Fox 19: Optimize your well-being
UC mindfulness expert offers tips for surviving a pandemic
Sian Cotton, PhD, director of the UC Center for Integrative Health and Wellness, and UC family medicine professor, spoke with Fox 19 about using mindfulness techniques to cope in the midst of a stressful COVID-19 impacted world. Cotton explains how a mindfulness practice can help increase our focus and reduce our ability to not waste time. To be focused in the moment allows us to attend to the task at hand and get the job done with time to enjoy life, explains Cotton.
“Mindfulness is a skill that we can learn,” Cotton told Fox 19.
She explained that mindful techniques can be used during formal practice such as yoga or mediation or informally with an activity done daily such as brushing your teeth. “Imagine the last time you brushed your teeth. You were thinking about your day or what I am going to feed the kids or that I am late for something. To practice mindfulness pay attention to the sounds, the sights and the tastes, the actual activities associated with brushing your teeth. It is a mindfulness activity.”
Listen to the Fox 19 interview with Sian Cotton, PhD.
Learn more about mindfulness with UC Answers.
Register for an October 17 virtual symposium promoting mindfulness online.
Featured image of women in a mindful pose practicing yoga is courtesy of Unsplash.
Related Stories
Sugar overload killing hearts
November 10, 2025
Two in five people will be told they have diabetes during their lifetime. And people who have diabetes are twice as likely to develop heart disease. One of the deadliest dangers? Diabetic cardiomyopathy. But groundbreaking University of Cincinnati research hopes to stop and even reverse the damage before it’s too late.
Is going nuclear the solution to Ohio’s energy costs?
November 10, 2025
The Ohio Capital Journal recently reported that as energy prices continue to climb, economists are weighing the benefits of going nuclear to curb costs. The publication dove into a Scioto Analysis survey of 18 economists to weigh the pros and cons of nuclear energy. One economist featured was Iryna Topolyan, PhD, professor of economics at the Carl H. Lindner College of Business.
App turns smartwatch into detector of structural heart disease
November 10, 2025
An app that uses an AI model to read a single-lead ECG from a smartwatch can detect structural heart disease, researchers reported at the 2025 Scientific Sessions of the American Heart Association. Although the technology requires further validation, researchers said it could help improve the identification of patients with heart failure, valvular conditions and left ventricular hypertrophy before they become symptomatic, which could improve the prognosis for people with these conditions.