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I'll work on patient's thoughts about sleep, So I must get eight hours of sleep tonight or I won't sleep tomorrow. That sometimes - or I won't function tomorrow. That sometimes makes it very difficult for you to sleep at night

Shelby Harris

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Shelby Harris
Age: 33
Born: 1991
Born: August 11
American Football Player
Football Player
Milwaukee City
Wisconsin
Tomorrow
Work
Sleep
Hours
Difficult
Tonight
Makes
Patient
Eight
Night
Function
Sometimes
Thoughts
Must

More quotes by Shelby Harris

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There are some that are - REM Behavior Disorder, we'll see some court documented cases. And they really need to have a thorough evaluation with a sleep specialist.
Shelby Harris
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So when you go to sleep at night, if you're someone who hasn't had any sleep deprivation, you have a very normal sleep pattern, what we tend to see is that, in adults, they go to bed and they start off by going into the deeper stages sleep.
Shelby Harris
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There's some debate as to whether you need to awaken from them because there are some patients who are actually starting to say, I had these horrible nightmares, but I never woke up from them. But they can still recall them when they get up in the morning. So there's still some debate in the field.
Shelby Harris
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There are some people who believe that dreams really are just kind of a throwaway thing. They are just a way of your brain processing what's happening during the day, but there's really no meaning to them a lot of imagery of just flashes of what happened.
Shelby Harris
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People tend to remember their dreams in the morning a little bit better and if earlier in the night, when you're in a lot of deep sleep, if someone wakes you, or the phone rings or something, you're really confused.
Shelby Harris
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Sleep paralysis is something that is actually very common. Many people have it, I've had it myself. And what happens is, when you're in that REM stage of sleep, your brain is very active. You're dreaming your most during that stage, you're mind, your eyes are moving, there's a lot going on. It's like fireworks going on in your brain.
Shelby Harris
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So we go through in the beginning of the night, we go into the really deep stages of sleep and we actually cycle through. So, when you go down to the deep stage, then you go back up and you actually come into something called REM sleep, which is after about 90 minutes.
Shelby Harris
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Really if it's an hour or two after you've fallen asleep because you're in such a deep sleep at that point.
Shelby Harris
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For some people they say, it's about wish fulfillment, it's about the things you are never able to do in your day you are actually fulfilling at night. There are other people who will say that it's actually telling you something.
Shelby Harris
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We'll work on relaxation strategies and also changing the times you go to bed will actually make them sleep a little bit less for a few nights so their body's natural sleep drive starts to kick in. That is very effective in about 60% to 70% of patients who do it, four to eight sessions, not even every week it works for 60% to 70% of patients.
Shelby Harris
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So when you're in REM sleep, your brain is very active, our body is quiet, but your brain is really processing a lot of things, a lot of emotions we dream the most in REM sleep. And then you go back down in the deep stages, and so on and so forth.
Shelby Harris
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So the older models, when you look at Freudian, when you look at Jungian thought, and there's still people who really - who really use the Jungian thought of dream analysis, is really that you would analyze the dreams. The dreams are there for a purpose.
Shelby Harris
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So there's a few different ways that we treat insomnia. The first thing that we always do is we look at the cause.
Shelby Harris
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People went to bed when the sun went down and they woke up when the sun came up. That's what our bodies are naturally programmed to do. However, with all the new stresses in life with electricity, with technology, we tend to override that system and we'll stay up later and we'll get up earlier or later, and we use alarm clocks, we use the light.
Shelby Harris
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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.
Shelby Harris
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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 Harris
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So a lot of people who work rotating shifts and they work at night, their bodies are set to want to be awake during the day and sleep at night. So there are some people who have a lot of trouble adjusting their rhythms and they have trouble working the night shift, they're sleepy, they're drowsy driving home.
Shelby Harris
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We actually don't know the function of sleep all that well yet, but sleep is a time of quiescence in the brain.
Shelby Harris
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Night terrors are very different from nightmares. A lot of people will think they're the same, but they're really not. Night terrors - you want to look at the time of night when you're having the problem. Night Terrors happen in deep sleep. Nightmares tend to happen in a lighter REM sleep.
Shelby Harris
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So 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 Harris