There 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 HarrisNight terrors are in deep sleep, and they're more common in kids, as are nightmares, but what happens in a night terror is like a flash - we think a flash of some image or something happens in the brain. We don't really quite know what. And it usually ends up with the child screaming almost like screaming bloody murder. It's very scary for the parents or whoever else is around.
Shelby HarrisThere's a problem for them [teens] when they have to get up and go to school in the morning, they're very sleepy, yet on the weekends, they'll sleep 12 hours, they'll sleep late and then go to bed late and wake up late. And on vacations, it's not a problem.
Shelby HarrisReally if it's an hour or two after you've fallen asleep because you're in such a deep sleep at that point.
Shelby HarrisSo if somebody has chronic pain, we want to manage the pain, but we still want to treat the insomnia separately. So what we'll tend to do in our sleep lab is we'll do a thorough evaluation and we usually have myself, who is a Psychologist and a Sleep Behavioral Sleep Specialist, I treat the patients first.
Shelby HarrisDecrements in attention and concentration, being able to learn more efficiently, that's just not as good. Also, there are motor vehicle accidents, workplace accidents, we see that a lot.
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 Harris