Hi everyone, welcome to Radio Headspace and to Friday.

It's Lucas Miller here.

Thanks so much for having me as your guest host this week.

It's been so fun to share ways to have more energy and productivity in your days.

As you know, I'm a cognitive neuroscientist, but I also have a passion for fitness.

And today I want to share some easy ways that exercise can give us more energy and boost

your brain health.

And don't worry, you don't necessarily need to have a full gym or a bunch of fancy equipment

to reap the benefits of exercise.

The real relationship between fitness and productivity is fitness and sleep.

Those who exercise consistently and specifically those who do aerobic exercise, they tend

to be able to fall asleep faster.

It's also been shown that aerobic exercise 20 to 30 minutes max per day, you don't have

to go more than that, improves sleep quality.

And then because you get better sleep, that's what makes us more productive the following

day.

In addition, exercise is one of the only and one of the best insurance policies that we

have on our brain health and on preventing the normal cognitive decline that we all experience.

Exercise seems to play a role in neuroplasticity.

This idea that your brain can change and learn and grow over time, it can form new connections.

Exercise is a wonderful promoter of that process that often happens so much during sleep.

When it comes to exercise more is not always better.

...