The prime minister of Japan, the conservative Sanae Takaichi, has caused a certain international sensation in recent days when it was learned that she had called her advisors for a meeting at three in the morning and confessed in a legislative commission that, since she became prime minister, she has survived by sleeping on average two to four hours a day. “It probably hurts my skin,” Takaichi told the commission’s deputies wryly. However, for the experts consulted by EL PAÍS, this confession invites anything but a joke.
Those who pride themselves on sleeping little associate this fact with productivity, with having more time to work. However, skipping rest is associated with the opposite situation, with lower efficiency and lower performance. “If you do without sleep to work more than normal, you will be more tired and make more mistakes. Sometimes these errors can be spelling errors, but other times they can cost billions of euros or take the lives of dozens of people,” concludes Carlos Egea, president of the Spanish Federation of Sleep Medicine Societies.
Despite this evidence, numerous influencers For them, sleeping little and waking up very early have long been almost a hallmark that they associate with personal and professional success. Not in vain Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, says he gets up at four in the morning and Anna Wintour, as editor of Rowinghe started his day at five. Even the president of the United States, Donald Trump, has boasted on several occasions that he sleeps three to five hours a night. And Margaret Thatcher’s press secretary, Sir Bernard Ingham, said the former British prime minister barely slept four hours a night from Monday to Friday.
A study measured the cost of insufficient sleep on the economy of several OECD countries: in the US it is equal to 2.3% of GDP (the equivalent of 411 billion dollars in 2017, the year of the study), in Japan it is 2.9%, in the United Kingdom it is 1.9% and in Germany it is 1.5%. Another 2024 research concluded that if all Argentine adults slept at least seven hours a night, the GDP of The country could grow by 1.27%, which is equivalent to Argentina’s education budget.
“Sleep is not wasted time, it is time that our body needs to repair itself. Among other things, sleep serves to fix the memory, to better regulate emotions and also helps to make better decisions. Many times we go to bed with a problem in mind and the next day, if we sleep well, we wake up with the solution; or at night we see a situation in a dramatic and dark way, and the next day, after having rested, we see that it wasn’t all so dramatic,” says Manuel de Entrambasaguas, coordinator of the Insomnia working group of the Spanish Sleep Society.
His opinion is shared by Juan Antonio Madrid, professor of Physiology and director of the Laboratory of Chronobiology and Sleep at the University of Murcia, who recalls that when sleep deprivation is extreme, the brain tries to sleep at all costs. “What appears in our brain are therefore microsleeps. This can happen, for example, to a driver who is driving and can suddenly go into a microsleep for one or two seconds, enough to travel up to 100 meters completely blind,” he explains. In fact, a video recently went viral of Donald Trump appearing to take a nap during a press conference at the White House. In cases of less extreme sleep deprivation, as in the case of the Japanese prime minister, what happens is that the brain’s performance decreases, according to the expert. “As the number of hours of sleep deprivation increases, your ability to react to an unexpected event decreases, your logical reasoning ability, your motor coordination, your visuospatial coordination, your emotional stability, and all of this, of course, decreases your faculties,” he adds.
“Human” errors.
This, according to the experts consulted, is particularly important in the case of certain professions. Even in that of political leaders, who make decisions that impact the citizens of an entire country. “Would you fly on a plane if they told you that the pilot was awake for 20 hours? Would you have a surgeon operate if you knew he only slept three hours? Would you be sure that your prime minister made the decision after having slept two hours? Sometimes an emergency situation can arise, but if this is a way of life, I wouldn’t trust it,” says De Entrambasaguas, from the University Clinical Hospital of Valencia.
Recent history is full of events that prove him right. Lack of sleep has played an amplifying role in disasters such as the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, the sinking of the Exxon Valdez in Alaska (37,000 tons of oil in the sea), the Space Shuttle accident Challengerthe nuclear accident at the Three Mile Island power plant (United States) or, more recently, Air France Flight 447. They are not directly attributable, but they increase the possibility of decision-making errors on the part of those responsible for their management.
In some cases, like that of ChallengerSubsequent research points directly to lack of sleep and fatigue due to long work shifts. In other cases, such as those at the Chernobyl or Three Mile Island nuclear power plants, the time of the accidents, in the early hours of the morning, could have hindered the judgment of those who had to make decisions and regain control of the situation.
A scientific article published in the journal sleep in 2008 he reviewed studies on the role of human sleep and circadian rhythms in the occurrence of medical catastrophes and human errors. The report confirms that the effects of sleep loss are cumulative and, therefore, “the danger of making mistakes due to sudden and intense drowsiness progressively increases with continued sleep loss”; furthermore that there is a lower functional capacity in some hours of the morning (between approximately 1 and 7, the period between 1 and 4 being particularly critical).
Long-term illnesses
In addition to its impact on a person’s short-term functioning, it primarily affects long-term health. «It is a mistake, because if this practice is maintained over time, it affects the appearance and development of serious diseases», says Egea. “For a prime minister to promote this is irresponsible, because it is an example that can push many people, especially in her country, to try to emulate her. And this will cause irreparable damage to health, both physical and mental,” adds Juan Antonio Madrid.
Scientific evidence confirms this. In recent years, several studies have linked poor or poor sleep with a greater incidence of various risk factors for cardiovascular health, with the development of metabolic diseases – such as obesity and diabetes – and neurodegenerative diseases, with an increase in cases of anxiety and depression and even with a higher risk of suffering from certain types of cancer such as prostate, breast or colon cancer. Only the so-called “short sleepers” are saved from this impact, a small percentage of the population – estimated at around 5% – who, thanks to their genetic predisposition, do not suffer the consequences of sleeping fewer hours than recommended.
Juan Antonio Madrid, however, believes that “fortunately” the idea that meeting the minimum sleep requirement (around seven hours a night) is essential to performing more and better is gaining more and more weight, even among public figures with the ability to influence. “Great athletes, such as Rafael Nadal and Carlos Alcaraz, have explained that they care a lot about their sleep. Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, always states that one of the fundamental pillars of his productivity is sleep. And even Elon Musk has recognized that he has long suffered from health problems due to the reduction of the time dedicated to sleep and stated that he now always tries to sleep at least six hours a night”, exemplifies the author of The Sapiens dream: how sleeping and dreaming made us human (Editorial platform).
