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.
Shelby HarrisThe other option we have are medication treatments. So you'll have the treatments such as Ambien, Lunesta, Sonata, and we'll also have Rozerem and for some patients we use Benzodiazopine/Clonazepam. Things like that to help with anxiety.
Shelby HarrisThere are people who have repetitive nightmares. And what happens is their brain is trying to process the stress and help their brain actually deal with what happens if this stress happens again, so their brain's preparing them to deal with it in case the stress happens again, but it's so scary that they awaken from it.
Shelby HarrisWe try not using medications initially, and we use something called behavioral therapy for insomnia. This changes behaviors people do in bed, none of the tossing and turning.
Shelby HarrisWe're not really sure why it [broken circadian rhythm] continues, but when they become adults, we usually have to treat it because many people need to get up early to go to work and they can't be sleeping until 11:00 or 12:00. So we use treatments like bright light therapy, melatonin, things like that that are very effective.
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 Harris