The evidence is convergent. Multiple independent sources reach the same conclusion, the underlying mechanism is well-characterized, and even the field's most cautious voices treat it as worth doing.
So the habits above are all about lowering your heart rate, calming your nervous system and preparing your body to sleep. Making these things habitual allows your body to know what's coming. So that it can excrete melatonin, lower your body temp, and run all its other sleep processes.
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Native comments, Twitter mentions, and Reddit threads about this claim — surfaced together so the conversation isn't fragmented across platforms.
Bookmarking — the dossier-vs-overview split is the right call. Most of the time I want overview; sometimes I want receipts.
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The marker for your success is your resting heart rate before bed. That which increases your heart rate before bed is bad for sleep (excluding sex) and that which lowers your heart rate is good for sleep.
Now, when that happens, it impedes your ability to sleep.
where anything that increases your heart rate is going to lessen the quality of your sleep.
So when you increase your heart rate before bed, it wrecks your sleep.
Evening habits elevating heart rate
10 minutes of bright outdoor light within the first hour of waking anchors the circadian phase and improves sleep onset that night.
Morning sunlight exposure shifts the cortisol awakening response forward, improving daytime alertness.
Long-term morning sunlight reduces age-related macular degeneration risk.
Sleep regularity predicts all-cause mortality more strongly than sleep duration.
Tracking deep sleep on a wearable accurately reflects EEG-measured slow-wave sleep.
Caffeine has a half-life long enough that consumption after 2pm measurably degrades deep sleep in slow metabolizers.