You’re exhausted after a long day. You finally get into bed, hoping for restful sleep—but your mind won’t switch off. Sound familiar?

According to spiritual coach and energy healer Oliver Niño, who works with celebrities like Tony Robbins and Jessica Alba, the issue might not be your bedtime routine or screen time but the stress you've carried into the night.

“Anxiety tends to build up because people carry it on from their day, and they sleep with it,” Niño told *The Post*. “They wake up the next day, and they really aren’t able to get enough sleep. The anxieties of the day before follow them over the next day, and they kind of snowball.”

This is why Niño emphasizes what he calls a “nighttime anxiety detox.” And the busier you are, the more crucial it becomes. “A lot of times, people say, ‘I don’t have time to do much,’” he said. “To me, it’s reversed. The harder it is, the more you have to do it.”

To help his clients—many of whom are pressed for time—Niño focuses on short, effective practices that take five minutes or less. In his new book, Do This Before Bed: Simple 5-Minute Practices That Will Change Your Life, he shares techniques that aim to reset the nervous system and clear emotional clutter before sleep.

Color Therapy

Color therapy, Niño explains, involves visualizing colors as you prepare for sleep. “When you’re going to bed or when you’re meditating and you’re imagining different colors coming down and filling you up,” he said, this practice taps into ancient beliefs that colors carry specific energies and healing properties. He suggests imagining “white coming down from the sky, filling you up,” and experimenting with different colors to find one that brings calm and peace.

Geometric Breathing

Many are familiar with breathwork, but Niño prefers “geometric breathing,” which involves inhaling, holding, and exhaling in equal intervals—typically five seconds each. “While you’re doing that, you’re visualizing—you’re inhaling positive energy, you’re inhaling love and light,” he said. “And when you’re releasing, when you’re exhaling, you’re breathing out every stress, every anxiety, everything that you held onto that day.”

Cord Cutting

When people affect your mood long after they’ve left the room, it could be due to what Niño calls energetic cords. These emotional ties can drain you. “If someone’s affecting me, I probably have what I call an energetic cord attached from them to me,” he explained. To break this, Niño uses visualization: he imagines being filled with light, then visualizes his hands as swords slicing through those cords.

Physical Activity

Whether it's journaling, dancing, or stretching, Niño recommends using movement to release built-up tension. “For some people, they want to go for a night walk, or they want to dance or shake it off or do some yoga,” he said. Other calming activities include salt baths, sound baths, and incense.

Laughter Therapy

Sometimes, a little humor can work wonders. “Some people, they want laughter therapy,” Niño said. Watching a funny video or scrolling through memes can provide that release. “When they’re laughing, anxiety can’t build up.”

World Health Day 2025 just went by, which touched upon the theme of "Healthy beginnings, hopeful future." On this occasion, Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare Anupriya Patel in an interview with the News Services Division of Akashvani talked about India's strides in improving maternal and child health.

With this year's global theme, which had been centered on "ending preventable maternal and newborn deaths", the minister detailed targeted efforts and achievements that India has made in reducing mortality rates.

As per Patel, India has successfully outpaced global averages in reducing maternal and child mortality. The maternal mortality rate has dropped by 83% in India. This, when compared with global drop is at 42%. Similarly, the country's infant mortality rate has also fallen by 69%, whereas the global rate is at 55%. The mortality rate for under five has also reduced by 75%, whereas globally, it stands at 58%.

She attributed this access to the Reproductive Maternal Neonatal Child and Adolescent Health (RMNCHA) strategy and associated government schemes. These included:

Janani Suraksha Yojana: Promotes institutional deliveries.

Janani Shishu Suraksha Karyakram: Offers free deliveries at public health centres.

Pradhan Mantri Surakshit Matritva Abhiyan (PMSMA): Enables access to specialist antenatal care.

Lakshya initiative: Focuses on quality care in labour rooms and maternity OTs.

Comprehensive abortion care: Ensures safe, legal, and affordable abortions for various medical and social reasons.

Ensuring Nutrition For The Mother And Child

Patel also noted the efforts made to end malnutrition and obesity. The Ministry of Women and Child Development is also looking after the Saksham Anganwadi and Poshan 2.0. These focus on maternal nutrition, child feeding practices, and treatment of severe and moderate acute malnutrition. These schemes ensure that children aged 0 to 6 are regularly screened at Anganwadi centers. Malnourished children are referred to Nutrition Rehabilitation Centers (NRCs). Lastly, the Poshan Tracker, which is a digital platform, must monitor the real-time data on service delivery and health outcomes.

In fact, from April 8 the Poshan Pakhwada campaign, which aims to fight malnutrition in India, titled Swast Suposhit Bachche, Samriddh Bharat Ki Neeyat” has started to mobilise community participation and promote behavioural changes in dietary habits. This will go on till April 22.

Obesity and Promoting Healthy Lifestyles

Highlighting rising childhood obesity, Patel noted initiatives by FSSAI and the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports. The Eat Right India campaign encourages reduced intake of salt, sugar, and fat. The Fit India Movement and the School Health Programme advocate nutrition education, obesity screening, and lifestyle counselling in schools.

Additionally, school canteens are being regulated to limit unhealthy food options, ensuring children grow up with healthier habits.

Combating Anemia in Women and Children

India’s long-standing battle with anemia continues through widespread distribution of Iron and Folic Acid (IFA) supplements. Pregnant and lactating women receive IFA tablets for 180 days, while children get IFA syrups. Routine monitoring of haemoglobin levels helps track progress. Patel expressed confidence in achieving the goal of Anemia Mukt Bharat soon.

Ensuring Equitable Healthcare Access

Patel concluded by emphasizing the government’s focus on equitable and quality healthcare access, especially in underserved and rural regions. She reiterated the need for a collective approach—government, community, and stakeholders—to ensure sustainable improvements in public health outcomes, particularly for women and children.

Melatonin is a crucial hormone that promotes sleep by signaling the brain that it is nighttime. Beyond sleep, melatonin also acts as an antioxidant and has anti-inflammatory properties. This crucial hormone is produced by the pineal gland in the brain. While consuming certain fruits and vegetables can stimulate its production, melatonin supplements are also widely used by people struggling with insomnia or jet lag and are available over the counter in many countries.

How Does Melatonin Work?

Melatonin works hand-in-hand with your body’s internal clock, known as your circadian rhythm. This rhythm tells you when to sleep, wake, and even eat. Besides sleep regulation, melatonin also plays a role in managing your body temperature, blood pressure, glucose levels, and some hormones.

At night, as it gets darker, melatonin levels rise, signalling that it’s time to rest. In the morning, exposure to light lowers melatonin levels, helping you feel alert and awake. It interacts with receptors in your brain to slow down nerve activity and reduce dopamine, the hormone that keeps you awake.

7 Habits That Can Boost Melatonin Production

1. Get Morning Sunlight

Exposure to natural light early in the day helps regulate your internal clock and tells your body when to produce melatonin later. According to experts, Natural light in the morning helps regulate your internal clock and signals to your body when it’s time to produce melatonin later.

2. Limit Blue Light at Night

There is empirical evidence that screens from phones, tablets, and TVs suppress melatonin. Adjusting your phone to filter blue light or avoiding screens before bed can help.

3. Eat Melatonin-Rich Foods

Many fruits and vegetables boost melatonin production:

Tart cherries

Bananas

Oats

Walnuts

Almonds

Milk

Tomatoes

Fatty fish (like salmon)

Eggs

Grapes

4. Include Tryptophan in Your Diet

Tryptophan, found in turkey, eggs, nuts, and seeds, helps produce serotonin, which converts into melatonin. Several other nutrients, including magnesium, calcium, vitamin D, zinc and several types of vitamin B.

5. Maintain a Consistent Sleep Schedule

Going to bed and waking up at the same time daily trains your body to produce melatonin more effectively.

6. Avoid Late Meals

Finish eating at least two hours before bed to avoid disrupting your sleep with digestion-related issues. Digestion keeps your body active when it should be winding down and can lead to sleep-disturbing side effects such as heartburn and acid reflux.

7. Manage Stress

Stress raises cortisol, which interferes with melatonin. Meditation, breathwork, and warm baths can promote relaxation. Other healthy bedtime rituals include journaling, reading and listening to a podcast — whatever you need to do to let your muscles relax so that you sleep easily.

Babies as young as one year old can form memories, according to the results of a brain-scanning study published in the journal Science. The findings suggest that infantile amnesia, the inability to remember the first few years of life, is probably caused by difficulties in recalling memories rather than creating ones. This is the first time that scientists observed memory creation by observing the babies' hippocampus in real time.

How Did The Study Work, And What Did It Find?

To observe this, the researchers used a specially adapted brain scan for infants during a single session. It allowed them to watch how babies’ brains responded while they were awake and looking at images of faces and objects. Parents remained close to their babies, which helped keep them calm and alert.

For the experiment, the researchers observed 26 infants aged four to 25 months. It was found that if a baby’s hippocampus was more active the first time they saw a particular image, they would look at the same image for longer when it reappeared a short time later, next to a new one. This suggested suggesting they recognised it. "Our results suggest that babies’ brains have the capacity for forming memories – but how long-lasting these memories are is still an open question,” said Tristan Yates, a postdoctoral research scientist in the department of psychology at Columbia University and lead author of the study.

Episodic Memory Begins Developing Earlier Than Expected

The findings suggest that episodic memory – the kind of memory that helps us remember specific events and the context in which they took place – begins to develop earlier than scientists previously believed.

Until recently, it was widely believed that this type of memory didn’t begin to form until well after a baby’s first birthday, typically around 18 to 24 months. Although the findings from the Science study were strongest in infants older than 12 months, the results were observed in much younger babies as well.

According to Cristina Maria Alberini, professor of neural science at New York University, the period in infancy when the hippocampus is developing its ability to form and store memories may be “critical”. This window could be important not only for memory but also has “great implications for mental health and memory or cognitive disorders”, she added. Memories formed in early childhood do not typically last very long, it is believed, which might explain why we can’t remember them later in life. In an ongoing study at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Germany, 20-month-old toddlers were able to remember which toy was in which room for up to six months, while younger children retained the memory for only about one month.

How Early Do We Start Forming Memories?

Humans’ near-universal inability to recall personal experiences from before the age of about three is a phenomenon known as “infantile amnesia”. As of now, scintists believed that it was because babies'brains were immature and weren't capable of stories any form of memory. But the Science study has shown that babies do indeed form memories. The mystery is why those memories become inaccessible as we grow older.