Consider these products as part of your evening winddown routine to calm your mind and optimize your sleep.
Having a consistent winddown routine helps prepare our body for sleep, shortening the time required for sleep onset and increasing overall sleep quality and duration. It entrains initialization of physiological and circadian processes, changing neural and endocrine activity and relaxing our mind and body. Our brains begin to release melatonin, and the absence of light allows adenosine and melatonin to make us feel tired.
Given the negative effects that evening light exposure and social media have on sleep quality and regularity, scientists strongly encourage winddown routines that exclude the use of screens and electronic devices, which are highly visually and mentally stimulating. Light and mental stimulation are two primary factors that affect our ability to fall and stay asleep.
To help develop your winddown routine, here are some relaxing activities we've enjoyed that are not highly stimulating and don't require the use of light.
The podcast industry is booming as barriers to produce podcasts have fallen and streaming platforms have increased their offerings. Podcasts can be informative and/or entertaining and streamed without a video component, making them ideal for evening entertainment. Popular platforms include Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube. We enjoy the broad catalog and UI of Spotify the most (we have no relationship with these platforms).
Our favorites have a strong scientific emphasis, including Andrew Huberman's Huberman Lab, Rhonda Patrick's FoundMyFitness, The Peter Attia Drive, Dr. Laurie Santos's The Happiness Lab, ZOE Science & Nutrition, Levels' A Whole New Level, and BBC's All in the Mind.
Books are another great way to transition the mind to sleep. While entertaining, they generally do not overstimulate the nervous system and affect sleep onset. A dim, warm, directed light is sufficient for reading and unlikely to disrupt melatonin production. Audiobooks may serve as even better winddown tools as they do not require light. Audible has the largest catalog of audiobooks and is the most popular streaming platform.
Some of our favorites include Dr. Casey Means's Good Energy, Thaler and Sunstein's Nudge, and Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational. As avid listeners of the Huberman Lab podcast, we are also very excited for the release of Andrew Huberman's book Protocols in 2025.
Meditation and mindfulness are phenomenal ways to calm the body and mind. Each encompasses a variety of forms, including mindful walking, breathing, eating, visualization, and awareness, and can be customized to fit our schedule, lifestyle, and thinking patterns. Guided meditation is a straightforward way to begin a mindfulness practice and is available on many platforms, including Spotify, Waking Up, Headspace, Insight Timer, and Positive Intelligence (PQ). These platforms offer short sessions to help ease into a regular practice.
We've found great benefit from initiating our winddown routine with focused breathing techniques to transition into a state of mindfulness. We've also discovered that combining these techniques with a 20-minute walk following each meal helps to focus and calm the mind and body, easing the transition later in the evening.
Recent evidence validates the positive effects of music on our physiology, including on cardiovascular, metabolic, emotional, and cognitive processes. Listening to music in the evening can improve sleep quality and induce a more relaxed state. Studies have found benefits on heartrate variability, respiration patterns, and emotional processing.
The most popular music streaming platforms are Spotify, YouTube Music, Apple Music, Amazon Music, and Pandora. All platforms have curated playlists that can provide you with downtempo music great for relaxing in the evening.
Dimming and warming lights in the evening is made easier with smart bulbs that are easily adjustable and programmable. Red light affects our visual system much less than blue and white light. When reading a physical book, utilize a book light with dimming and color temperature settings to avoid excessive environmental light.
Remember to dim lights (especially blue light) from your devices 2-3 hours prior to sleep. Silencing notifications from texting and social media also reduces social stimulation and nervous system activation. Most smart devices have nighttime settings to do both of these automatically or on a schedule.
What other entertainment do you use in the evening as part of your winddown routine? Let us know by leaving a comment!