On the website Morning Routines, I found the evening wind-down routine of Arianna Huffington most interesting
First, I turn off all my electronic devices and gently escort them out of my bedroom. Then, I take a hot bath with epsom salts and a candle flickering nearby; a bath that I prolong if I’m feeling anxious or worried about something. I don’t sleep in my workout clothes as I used to (think of the mixed message that sends to our brains) but have pajamas, nightdresses, and even T-shirts dedicated to sleep. Sometimes I have a cup of chamomile or lavender tea if I want something warm and comforting before going to bed. I love reading real, physical books, especially poetry, novels, and books that have nothing to do with work.
We’ve seen me use the Fitbit wearable to track a baseline level of activity while home-bound, and how getting adequate, quality sleep is a part of that. The piece above interested me because I’ve found that deliberately designing my activities prior to turning in have an effect on the quality of sleep – specifically, how often I awaken at night where I’m conscious.
You can see in the comparison between these two sleep graphs that the upper one has extremely short periods of wakefulness, not enough for me to remember them; the lower one has larger gaps.
It’s probably too much to optimise beyond a certain point what activities in what order have the most beneficial effect (controlling for bedtime, the evening meal and what kind of workday I have had), but the following seems to help:
- Twenty minutes of browsing low-stimulation subreddits
- Twenty minutes reading whatever book I’m on, on the iPad, where you can set a daily reading goal. I do this while pacing up and down, which is approximately 1500 steps and me wind down. Night Shift on the iPad is on and set to full, and the room has low-brightness warm lighting
- Twenty minutes of solitude
- Before any of these, I down a cup of chamomile tea. I’m a skeptic and remain so at the time of this writing, but I’m giving it a try because the US National Institute of Health published this 2010 review of the effect of the herb on, among other things, sleep:
Chamomile is widely regarded as a mild tranquillizer and sleep-inducer. Sedative effects may be due to the flavonoid, apigenin that binds to benzodiazepine receptors in the brain (68). Studies in preclinical models have shown anticonvulsant and CNS depressant effects respectively… Compounds, other than apigenin, present in extracts of chamomile can also bind BDZ and GABA receptors in the brain and might be responsible for some sedative effect; however, many of these compounds are as yet unidentified.
The whole thing takes an hour, but with it is contained my daily reddit and book reading, and a significant part of my step goal. With the benefit of good sleep and a refreshed start to the following morning, the return on that hour might be one of the highest in my day.