#59 - Bedtime Rituals: Right On Time

Sleep Unplugged with Dr. Chris Winter

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 timing
• Define the concept of a zeitgeber and how they work to strengthen the effectiveness of our circadian rhythm and its predictive ability
• Understand the concept of weak and strong zeitgebers and how they relate to the actions that make up our bedtime routines
• Examine common bedtime rituals and their relationship to known zeitgebers
• Touch upon light as historically the strongest/most influential zeitgeber
• Differentiate the health (and sleep) benefits of exercise from the circadian benefits and understand how evening exercise could capitalize on both in a bedtime ritual
• Evaluate stress (and alleviating stress) as an unexpected zeitgeber
• Revisit the concept of temperature as a zeitgeber and how its mechanism in humans is not entirely clear
• Introduce the food entrainable-oscillator (FEO) and how it relates to food as a zeitgeber
• End on more unusual potential zeitgebers like music, and the research supporting them

Produced by: Maeve Winter
More

• Twitter: @drchriswinter
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• Threads: @drchriswinter
• Bluesky: @drchriswinter
• The Sleep Solution and The Rested Child

Thanks for listening and sleep well!