Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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

More quotes by Shelby Harris

Image
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
Image
So people only focus on getting the really deep sleep, but in reality, we spend almost 60% of the night in the stage two sleep.
Shelby Harris
Image
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
Image
So, sleep deprivation, and sometimes an insomnia, which is a little bit of a different form, but just getting a lack of sleep, can lead to a number of different decrements.
Shelby Harris
Image
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
Image
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
Image
When it comes to the reason why we have nightmares, we're still debating that. It's a new area of research, nightmares. And the way I like to think about it is, our brain - we have stress during the day and our brain needs to learn to process this stress.
Shelby Harris
Image
We haven't really - it's harder for us to set those rhythms. So it's really important to keep a steady bedtime and wake time to really lock in those rhythms.
Shelby Harris
Image
So you have Sleep Stage One, Two, and then Three/Four. One is a little bit lighter stage of the quiet, non-REM sleep and then Three/Four is really deep, deep sleep. And what you want is, you actually want a number of - you want to go through all of these stages throughout the night.
Shelby Harris
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Nightmares are distinctly different from dreams in the way that people feel them and experience them. So a lot of people think that a nightmare is something where something is chasing them and you have to wake up screaming. Yes, that's one of the more common nightmares that we see is the person chasing someone or they're being chased.
Shelby Harris
Image
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 Harris
Image
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.
Shelby Harris
Image
Decrements 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 Harris
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
So you have it, you awaken from it and you can recall, in detail, what just happened, that's a nightmare. So it's very different from a dream where you generally don't wake up from it and you don't have this dysphoric emotion.
Shelby Harris