We think is happening in the brain, the way I like to think about it is, it's almost like, you're brain is going through all these stages of sleep and it's developing in children so fast that it's almost like you're shifting gears in a car. And at some point, you actually stall out a little bit, and that's kind of what happens during a night terror.

When they [people with insomnia] start worrying about not sleeping, I'll say, "Say the mantra to myself; if I don't sleep tonight, I'll likely sleep tomorrow, and if not tomorrow then definitely the third" because our body has a way of naturally catching up.

And you cycle throughout so that you do about five to six cycles throughout the night. And we spend more time in REM later on in the night than we do earlier on.

So, more times than not, but not every time, it can be linked to a medical problem, such as menopause, cancer, chronic pain, it can be linked to anxiety and depression. Those are the more common causes.

Now there's some night terrors that happen in adults. And if it starts as an adult and you've never had them before, then there might be other things that are happening; it might be anxiety, depression, stress. And that's when you might have more of a thorough psychological evaluation.

There are some patients who just have insomnia and they've had it since they were a kid and we don't quite know why. So when we look at the cause, we definitely want to treat whatever else is going on, but insomnia often because it becomes its own diagnosis and that requires its own treatment.

If you're going somewhere East from here, generally what you want to do is you want to try to have your bed time earlier and earlier so what we'll do is I'll have someone adjust for a week or two by going to be 15 minutes earlier and getting up 15 minutes earlier every night. So that can be a really simple thing.