Elly Mackay

Sleep needn't be the enemy.

Tagged: Your Guide to Better Sleep

How Floating’s Pain-Relieving Powers Can Help Sleep 0

sleep and insomnia

How Floating’s Pain-Relieving Powers Can Help Sleep

I’ve been talking lately about the fascinating, encouraging science around floatation therapy and how this peaceful, meditation-like practice can improve sleep and a whole range of health issues, mental, emotional and physical. Last time, I focused on the benefits of floating for psychological health. Today, I’m looking at what the science tells us about floatation therapy’s potential benefits in alleviating physical pain.

If you’ve ever drawn a bath at the end of a long day to ease sore muscles, found physical and mental relaxation in a lap session swim, and or sought relief in the calm waters of a lake or the rhythmic waves of the ocean, you know the power that water can have in relieving physical and psychological tension. Floatation therapy harnesses that essential power and combines it with the deeply relaxing properties of magnesium, and the calming, centering capabilities of restricted environmental stimulation therapy, or REST. For a refresher on how floating works, read my initial article, here.

Float therapy for pain relief

The characteristics of floatation therapy make it a strong fit for treating

…
Is It Bad To Watch TV Before Bed? 0

sleep and insomnia

Is It Bad To Watch TV Before Bed?

This has been a great week. I was asked to be on Headline News to talk about a new study looking at how light in your bedroom can lead to weight gain; more on that in a second. I also gave a lecture in San Francisco to a global Chief Marketing Officer conference. Finally, I met with celebrity fitness trainer Peter Park on the important combination of sleep and exercise!

On Headline News I talked about a large scale study where it was discovered that people who slept with a light or the television on shared two similar characteristics that were different from those who slept in total darkness:

  • These people tended to already be obese
  • Over a 5-year period, compared to similar people, they gained almost 11 lbs

This was only a correlational study, meaning that we cannot say that having a light on will cause the weight gain. We can only say that those people tended to be the ones who gained weight. In another study published in 2016, under more controlled conditions, similar results were observed.

So, …

Video Games That Value Sleep and Is It Ok For Kids To Take Melatonin? 0

sleep and insomnia

Video Games That Value Sleep and Is It Ok For Kids To Take Melatonin?

With summer nearly here it seems like more fun is in the air.

Summertime means longer night walks, hanging out with friends, and BBQ’s. I find myself acting more like a kid and staying outside until dark and enjoying the summer evenings with my dog.

On my way back from Portugal this week, I had 14 hours to read and found a few fun sleep related articles I want to share with you.

Videogames that value sleep?

I don’t know if you remember it, but not that long ago (2016) there was an augmented reality game called Pokémon Go! My kids were obsessed. It was one of the most popular games in history and then just as suddenly as it appeared it disappeared. Well, Pokémon Fans (or maybe you liked the characters like Pikachu?) there’s a new arrival: Pokémon Sleep!

The New York Times (May 29, 2019) reports that the Pokémon CEO, Tsunekazu Ishihara, is planning on releasing Pokémon Sleep in 2020. While the details aren’t fully released yet, the executives said the game itself will reward you for good …

What’s Better For Sleep—Coffee Or Matcha? 0

sleep and insomnia

What’s Better For Sleep—Coffee Or Matcha?

As I write this, I’m sipping on a rich, foamy latte made with almond milk. I taught myself how to make this at home, and I enjoy it most mornings when I’m not traveling, about 90 minutes after I get up. (That’s the best time to have your morning dose of caffeine.)

Here’s the twist: it’s not a coffee latte—it’s a matcha latte. And it’s delicious, earthy and roasted-tasting, a great pick-me up ritual for mid-morning.

I know a lot of you love your coffee—in the morning and all throughout the day. But that’s part of the problem. Caffeine is the single most abused stimulant across the world. Consuming too much caffeine and consuming it at the wrong times wreaks havoc with our sleep and circadian rhythms.

If you’re reluctant to even consider scaling back your coffee or switching to another daily pick-me up drink, hear me out. Matcha has a pretty exciting combination of benefits and protections you’ll want to understand.

What is matcha?

Matcha is a form of green tea that has been ground into a fine powder.

…
Sleep Better with the Calm App 0

sleep and insomnia

Sleep Better with the Calm App

I’m excited to announce that I’ve teamed up with Calm, the #1 app for sleep, meditation, and relaxation! They’re helping people everywhere to stop rebelling against their bedtimes by inviting us to wind down with meditation, music, mindful movement or a sleep story. In this hectic world of ours, adulting can mean having Matthew McConaughey read you a bedtime story or listening to ambient music to help settle our busy minds and relax our tired bodies.


Calm approached me to share the latest and greatest in sleep science in their new Calm Masterclass, Sleep Better. Calm Masterclasses are a series of life-changing audio classes delivered by world-renowned experts. It was an awesome opportunity for me to synthesize and share the knowledge, tips and practices that I’ve gathered over the years. 


In my Calm Masterclass, Sleep Better, I explore:

  • The Science of Sleep (including sleep stages and circadian rhythms).
  • Sleep myths (did you know that you may not need 8 hours of sleep each night)!?
  • Sleep Chronotypes (he goes beyond the binary of the Early Bird and the night
…
New Sleep Apnea Treatment In Pill Form On The Horizon And A Smartwatch To Stop Nightmares 0

sleep and insomnia

New Sleep Apnea Treatment In Pill Form On The Horizon And A Smartwatch To Stop Nightmares

I’m writing to you this week from Portugal! I am here attending the annual MindValley A-Fest (the A stands for awesome). I’m very thankful I used my Timeshifter app because I was able to avoid ANY jet lag! If you travel, I’d love for you to have the app as my gift and if you grab it now, you’ll get a free jet lag plan too. That said in between lectures and on the long flight over I was also able to do a little reading and found a few things I think you’ll find interesting.

There is Going to Be a Pill for Sleep Apnea!

Yes, you heard me correctly, a pill to treat sleep apnea. So long CPAP, bye bye mouthguards; swallow your apnea away. While it will not start out as the first line of defense (but ultimately may be), as early as next year clinical trials will start for the new drug. University of Chicago and IIT Research Institute’s David McCormick have discovered “a completely novel class of drugs, completely novel compounds that are synthesized by …

The Benefits Of Floating For Sleep And Mental Health 0

sleep and insomnia

The Benefits Of Floating For Sleep And Mental Health

Last week, I introduced you to the practice of floatation REST therapy: what it is, how it works, and some of the important effects it can have on the body and mind. Today we’re jumping right in to look in more detail at how float therapy can be used to treat sleep problems and other psychological conditions that affect sleep.

How floating improves sleep

Evidence dating back decades demonstrates that float therapy can be effective in treating sleep problems, including insomnia. For example, a study from 1989 found that a series of four 2-hour floatation sessions over a 2-week period led to improvements in symptoms of insomnia. Participants who received float therapy experienced reductions to their sleep latency—in plain terms, that means they were able to fall asleep more quickly. The improvements to sleep lasted for up to 12 weeks after the float session, indicating that floating as a sleep therapy can have lasting effects beyond the short-term.

More recent research has also demonstrated benefits for sleep from floating. This 2014 study by Swedish scientists found significant improvements both

…
How To Remember Your Dreams 0

sleep and insomnia

How To Remember Your Dreams

Just a quick reminder, you can get my Commune Sleep Course free for a few more days. If you haven’t yet, grab it today.

While reading this week, I came across a great article which answers a question I get all the time: Why don’t I remember my dreams?

The article is on BBC.com. I want to expand upon it.

Dream work is not something I do a lot because the science has always bothered me.

I know there are some very serious dream researchers out there and I know how hard that work can be, yet some researchers are not using standardized methods in order for us to come to trusted conclusions.

However, answering the question about remembering dreams is something we can tackle with a little science.

Dreams are weird and they are certainly something we need to understand better. As far as remembering our dreams, this feels like a “hit or miss” situation. Either we do or we don’t, but when we do, they seem to feel very “real”. We accept the weirdness while it’s happening …

Can You FLOAT Your Way To Better Sleep? 0

sleep and insomnia

Can You FLOAT Your Way To Better Sleep?

I had a patient in my office recently for an appointment, and she couldn’t wait to tell me about an experience she’d had. “I did my first float,” she said, her expression both excited and serene. She described the experience as nothing less than transformative. She’d been a little nervous at first, she said, but she found it surprisingly easy to relax, once she was floating in the pool of warm water, wrapped in silence and darkness. “It was the most amazing thing,” she confided. “I thought maybe I’d fallen asleep, but I was awake the whole time. My mind just went into a whole different place, somewhere so deeply peaceful. For once, I had no sense of time.” She went on to tell me she’d been trying to meditate for years, and floating brought her to what she felt was a meditative mindset she’d never been able to experience before. The calm and relaxation she felt after her float session stayed with her for some time. She had already booked her next appointment.

Float therapy has been around for

…
Working Memory And Sleep – If You Want A Better Memory Get Better Sleep. I’m On Adam Carolla’s Podcast 0

sleep and insomnia

Working Memory And Sleep – If You Want A Better Memory Get Better Sleep. I’m On Adam Carolla’s Podcast

This was a great week for me. I was in California, and was an honored guest on the Adam Carolla podcast! It was a ton of fun working with Bald Brian, Adam, and Gina. We talked about everything you can imagine and then some.

This week I read two studies that I think we can all learn a little something from. Both were reported in Medical News Today looking at the effects of sleep on something called working memory.

Working memory is defined as the short-term memory that a person uses on a daily basis, while going about their day, driving places, getting things, etc. As we get older, no big surprise here, working memory begins to decline. Researchers noticed that two separate aspects that could be affecting this decline, and making it worse, depressed mood, and you guessed it, SLEEP.

The study is in the Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society and it looked at both the accuracy of memory and if these factors work together or separately to have their effects on memory.

According to the article:

For …