.
The gift cards will be eligible for use through March 31.
Mike Coppola/Getty Images for American Heart Association
(NEW YORK) — Actress Susan Lucci is opening up about her battle with heart disease.
The 75-year-old, best known for her role as Erica Kane on the ABC daytime drama All My Children, told Good Morning America’s Amy Robach that she recently underwent an emergency heart procedure for the second time.
“I was having kind of a shortness of breath,” said Lucci, adding that she soon also felt discomfort around her ribcage and her back, similar to symptoms she had three years ago with her first heart scare.
“I thought, ‘This is crazy. These are the same kind of symptoms that I had three years ago but it can’t be,'” she said. “But when I lay down, I started to feel a sharp coming-and-going pain in my jaw.”
Lucci said when she called her doctor, he told her to go to the emergency room.
After undergoing several tests, Lucci’s doctor told her that she experienced an 80% blockage in one of her arteries due to plaque buildup. She was rushed to a cardiac catheterization lab, where another stent was put in to open up the blockage.
“She wasn’t having a heart attack this time and she wasn’t unstable,” Lucci’s doctor, Dr. Richard Shlofmitz, chairman of cardiology at St. Francis Hospital in Roslyn, New York, told GMA. “But she had symptoms that were certainly concerning to me that something might be wrong.”
Shlofmitz said if Lucci waited for her symptoms to get worse, it could have turned into a major emergency.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death for women in the U.S. About 1 in 16 women age 20 and older have coronary artery disease, the most common type of heart disease in the U.S.
The CDC says that heart disease may sometimes be “silent” and not diagnosed until other symptoms are present. To lower your chances of heart disease, doctors suggest managing stress levels, getting blood pressure checked regularly, check for diabetes and to quit smoking. Other ways to lower your risk of heart disease include being active, eating healthy and limiting alcohol intake.
Now Lucci, an advocate for the American Heart Association’s Go Red for Women campaign, is urging other women to listen to their bodies.
“Listen to your heart and act on [the symptoms],” Lucci said. “Give yourself permission to take good care of yourself. Be your own best friend. Be your own advocate. You’ll save your life.”
(WASHINGTON) — The Food and Drug Administration has authorized a new monoclonal antibody treatment for COVID-19, shown to hold up against the omicron variant and BA.2 subvariant.
The drug, called bebtelovimab from Eli Lilly, is a monoclonal therapy meant for COVID-19 patients as young as 12 who are at high risk for getting severely ill and who were recently infected, to keep them from getting even sicker and keep them out of the hospital.
The authorization comes after months of explosive spread of the omicron variant has squeezed an already finite arsenal of COVID-19 medicines.
Lilly’s previous monoclonal treatment was one of the two the government bought in bulk that have been shown to fail against omicron, leaving the federal government scrambling to stock up on functional omicron therapies. Meanwhile, the treatments that have been shown to work against omicron have been scarce — forcing difficult choices about which patients in need should get that limited supply.
On the eve of authorization, the Biden administration announced it had purchased 600,000 doses of bebtelovimab for at least $720 million. The plan is to get roughly 300,000 doses out this month, and another 300,000 in March. The contract also includes a future option for 500,000 more doses, if necessary.
The authorization brings the number of treatments for omicron in the U.S. to four, though production is still ramping up. The other options include the monoclonal therapy sotrovimab, from Vir Biotechnology and GlaxoSmithKline; and two antiviral pills, Pfizer’s Paxlovid and Merck’s Molnupiravir.
Daniel Skovronsky, Eli Lilly’s chief scientific and medical officer and president of their research labs, said in an interview with ABC News that the company began working on the therapy more than a year ago — long before omicron emerged — in hopes of being “future proof” for a range of variants and anything else that might come down the road.
It was meant as a “break glass in case of emergency” solution, Skovronsky said.
But once the new variant caught on, which the mainstay treatments failed against, getting a new one authorized suddenly became critical.
“Once omicron was identified, there was urgency in making sure that this antibody worked against it, and working with the government to try and make it available as quickly as possible to patients,” Skovronsky said. “It’s an unusual situation where you’re trying to fight a disease that in some sense doesn’t exist yet. … We can’t protect ourselves from something wholly new that the world has never seen before.”
Lilly’s new drug is authorized to be given as an intravenous injection from a health care provider — a notable change from the arduous hourslong infusion that came with previous monoclonal antibodies, a process that requires a great deal of clinical manpower. It must be administered within seven days of symptom onset.
“Today’s action makes available another monoclonal antibody that shows activity against omicron, at a time when we are seeking to further increase supply,” Dr. Patrizia Cavazzoni, director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said in a statement, calling the new emergency use authorization “an important step in meeting the need for more tools to treat patients as new variants of the virus continue to emerge.”
“We’re already working on the next generation antibodies, looking for things that bind in different ways than bebtelovimab so that in case this one ultimately is overcome by virus mutants we’ll have something else to offer,” Skovronsky said. “You have to stay one step ahead of this virus.”
ABC News’ Eric M. Strauss and Anne Flaherty contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — The Food and Drug Administration on Friday postponed its review of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for kids under 5.
“We realized now, in data that came in very rapidly because of the large number of cases of Omicron, that at this time, it makes sense for us to wait until we have the data from the evaluation of a third dose before taking action,” Dr. Peter Marks, the FDA’s vaccine chief, told reporters.
Marks acknowledged the change was “late breaking” — the FDA’s committee of independent advisors was scheduled to review and vote on authorizing the vaccine next Tuesday — but said the job of the FDA was to “adjust” to new data amid an unpredictable virus.
Pfizer applied for an emergency use authorization for its vaccine for kids ages 6 months to 4 years nearly two weeks ago. Studies on a three-shot regimen continue, which Pfizer ultimately expects will be the most effective dosage for the youngest age group.
The shot for kids under 5 is about one-tenth the dose for adults.
Submitting the data on a rolling basis was intended to get young children started on their vaccinations sooner in the face of the omicron variant and any potential new variants that arise.
But Pfizer said omicron advanced the study “at a rapid pace” and it was now going to wait for the three-dose data that “may provide a higher level of protection in this age group.”
“This is also supported by recent observations of three dose booster data in several other age groups that seems to meaningfully augment neutralizing antibody levels and real world vaccine protection for omicron compared to the two-dose regimen,” Pfizer said in a press release, referring to the heightened protection booster shots have shown to give.
Marks said the FDA needed to see the full data on three doses before it could proceed and he couldn’t comment on the specifics.
“The data that we saw made us realize that we needed to see data from a third dose … to make the determination that we could proceed with doing an authorization,” Marks said.
Pfizer predicts it will be able to submit data on the third dose by early April. Marks, in the briefing, also said it would be about two months before there is more movement from the FDA.
“For the next two months, while the additional data are gathered, parents will have to rely on what they’ve come to do well, which is they’re using masking procedures, and they are making sure that they’re vaccinated and taking those types of precautions with their youngest children,” Marks said.
He went on, “We will do our part obviously, to move as fast as we can when we have the data, but for now we’ll have to ask parents to help to continue to do what they’ve been doing.”
He also sought to reassure parents and their children that this postponement was a sign that the scientific process was working.
Pfizer may have only recently informed the FDA of this new data because it takes time to review clinical studies run by an independent monitoring board.
The latest omicron surge hit children harder than previous variants largely because of their unvaccinated status.
(NEW YORK) — About 4,000 New York City municipal workers are facing termination Friday for not being vaccinated against COVID-19.
Less than 1% of the city’s workforce will lose their jobs if they don’t show proof of vaccination — potentially the country’s largest workforce reduction linked to COVID vaccines.
The 4,000 employees include 3,000 workers who are on unpaid leave and 1,000 new workers who were hired after Aug. 2, 2021, who were told they had to be vaccinated as a condition of employment.
“I want them to stay, I want them to be employees of the city, but they have to follow the rules that were made before my administration,” Mayor Eric Adams said during a press conference Thursday. “We have to be very clear. People have to be vaccinated if they are a New York City employee. Everyone understood that and we have to follow that.”
The mandate was first announced in October 2021 by then-New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio for roughly 370,000 city employees — including police officers, firefighters, corrections officers and teachers — to either be vaccinated by the end of month or be placed on unpaid leave.
When the mandate was first announced, about 84% had received at least one dose, according to City Hall, which rose to 95% by January. Several exemptions have also been granted.
The unpaid workers must submit proof of their first dose by day’s end and then have 45 days to receive a second dose. The new workers, on the other hand, submitted proof of an initial dose when they were hired and now must show they’ve completed their vaccine series.
Adams said some workers who were facing termination have since submitted their proof of vaccination so it’s not clear how many employees will be fired.
During the press conference, Adams stressed that any workers who have not yet been vaccinated weren’t being fired, but are rather “quitting” on the city.
“We are not firing them. People are quitting,” he said. “The responsibility is clear. We said it, ‘If you were hired, if you get this job, you have to be vaccinated. If you are not following the rules, you are making that decision. You are making the decision that you are not going to follow the rules of getting vaccinated and that is a decision they are making.'”
Hundreds of workers protested the mandate earlier this week, marching across the Brooklyn Bridge.
Additionally, a religious rights group filed a lawsuit in Brooklyn Federal Court Thursday on behalf of unvaccinated city workers, claiming the mandate violates their religious and constitutional rights.
The plaintiffs, which include firefighters, a corrections officer, a sanitation worker, a social worker and a police officer, say the mandate is “openly discriminatory” against “people with personally held religious beliefs or unorthodox religious beliefs.”
ABC News’ Mark Crudele contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — COVID-19 vaccines for kids under 5 have not yet been authorized, but the U.S.’ rollout plan is already in the works.
The federal government is prepping an initial 10 million doses of the under-5 Pfizer formula, which will be ready to go out as soon as the Food and Drug Administration gives their final sign-off, sources familiar with the situation told ABC News.
The new three-microgram doses for this young population will be distributed in maroon-capped vials, according to a preliminary planning chart from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to states and obtained by ABC News.
This is to differentiate that specific formula from the vials for 5- to 11-year-olds, which are orange-capped. The formula for adults and older adolescents will have grey caps (previously it had purple caps, but that color will no longer be used).
A CDC spokesperson confirmed the rollout plans.
Supply of the under-5 vaccine formula is abundant, with enough for all children in the age group, sources familiar with the rollout said. Now, all that is needed is FDA authorization and CDC recommendation.
The Biden administration has promised there will also be enough needles, syringes and kits, for the roughly 18 million children aged six months to 5 years old in the U.S. who will soon be eligible.
States will be putting in their orders this week and next week, sources said, so the government can start sorting out where the doses will ship.
White House COVID-19 coordinator Jeff Zients said Wednesday that the plan for the vaccine rollout for kids under 5 is “well underway,” and the CDC is working with state leaders to help them prepare.
The new formula for these young children will be available at “thousands of locations across the country, locations that parents know and trust,” Zients said, and the Biden administration is working “closely” with pediatricians, family doctors, children’s hospitals and pharmacies to ensure access.
The Food and Drug Administration’s independent advisory committee (VRBPAC) is set to meet and publicly debate Pfizer’s request to authorize their under-5 vaccine on Feb. 15, after the company submitted that application at the start of February.
(NEW YORK) — Adding more plants to your diet can add years to your life, according to a new study.
Researchers in Norway used computer models to compare a typical Western diet — heavy on animal-based proteins dairy and sugar — with a more ideal plant-based diet that’s heavy on fruits, vegetables, beans and grains and light on animal-based proteins.
According to the models, a 20-year-old who went all-in on the plant-based diet could add 10 years to their life. Even just making a partial change could add six years of life expectancy.
An 80-year-old who started a plant-based diet could add three years to their life expectancy, according to the study, published Tuesday in PLOS Medicine.
“A sustained dietary change may give substantial health gains for people of all ages both for optimized and feasible changes,” the researchers wrote. “Gains are predicted to be larger the earlier the dietary changes are initiated in life.”
The researchers turned their model into a public online tool, Food4HealthyLife, where users can calculate how dietary changes can change their life expectancy.
A plant-based diet is a way of eating that consists mostly or entirely of foods derived from plants, including vegetables, grains, nuts, seeds, legumes and fruits.
Plant-based diets typically consist of eating few to no animal foods and is different from vegan diets, which eliminates all animal foods and products, and from vegetarian diets, which eliminate all meat, fish and poultry.
Plant-based diets, often done for health and environmental reasons, also often place an emphasis on whole foods.
Even small changes make a difference when it comes to trying a plant-based diet, according to Dr. Jennifer Ashton, ABC News chief medical correspondent.
“I think when people hear plant-based diet or they hear a definition they get very intimidated. This does not have to be an all-in thing,” Ashton said Wednesday on Good Morning America. “You can make small changes with, let’s say, a meatless Monday or just one meal of every day.”
She added, “Read the labels. Explore those food aisles. There are more plant-based options than ever.”
Plant-based diets have been steadily gaining acclaim for the last several years, often landing atop the annual best diet rankings from U.S. News & World Report.
Here are four questions answered about the plant-based diet trend.
1. What are good things to eat on a plant-based diet?
Brian Wendel, maker of the 2011 documentary Forks Over Knives, places an emphasis on eating whole, minimally processed foods within a plant-based diet.
“For me, the best guide is, does the food still look somewhat like it does when you take it out of the ground? When you cook a potato, it still looks like a potato,” he told GMA in 2020. “The more a food is like that the more you can lean on that in your diet and lifestyle, for health benefits.”
Of course fresh vegetables and fruits are a big part of a plant-based diet, as well as nuts, whole grains and legumes. Seafood and meat products can also, on occasion, be part of a plant-based diet.
Wendel emphasizes eating more than just vegetables on a plant-based diet to ensure you are taking in enough calories.
“Make starchy foods — beans, rice, sweet potatoes, quinoa, chickpeas –- the center of the plate because that has the energy to sustain you,” he said. “And then surround it with vegetables.”
2. What about all the packaged foods advertised as ‘plant-based’?
The emphasis on eating whole foods on a plant-based diet raises the question of what to make of all the packaged plant-based products on the market, from kale chips to meat-free burgers.
“So many diets that are restrictive or have a buzz name have nothing in their description about the quality of their food and that’s something that is really important,” said Deirdre Tobias, assistant professor in the department of nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health. “A lot of these plant-based products might still be highly processed and have a lot of sodium and saturated fats.”
“Be careful about plant-based being used as a marketing tool,” she said.
Tobias recommends being a “savvy shopper” and shopping for your plant-based diet in the produce aisle.
“Make your own plant-based foods because vegetables are there for you,” she said. “You don’t have to be purchasing packaged, processed foods.”
3. Are there any downsides to a plant-based diet?
Not really, according to the experts.
“For heart disease, diabetes, cancer, all of the major chronic diseases, there are no downsides to eliminating meat products from your diet for any of those,” said Tobias. “If anything, the evidence shows that by going plant-based you would be benefiting your long-term survival and reducing the risk of those diseases.”
“Fruits and vegetables, fiber, nuts and legume have also all been proven to be good for weight loss and to keep weight off long-term,” she said.
Is there a way to be plant-based but still eat some meat?
Yes, the definition of plant-based is that your diet is based on plants but allows room for other foods from time to time.
“If you’re not ready to give up meat entirely, still even reducing it to once in a while would have a lot of great benefits,” said Tobias. “The science isn’t there to say a steak or a burger once in a while is horrible for you, it’s the daily consumption that’s problematic.”
One option is the flexitarian diet which encourages people to try alternative meat options, like tofu, but leaves room for flexibility if you can’t quite fully give up meat. The diet was promoted by dietitian Dawn Jackson Blatner in a 2009 book that says you can reap the benefits of a plant-heavy diet even if you eat meat occasionally, according to U.S. News and World Report, which ranked the diet No. 2 on its 2022 best diets list.
This plant-heavy diet focuses on adding five food groups — “new meat,” fruits and vegetables, whole grains, dairy and sugar and spices — to your diet, instead of taking foods away.
The “new meat” food group includes tofu, beans, lentils, peas, nuts, seeds and eggs, according to U.S. News and World Report.
4. How do I know if a plant-based diet is right for me?
You’ll know a plant-based diet is working for you if you feel well and you are able to stick to it long-term, according to Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford, an obesity medicine physician scientist at Harvard Medical School.
“Your body has the answers,” said Stanford. “Pay attention to your body and don’t pay attention to someone else and how they say their body responded.”
The experts also noted there may be some trial and error involved so stay open to finding what works best for you.
(NEW YORK) — A growing number of states are lifting mask mandates in schools, but Education Secretary Miguel Cardona says that prematurely easing restrictions could lead to more issues for in-person learning.
“We have to have our health experts at the table,” Cardona told ABC News Live on Tuesday. “Most importantly, we have to keep our schools open; our students cannot afford another round of disruption.”
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and Delaware Gov. John Carney announced Monday that students will no longer be required to wear a mask in schools by mid-March.
Since a few months after the pandemic hit the United States, local politicians have come under pressure from parents and communities on both sides of the debate over children wearing masks in schools.
“We have people that are very passionate about what they believe,” Cardona said. “We have to remember to engage the perspectives of different parents, teachers.”
Cardona responded to claims of parents who argue that wearing a face mask negatively impacts their child’s learning, by pointing to a likely outcome of lifting restrictions too soon.
“You know what hinders kids’ learning? Being quarantined because they have COVID, or not having a teacher because their teacher has COVID,” he said.
Some experts say it is too soon to end mask mandates in schools because vaccination rates are not high enough among children and new cases are still being reported. Experts are especially concerned for children under 5 who are not yet eligible for the vaccine. Pfizer requested emergency use authorization for children 6 months old to 5 years old on Feb. 1, and a Food and Drug Administration advisory meeting is scheduled for Feb. 15.
“Many of our educators have children under the age of 5 that they go home to,” said Cardona. “We need to make sure our schools are safe for them to work. We have to honor and respect our educators and leaders who have difficult decisions.”
The education secretary said the easing of coronavirus protocols in the classroom are making some educators feel uncomfortable coming to work. Since the pandemic began, there’s been a teacher shortage, due to fears of contracting the virus, remote learning and an overall shift in how our nation’s educators teach and interact with young people.
“It’s been tough to be an educator the last couple years, not only because of the changes that they’ve had to experience in terms of being in-person one day and being fully remote the next, but they’ve been under a lot of pressure,” said Cardona. “There’s strong feelings in the community, oftentimes teachers are being blamed schools are not open.”
He noted that the country has made progress in keeping schools open throughout the last year, stating that in the beginning of President Joe Biden’s term, less than 50% of classes were held in person. Now, all schools have opened their doors, though some are still operating on a hybrid schedule.
Cardona said it’s important for school districts and politicians to remember what has succeeded in keeping students and educators safe in schools.
“What I’m hearing from educators is that they just want to make sure that their work environment is safe for their students,” he added. “But they also understand this pandemic has taken a toll and that we’re ready to move forward, but we can only do so if we protect our students and our staff, including the students who are not yet in our schools, the little ones that parents are going back home to.”
(WASHINGTON) — U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy told lawmakers on Tuesday that the pandemic has had a “devastating” impact on the mental health of America’s young people.
“I’m deeply concerned as a parent and as a doctor that the obstacles this generation of young people face are unprecedented and uniquely hard to navigate and the impact that’s having on their mental health is devastating,” Murthy told the Senate Finance Committee.
Senators expressed bipartisan support for addressing mental health issues among young people, with chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Ranking Member Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, raising alarm over recent increases in suicide attempts among American youth.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported last year that emergency department visits for suicide attempts among teen girls were up more than 50% at the beginning of the pandemic, compared to the same period in 2019.
“Millions of young Americans are struggling under a mental health epidemic, struggling in school, struggling with addiction or isolation, struggling to make it from one day to the next. Our country is in danger of losing much of a generation if mental health care remains business as usual,” Wyden said. “And that means the Finance Committee has got to come up with solutions.”
A main issue, Murthy said, is access to care. He said that on average it takes 11 years from the onset of symptoms before a child begins receiving treatment.
Murthy’s main recommendations are to ensure access to “high-quality, culturally competent care,” focusing on prevention with school and community-based programs and developing a better understanding of the impact technology and social media have on young people.
“Currently there is a grand national experiment that is taking place upon our kids when it comes to social media and we need to understand more about what is happening, which kids are at risk, what impact these algorithms and the broader platforms are having on our children,” Murthy said.
He explained that, in addition to the positive effects social media platforms have had on young people, they have also, “exacerbated feelings of loneliness, futility and low self esteem for some youth,” and increased potential for negative messaging and bullying.
“Our obligation to act is not just medical, it’s moral,” Murthy said. “It’s not only about saving lives, it’s about listening to our kids who are concerned about the state of the world that they are set to inherit. It’s about our opportunity to rebuild a world that we want to give them, a world that fundamentally refocuses our priorities on people and community and builds a culture of kindness, inclusion and respect.”
If you or a loved one is experiencing suicidal thoughts, The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline provides 24/7, free and confidential support. Call 1-800-273-8255 for help.
(NEW YORK) — Losing weight can be hard and confusing, but a new study has found an easy way to help.
Adding just one hour or more of sleep a night can help boost weight loss, according to the study published Monday in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.
Participants in the study who underwent a “sleep extension” program for two weeks, sleeping about one hour longer per night, took in about 150 fewer calories per day, which, over the course of the two weeks, averaged a weight loss of nearly two pounds.
Prior to the “sleep extension” program, the participants slept less than 6.5 hours per night, according to the study, which was led by researchers at the University of Chicago and the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Over a three-year period, adding at least one hour of sleep per night could result in a 26-pound weight loss, the study’s authors noted.
“Along with a healthy diet and regular physical activity, healthy sleep habits should be integrated into public messages to help reduce the risk of obesity and related comorbidities,” the study’s authors wrote, noting their study is a first of its kind because it monitored participants in their home environments instead of in a sleep lab, for example.
“The theory here is that sleep can really affect our brain hormones, which trigger hunger, satiety, as well as our behavior,” said ABC News chief medical correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton, who was not involved with the study. “We know that when we’re sleep-deprived, we tend to make poor food choices.”
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, adults ages 18 and over should get a minimum of seven hours of sleep per night.
Infants and toddlers should get between 11 and 16 hours of sleep per night, depending on age, while elementary school children should get between nine and 12 hours of sleep per night, according to the CDC.
Teenagers should get eight to 10 hours of sleep per night, the CDC advises.
Speaking of the importance of sleep, Ashton said, “This is not a luxury. This is a medical necessity.”
“We know that sleep has been linked with everything from thinking ability, mood and mental health, hormone levels,” she said. “It can decrease high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease if we get adequate sleep.”
A study released last year found that sleeping less than six hours a night in midlife can raise the risk of dementia — the loss of cognitive functioning, like thinking, remembering and reasoning — by 30%.
“This is so important,” Ashton said of getting adequate sleep. “This is on par with our nutrition and our fitness in terms of our health.”
Here are four tips from Ashton to get better, more restful sleep:
1. “Keep a consistent bedtime routine during the week and on the weekends.”
2. “Make your bedroom cold, dark and quiet. That’s the most relaxing sleep environment you can have.”
3. “Limit screen time, which includes the phone, about an hour before you go to bed.”
4. “Avoid caffeine, alcohol and large meals in the one to two hours before you go to sleep. What we’re eating and drinking really matters.”
Read more here for tips on how to get a good night’s sleep.
