Melbourne, Australia – Stress comes in many forms and from many things, including traumatic events, chronic pain/illness or simply the demands of a busy lifestyle. One of the first things to suffer is sleep. In fact, experts no longer consider insomnia a sleeping disorder, but a stress disorder. Thankfully, a new mobile app called Sleep Restore, released by renowned Australian psychologist Mark Grant, is helping people around the world find rest through its incorporation of bilateral stimulation, a treatment element of EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing), a cutting-edge PTSD therapy.

On first use, Sleep Restore evaluates the issues causing a person to suffer from insomnia and then selects a specialized set of audio treatments for them to listen to as they lay down to sleep. In addition, the app will alert you if it suspects some other potential issues are causing sleep disturbances which you can then bring up with your own physician.

Other audio sleep solutions tend to focus only on standard meditations or “relaxing sounds” such as rainfall to attempt to help a user get to sleep. Unfortunately, an anxious brain soon gets used to these and goes back to being tense or worried. Sleep Restore gets around this through its incorporation of bilateral stimulation (bls) which, in effect, creates an auditory illusion that something is moving, a sensation the brain is unlikely to get desensitized to. This captures and holds attention of the brain long enough for its functioning to be altered. Bls has been found to decrease brain activity associated with stress and stimulate brain activity associated with restful sleep.

Sleep Restore 1.1.3 is free to download on iTunes and in Google Play for most mobile devices including phones and tablets. The free version comes with the complete sleep evaluation tool and six tracks that are 20 minutes long each. The tracks consist of a blend of music, nature sounds guided meditations and bls. For those who wish to have more options, a premium version is available for around $9.50 USD (price may vary due to currency fluctuations) for a total of 18 tracks (with bonus tracks). Users who complete a sleep evaluation questionnaire in the app three times receive 2 free bonus tracks and their sleep data will anonymously be evaluated in ongoing sleep research.

Sleep Restore 1.1.3
Download from iTunes
Download from Google Play
YouTube Video
Media Assets

Mark Grant MA is an Australian clinical psychologist/researcher in independent private practice. He has researched the use of EMDR as a treatment for chronic pain resulting in several peer reviewed articles in various professional journals. He is particularly interested in the impact of stress on health and the involvement of the brain in stress. Reflecting his origins as the son of an artist and an engineer, he likes to take a creative but practical approach to creating tools for undoing the effects of severe stress; ie, strategies that harness innate brain capabilities. He is also the author of ‘Change Your Brain Change Your Pain’ (self-help book), ‘Pain Control with EMDR’ (clinical treatment manual), Anxiety Release (app) and ‘Calm and Confident’ and ‘Pain Control with EMDR’ (audio download/CD). All Material and Software (C) Copyright 2018 Trauma and Pain Management Services pty ltd. All Rights Reserved. Apple, the Apple logo, iPhone, iPod and iPad are registered trademarks of Apple Inc. in the U.S. and/or other countries. Other trademarks and registered trademarks may be the property of their respective owners.