I’ll let you in on a very personal secret – my wife wears socks to bed. Her feet get cold so on most nights she chooses to wear socks. Me, I prefer letting the air breathe around my feet. However, my wife usually falls asleep faster than I do.

Imagine my surprise when I picked up the newspaper and read an article on how wearing socks can help you fall asleep faster! Zena le Roux, writing in The Epoch Times, tells us, “Grandma was onto something when she told you to wear socks to bed. In Nordic countries, staying cozy before sleep is part of the tradition of “hygge,” which embraces warmth and comfort as essential for restful nights. Beyond just feeling snug, warming your feet plays a vital role in sleep. It helps your body cool down just the right way, signaling that it’s time to rest.”

When the body is exposed to warmth—through a bath, foot soak, or warm socks—it activates cooling mechanisms. Heat causes blood vessels to expand (vasodilate), boosting blood flow to the skin’s surface. This process releases heat from the body, effectively lowering core temperature. As blood moves toward the skin, excess heat transfers out of the body, promoting a cooler internal temperature and aiding sleep.

The body’s sleep–wake cycle is closely linked to core temperature changes. During the day, body temperature peaks in the late afternoon and early evening. At night, it gradually drops, signaling the body to prepare for sleep.

Dr. Alison Bentley, who has more than 30 years of experience treating sleep disorders, told The Epoch Times that the sleep hormone melatonin also helps lower body temperature. As melatonin is released, body temperature naturally decreases, setting the stage for deep sleep.

Wearing socks in bed is an easy and effective way to activate the cooling mechanism. A 2018 study showed that this simple strategy can improve sleep quality, leading to fewer awakenings, longer sleep duration, and quicker sleep onset. On average, those who wore socks during a seven-hour sleep period fell asleep 7.5 minutes faster, had 7.5 fewer awakenings, and gained 32 extra minutes of sleep. Sleep efficiency also increased by 7.6 percent in sock wearers.

Beyond vasodilation, socks may also influence the hypothalamus, the brain’s temperature control center. Certain neurons (brain cells) in this area respond to warmth by becoming more active, which promotes sleep. Their activity increases at sleep onset and during deep sleep but decreases upon waking. Therefore, keeping your feet warm may help these neurons function optimally, improving sleep quality.

Your bedroom’s temperature also affects sleep quality. According to Giles Watkins, a sleep coach and author of “Positive Sleep,” the ideal room temperature for sleep is about 64 degrees Fahrenheit. (I can’t imagine turning my A/C on high enough to achieve 64 degress, but I do agree cooler is better.)=

A cool sleeping environment supports deeper, more restorative sleep. Watkins explained that keeping the room cooler aligns with the body’s natural cooling process, making falling and staying asleep easier. In contrast, a bedroom that’s too warm can disrupt the cooling process, leading to difficulty falling asleep and restless nights. Keeping your room comfortably cool can create the optimal conditions for rest.

Looking to fine-tune your sleep environment? Try these temperature-regulating strategies:

• Optimize your bedroom to prevent heat buildup during the day.
• Lower the thermostat before bed.
• Choose cooler bedding materials.

The body cools down about two hours before sleep, so lowering the thermostat complements this natural temperature drop, according to Watkins. If you’re looking to cut heating costs, cracking a window may help. Additionally, choose cotton or wool bed socks (they’re breathable and comfortable), and avoid synthetic fabrics that trap heat. You can also add calming essential oils such as lavender and chamomile to your foot bath for extra relaxation.

I’m ready to give socks a try, even if I have to give my wife credit for the idea first. What have I got to lose but more sleep?

If you watch television much, like most people, you’ve probably seen the latest ads about the “Biden Pill Penalty.” The ads are calling on Republicans and President Trump to fix the penalty. But what is it?

This all concerns the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022, a misnamed bill if there ever was one. It certainly did not reduce inflation, but it did do a lot of harm for seniors on Medicare.

The issue is price controls. I wrote about it in a previous post on 8/19/24 called Price Controls Means Fewer Drugs and Groceries. Here’s what I said about them then:

“It makes good political sense to tell seniors you’re going to lower the price of their prescription drugs. What you won’t tell them, however, is this same move will reduce the development of new medicines.”

The editors of The Wall Street Journal said this: “The IRA let Medicare “negotiate” prices for 10 to 20 drugs a year and a total of 60 by 2029. Negotiate is a euphemism for extortion: Drug makers that don’t participate or reject the government’s price face a daily excise tax that starts at 186% and climbs to 1,900% of a drug’s daily revenue.”

The law also requires manufacturers to pay the government rebates on medicines sold to Medicare if they raise prices more than the rate of inflation, and puts them on the hook for more of the entitlement’s Part D costs. Democrats used the resulting estimated “savings” of some $160 billion to pay for the green new deal.

WSJ says, “But subsidized solar panels won’t help if you get sick. The inevitable, albeit invisible, result of Democrats’ raid on pharmaceutical companies will be fewer new medicines.”

Thus, the term, “The Biden Pill Penalty.” The penalty is fewer new medicines for seniors whose declining health means they need those new medicines more than anyone.

Roche CEO Thomas Schinecker said last summer that “we have decided that we are not going to do certain trials, or that we are not going to do a merger or acquisition or licensing [deal] because it is becoming financially not viable.” Astra-Zeneca also warned that it might delay launching some cancer medicines because of the IRA.

Some 90% of drug candidates fail in clinical trials, and manufacturers sometimes never recoup their investment on even those that are approved. They use profits from their few commercial successes to finance research and development into new medicines and to compensate investors. The IRA threatens this risk-reward model.

Here is what the WSJ editors have to say about that:

“Fixing prices is a recipe for shortages, as controls would discourage grocery suppliers. Voilà, empty store shelves. Price controls have led to shortages everywhere they’ve been tried, from Moscow to Caracas. The last American President to impose wage and price controls was Richard Nixon in the early 1970s. He had to stage a humiliating retreat amid shortages and market dislocations, and prices immediately soared when controls were lifted.”

It’s time to undo the damage of the Biden Pill Penalty and get rid of price controls on prescription drugs. We need all the innovation possible to develop new drugs to keep us all living longer. Price controls only disincentivize the pharmaceutical companies from developing new drugs when we need them most.

For many years I took a baby aspirin every day to prevent heart attacks or a stroke. It was the recommendation for anyone over the age of fifty. But recently that has all changed.

Are you aware of this change? Jack Phillips, writing in The Epoch Times, tells us a new survey found that about half of U.S. adults are not aware that the decades-old consensus about taking one low-dose aspirin per day has changed.

For years, health officials and medical groups recommended that older Americans take one aspirin, a blood thinner, daily to stave off cardiovascular disease or stroke. Then, in 2019, the American Heart Association and the American College of Cardiology announced new guidelines about low-dose aspirin usage, reversing the prior guidelines and noting that taking one aspirin per day can lead to increased risks of gastrointestinal bleeding.

But the message seems to have been missed by about half of Americans. A survey released on Feb. 3 by the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg Public Policy Center found that 48 percent of U.S. adults believe that for most people, the benefits of taking one low-dose aspirin each day to reduce the chance of stroke or heart attack outweigh the risks. More than 1,700 people participated in the survey.

Thirty-nine percent of those surveyed said they were not sure, while 13 percent said that the “risks are now thought to prevail over the benefits” under the new guidelines. “Habits backed by conventional wisdom and the past advice of health care providers are hard to break,” Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, who oversaw the survey, said in a statement on Feb 4. “Knowing whether taking a low-dose aspirin daily is advisable or not for you is vital health information.”

The survey also shed more light on why people may believe that low-dose aspirin’s benefits outweigh the risks. About 45 percent of respondents said that they or someone in their family had suffered a heart attack or stroke, compared with 49 percent who did not have a family history of heart attack or stroke.

People who have a personal history of heart attack or stroke have been told to take a low-dose daily aspirin, typically about 81 milligrams. The survey found that about 18 percent of people with no history of either health problem reported taking aspirin daily.

In 2019, the American College of Cardiology and the American Heart Association changed their guidelines on daily aspirin usage, stating that it should be taken only infrequently because older adults could be at an increased risk of developing internal bleeding. However, daily aspirin is still recommended for people who have a high risk of a heart attack or stroke.

An independent panel of health officials known as the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force made a similar recommendation in 2022, after it had suggested daily aspirin usage to combat heart attack or stroke. Health officials have said that aspirin irritates the lining of the stomach, triggering internal bleeding, ulcers, and gastrointestinal problems. Because it’s a blood thinner, aspirin also can be dangerous for people who are at a high risk of bleeding, according to officials.

Older adults without heart disease shouldn’t take daily low-dose aspirin to prevent a first heart attack or stroke, the preventive services group said at the time. Bleeding risks for adults in their 60s and older who haven’t had a heart attack or stroke outweigh any potential benefits from aspirin, it said.

A study published on June 25, 2024, in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that 18.5 million adults ages 60 and older with no history of cardiovascular disease reported taking preventive aspirin in 2021, the latest year for which data are available. Of that figure, 3.3 million reported taking daily aspirin without being directed to by a doctor or medical professional.

This is a perfect example of why we should never say, “The science is settled.” Science is never settled because our knowledge is always growing. We must always challenge our conventional wisdom because you never know when further knowledge will change our understanding and alter the best advice based on “our current scientific recommendations.”