Now narcolepsy is really hard though because they're very tired during the day, they're sleepy during the day and it's managed mostly with medications. So we use medications to help them sleep better at night and to stay away during the day. But there are behavioral things you can do also by changing diet, exercise, having an actual nap schedule.
Shelby HarrisWe actually don't know the function of sleep all that well yet, but sleep is a time of quiescence in the brain.
Shelby HarrisWe have other opposite problems with circadian rhythms that can happen when you - a lot of times with older adults. They start to go to bed at 6:00, 7:00 at night and they wake up at 2:00 in the morning. And they're rhythms actually shift earlier, but sometime it can just kind of miss the mark and shift too much earlier and that's when we need to treat it with bright light.
Shelby HarrisWell, the actual function of the brain, not so sure yet. There's a lot of different theories about it, but when you talk about psychologically in your brain, a lot of people with insomnia, though not all, report that they can't turn their minds off.
Shelby HarrisThere's a new line of research showing that people who don't get enough sleep, they're body doesn't metabolize as well. And so they actually - it leads to weight gain. So if you're not getting enough sleep, you might have difficulty losing weight.
Shelby HarrisThere are other people that think that dreams actually do serve a purpose. But what that purpose is, we're not really sure. So some people believe that it actually does have some psychological representation of what's going on in the day, but there's no need to sit and really analyze it.
Shelby Harris