Raena Morgan: Hi, I'm Raena Morgan with iHealthTube. We're visiting today with Dr. Hyla Cass. She is the author of many books. One of them is 8 Weeks to Vibrant Health. It's a women's take charge book on their health. She's also written Natural Highs: Feel Good All the Time. Today, we'd like to talk about sleep, Dr. Cass. Is there such a thing as early morning insomnia where you can get to sleep, but not stay asleep? You're up at 3 or 4. Dr. Hyla Cass: Absolutely and we call it early morning awakening. You wake up suddenly at 3 or 4 in the morning and you are wide awake. Raena Morgan: Yes. Dr. Hyla Cass: And you can't fall back asleep and everything is going through your mind all the things you haven't done; all your worries. It's bad. Raena Morgan: Uh-huh. Dr. Hyla Cass: You finally might fall asleep at seven and then the alarm goes off. Raena Morgan: Okay. Dr. Hyla Cass: So, this is pretty common, and I approach it a little differently from other physicians who might, say, give you a sleeping pill. What I do is, first of all, diagnose what's going on. If it's an issue with the adrenals if you're under a lot of stress, your adrenals that adrenal deficiency will actually wake you up around 3 or 4 in the morning. You go into a low blood sugar dip because of your adrenal glands. The best thing to do is a) have some protein before you go to bed. That's going to help. And have some protein right by your bed so that you a piece of cheese, a hard boiled egg, something that you like to eat -- that actually helps quite a bit. If you're waking up and your perimenopausal and it's hormonal, I have women take a little progesterone cream and just rub it on their neck or their face and that will put them right back to sleep because in that case it has to do with a hormone issue. Some other things I do for insomnia are taking care of the sleep hygiene -- and I cover this pretty well in Natural Highs -- Raena Morgan: Okay. Dr. Hyla Cass: In fact, some of the things I talk about are don't do anything stimulating before you go to bed. Raena Morgan: Alright. Don't work out. Dr. Hyla Cass: Have -- don't work out, don't work out, don't watch really very animated action movies before you go to sleep. In fact, don't have a TV in your bedroom. It's not a good idea. Keep your exercise to the morning. Don't eat too late. Now I did say eat a little protein if you need to, that's in the middle of the night awakening, but don't eat a heavy meal. Try to wait a few hours between dinner and sleep because that will help. Take a warm bath; have some chamomile tea -- things that will relax you. Then there are some other things that I really like. 5-hydroxytryptophan if you tend to be depressed and have insomnia particularly. Serotonin enhancers like 5-hydroxytryptophan, or 5-HTP, will really help tremendously anywhere from 50 to 200 milligrams at bedtime. You can determine what your best dose is by experimenting. The other things -- I've put together some formulas that contain an amino acid called thiamine also taurine, GABA, hops, passion flower, and in combination they work very nicely together. So there are many ways to go before you begin to turn to a drug. And this is actually more effective because you're working with your brain's chemistry to actually restore balance and it's very effective. Raena Morgan: Okay, well thank you, Dr. Cass. It was very informative, and we appreciate it very much. I'm Raena Morgan with iHealthTube.