3 hours ago
3
After a hard day at work, the last thing you want to do is fritter away your precious downtime slumped on the sofa in a dazed doomscroll. Yet, in the absence of a better plan, it happens with depressing ease. How we spend the hours between shutting down the laptop and slipping under the duvet affects sleep quality, mood and how restored we feel the next day. So, how can we reclaim those lost evenings?
According to Jason Ellis, a professor of psychology at Northumbria University and director of the Northumbria centre for sleep research, establishing a regular end-of-day routine sends a signal to your brain that you are making a shift between work mode, and rest and recreation. “It’s about putting the day to bed before you go to bed,” he says. Gretchen Rubin – an author, podcaster and creator of the Happiness Project – agrees. “Habits are the invisible architecture of everyday life,” she says.
When Rubin’s working day is finished, she spends a few minutes tidying up and rewriting her to-do list. Then she gets out her watercolours and paints for a while, although she says the activity itself isn’t important. “It could be going for a walk, or playing with your dog; the important thing is that it marks the transition between work and free time.”
Unsurprisingly, staring at YouTube on your phone is probably not the ideal transition. Rubin recommends turning your phone off for an hour or so after work, or placing it somewhere inconvenient to reach. “It keeps the brain stimulated and alert, similar to the work mindset.”
Much has been made of the detrimental effect of blue light – emitted by phones, laptops, game consoles and other screens – on sleep. However, Ellis says the notion that blue light is “bad” is “a little too simplistic. Research is now focusing on the combined effect of blue light and what you are actually doing on your blue-light-emitting devices.” This means distinguishing between “active” blue light, associated with checking emails or social media, and “passive”, from reading, watching or listening to something on your device. “The former should be avoided in the two hours before bedtime, but the latter is fine during that time window.”
Contrary to what you might assume, a lit room is actually better than a dim one when looking at your phone in the evening. This is because a brightly lit device held close to your face in an otherwise darkened room delivers more light to the retina (because your pupils are dilated), which has a larger potential to suppress melatonin than the same device used in a well-lit room. Try to avoid fluorescent or LED lights, though.
TVs emit blue light too, but the distance from your face renders the effect insignificant compared with a phone or tablet. Although Rubin warns that TV can suck up your time in just as unsatisfactory a manner as social media. “Make sure your viewing is an intentional activity, not just mindless channel flicking,” she says.
Whatever your chosen evening entertainment, don’t get too comfortable. The average person sits in chairs for nine to 10 hours a day, and while some of this sitting time is unavoidable – desks, meeting rooms, vehicles – at home, you have more flexibility. Katy Bowman, a biomechanist and author of Rethink Your Position, recommends taking the floor. “Sitting on the floor encourages your body to cycle through many different positions, rather than the one or two that a sofa encourages us to sit in,” she says. You can use a cushion or two at first. If floor-sitting isn’t an option, at least try to avoid taking root in your comfy chair. Researchers at the University of Leicester recommend five minutes of movement for every 30 minutes of sitting.
When I read Haruki Murakami’s novel Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki, I was inspired by the protagonist’s habit of taking a shower when he got home from work. I had formerly regarded showers as a morning wake-up activity, but the post-work shower was a revelation – providing a metaphorical washing away of the stresses of the day and a clear transition point from day to evening.
Science suggests baths are even better. A Japanese randomised trial in 2018 found that bathing beat showering on measures including mood, fatigue and stress, as well as on ratings of aches and pains. Ellis gives baths the preferential thumbs up when it comes to sleep, too. “Research on sleep onset latency – how quickly we get off to sleep – shows that a shower is OK, a 20-minute bath is better but a longer soak is best.”
Two of the main regulators of the sleep-wake cycle are core body temperature and melatonin levels, which are governed by circadian rhythms. In the evening, core body temperature begins to drop as melatonin rises, inducing natural sleepiness. “When you lie in a hot bath, body heat is transferred from the core to the periphery where it is lost, which signals to the brain that it is time to prepare for sleep,” Ellis says. Apparently, adding bubble bath serves a practical purpose too: it insulates the water, enhancing the cooling effect afterwards.
I lost the post-work shower habit when I started working from home. Now, my go-to post-work activity is typically CrossFit or a 10km run.
Traditional advice has always warned against working up a sweat too close to bedtime, though this hasn’t been well supported by recent evidence. A 2019 systematic review concluded that, for most people, evening exercise does not impair sleep and may even improve it – with the exception of high-intensity workouts performed within an hour of bed.
A large real-world study from Monash University in Australia earlier this year has shed new light on the issue. “We found that strenuous exercise performed within four hours of bedtime was associated with delayed sleep onset, shorter sleep duration and lower sleep quality,” says the lead author Dr Josh Leota, from the school of psychological sciences.
Exercise activates the sympathetic nervous system, associated with alertness. The parasympathetic system is reactivated afterwards, which returns the body to a resting state (and is related to sleep onset). But, Leota explains, very strenuous exercise can slow this reactivation.
He recommends doing strenuous workouts earlier. “Our findings suggest that as long as a workout is finished at least four hours before bedtime, it has no effect on sleep, regardless of how long or strenuous it is,” he says. “If you do exercise later in the evening, keep it on the lighter side – such as an easy jog or a brief swim.” Evening exercise can also expose you to bright light and stimulation, he adds, “at a time when your system should be winding down”. That said, these things can be highly individual. “It is worth experimenting with timing, and monitoring your recovery,” says Leota, “rather than assuming what works for one person applies to everyone.”
Whether you’ve been soaking in the bath, painting watercolours or running laps, eating is an integral part of the evening routine. The emerging field of chrono-nutrition explores how the timing and composition of dietary intake interacts with circadian rhythms. “When you eat, not just what you eat, is increasingly being shown to play an important role in sleep,” says Dr Samantha Gill, a registered dietitian and spokesperson for the British Dietetic Association.
The findings with regard to the evening meal are somewhat inconclusive, however. A large-scale cross-sectional study published in the British Journal of Nutrition in 2021 supported the popular belief that eating too close to bedtime is detrimental to sleep – linking it to more interrupted sleep – though other studies have found no negative impact. “While experimental and observational research indicates that certain nutrients and dietary patterns can influence sleep outcomes, what’s missing are randomised controlled trials that use objective measures of both diet and sleep to provide clear insights into cause and effect,” says Gill.
She recommends eating around three hours before going to bed as a sensible aim, but concedes “the ‘best’ time to eat dinner likely varies from person to person. The key message is to not go to bed too full or too hungry.”
It’s not only the evening meal that can have an effect on sleep. “It’s helpful to consider what you’re consuming throughout the whole day.” Caffeine and alcohol are two of the most obvious – and well-researched – sleep-hampering substances, but one small study reported that a diet low in fibre and high in saturated fat and sugar was associated with lighter, less restorative sleep. Whereas, Gill says, “Higher dietary fibre and protein intakes have been linked to improved sleep quality.”
Given the importance of melatonin in the sleep-wake cycle, it is not surprising that foods that contain it have been found to enhance aspects of sleep. Many of the interventional studies (those that add something into the diet to test its effect) have used tart cherry juice or supplementation, which, while effective, is expensive and hard to source. Ellis has a budget-friendly solution: “Eating two kiwi fruits an hour before bedtime has been shown to reduce sleep onset latency and improve sleep duration,” he says.
Dietary sources of tryptophan (which include dairy, eggs, fish, chicken and turkey, as well as nuts, seeds and legumes) also appear to improve sleep outcomes, says Gill. Milk’s tryptophan content is one of the reasons a warm milky drink is such a good sleep promoter. However, the cultural aspect (we associate such drinks with bedtime) and habituation also play a role. “If a hot milky drink is part of someone’s usual going-to-bed regime, it signals to the brain to prepare for sleep,” says Ellis, who prefers a mug of decaf tea.
Which brings us back to the importance both of routine – the brain’s comfort blanket – and individuality. “It’s great to know what the research says about when we should eat, exercise, work or bathe, but we must also pay attention to our own responses,” says Rubin. “There is no single perfect evening routine, there is only your perfect evening routine.”
