Evening is the perfect time to declutter your mind after a busy day, leading to a peaceful sleep afterwards. Having enough sleep hours enables your body to heal and replenish its energy, making you feel refreshed in the m7orning. This highlights the importance of being mindful of your evening routine, as the activities you engage in after sunset directly impact your overall well-being.
To achieve true relaxation before bedtime, it’s essential to choose effective, science-backed products for sleep that help calm your mind and prepare your body for rest. So, what truly helps and what can sabotage your rest? In this article, we’ll explore those answers to optimize your lifestyle by identifying both supportive and harmful evening habits.
What to Avoid in the Evening for Sleep Hygiene
Before moving towards ideal evening rituals, check out what you should avoid in the first place:
1. Dooms scrolling
In the evening, we have surplus time to spend on leisure activities, so doomscrolling is quite common. With a constant desire to stay updated, you expose yourself to a wide range of information, including negative content.
Doomscrolling increases cortisol levels, a stress hormone linked with poor sleep quality. Moreover, constant blue light exposure disturbs our body’s sleep-wake cycle, resulting in reduced melatonin production at night.
2. Heavy Meals
Heavy meals containing spicy or processed foods take longer to digest, so your dinner should be light. Moreover, going to bed soon after your dinner slows down the digestion, causing discomfort at night, so it is good to have light snacks for night cravings. Or, you can take heavy meals at least three hours before bedtime, allowing your body to digest the food completely.
Moreover, healthy food options are also crucial for maintaining good sleep hygiene. You should consider a well-balanced diet containing foods from all groups. Furthermore, you should avoid sugary foods as they trigger sleep issues. Likewise, avoid caffeine, which can cause alertness after noon.
3. Vigorous Exercises
Low-intensity exercises and light physical activities are part of sleep alternative therapies that people often consider for their evening routine. However, it is best to avoid high-intensity workouts before bedtime, as they can trigger sleep issues.
Vigorous workouts within one hour before bed can cause a reduction in total sleep time or difficulty falling asleep. So, consider lighter exercises, such as walking, Yoga, or tai chi, for your evening rituals.
4. Sleep Medications
Sleep Pills are not a ritual, but they are widely consumed to treat sleep disorders. Most of these medications make you feel dizzy and relax your mind, leading to uninterrupted nighttime. However, research says that taking sleep medications for too long increases the risk of stroke.
Additionally, pharmaceutical sleep aids come with certain side effects like nausea, impaired vision, dry mouth, etc. For those who are facing insomnia or similar sleep issues, alternative treatment options like natural sleep aids are available. These supplements contain herbal extracts that promote natural melatonin production without causing significant side effects.
5. Too Much Water Intake
Having enough liquids throughout the day is essential for hydration and electrolyte balance. However, do you know that water intake before bedtime can lead to sleep disturbances? Consuming water or other beverages shortly before bedtime can trigger insomnia symptoms.
It is also obvious that you can’t sleep peacefully with a full bladder. Waking up for the restroom disturbs the sleep cycle, resulting in poor sleep hygiene. So, ensure you cut off your water intake after evening.
Top 5 Relaxing Evening Routine Ideas
Here are some simple tricks to make your resting time more impactful for your mind and body:
- Setting a consistent bedtime routine helps regularize your body’s internal sleep cycle.
- Having an herbal tea containing valerian root, lavender, or chamomile extract for sleep restoration
- Journaling or meditation to tackle daily stressors naturally for mental resilience.
- Setting a comfortable and soothing bedroom environment with aromatherapy.
- Following a digital detox by eliminating all digital devices from your bedroom at least one hour before sleep.
Bottom Line
Resting isn’t just about lying idly in bed with a cluttered mind. It’s about engaging in healthy, calming activities that help heal yourself from the day’s stressors. Simply avoid activities like doomscrolling, heavy meals, and high-intensity workouts near bedtime, as they can lead to restlessness. Instead, incorporate calming practices such as herbal teas, aromatherapy, and digital detox into your routine for natural stress reduction at night.
