Hi there, it's Matt here and welcome back to the podcast and this second in a

longer series all about exercise and sleep.

Now, to refresh my memory more than yours,

in this series we are addressing essentially three big picture questions.

Number one, does exercise change your sleep? Number two, does the intensity or the type or even the duration of

exercise matter when it comes to that improvement in sleep? And finally number three does when you exercise during the day or even

in the evening make a difference to that sleep benefit. Now in the prior episode and also in this

episode we're going to be focused on that first question, does exercise

improve your sleep?

And in that last episode, we learned that at least at the large scale epidemiological level,

people who exercise typically are those who sleep better and more

specifically they fall asleep faster they stay asleep more soundly and they

also wake up feeling refreshed and restored the next day.

I should also say that they are less likely to suffer from insomnia or have symptoms of insomnia.

Today's episode is still focused on that question of how exercise can change your sleep at night, but today we're going to go deeper and we're going to

ask does activity or does exercise during the day not only change the big picture of your sleep but does it change the

very stages of sleep and the different types of sleep that you have at night and does it even change the electrical

quality of your brainwave activity at night and here we're going to be

targeting those big powerful those sort of

luscious brain waves of deep non-rem sleep and to refresh your memory I've at least got this in mind, to remind you that deep sleep and those deep sleep electrical brain waves we know are critical for a whole host of different functions. They are essential for

solidifying new memories so that you don't forget. Deep sleep also helps reduce anxiety.

It stimulates your immune system, it also lowers your blood

...