One often overlooked strategy to improve sleep and manage insomnia is to employs bedtime rituals. While most think of these as activities designed to help kids go to sleep easier, their science is deeply rooted in our sleep health. In this episode we will:Revisit the idea of circadian rhythms and why they are important for sleep health and sleep timingDefine the concept of a zeitgeber and how they work to strengthen the effectiveness of our circadian rhythm and its predictive abilityUnderstand the concept of weak and strong zeitgebers and how they relate to the actions that make up our bedtime routinesExamine common bedtime rituals and their relationship to known zeitgebersTouch upon light as historically the strongest/most influential zeitgeberDifferentiate the health (and sleep) benefits of exercise from the circadian benefits and understand how evening exercise could capitalize on both in a bedtime ritualEvaluate stress (and alleviating stress) as an unexpected zeitgeberRevisit the concept of temperature as a zeitgeber and how its mechanism in humans is not entirely clearIntroduce the food entrainable-oscillator (FEO) and how it relates to food as a zeitgeberEnd on more unusual potential zeitgebers like music, and the research supporting themProduced by: Maeve WinterMore Twitter: @drchriswinter IG: @drchriwinter Threads: @drchriswinter Bluesky: @drchriswinter The Sleep Solution and The Rested Child Thanks for listening and sleep well!

Ask this episode

“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

Transcript

Related