- Many celebrities, entrepreneurs and politicians claim they barely sleep
- Donald Trump, Kelly Ripa, Jack Dorsey, and Bill Clinton ‘sleep 4-5 hours’
- But a new study warns they are more tired than they think while awake
- They may be sharp on things that require attention, but will get insurmountably tired when faced with less stimulating tasks
Mia De Graaf for MailOnline
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Donald Trump attributes his success to sleeping just three or four hours a night.
He is not the only one – Kelly Ripa, Jay Leno, Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, Yahoo CEO Marissa Meyer, and President Bill Clinton all claimed to sleep just five hours.
But new research suggests they may be more tired than they think.
According to the University of Utah study, anything less than seven hours’ shut-eye unequivocally impairs our judgement and reasoning.
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Some people like Donald Trump attribute their success to very little sleep. But a new study warns that we are always tired on less than seven hours, even if we don’t think it
‘Most people feel terrible when they get less than six hours of sleep,’ study co-author Professor Paula Williams said.
‘What’s different about these short sleepers who feel fine? Is there something different going on in terms of brain function?
‘Although they report no daytime dysfunction from short sleep, what if their perceptions are inaccurate?’
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The researchers compared people who had a normal amount of sleep in the past month with those who reported sleeping six hours or less.
They divided the short sleepers into two groups: those who reported daytime dysfunction – such as feeling too drowsy to perform common tasks or keeping up enthusiasm – and those who reported feeling fine.
Both groups of short sleepers exhibited connectivity patterns more typical of sleep than wakefulness while in the MRI scanner.
Although the participants were instructed to stay awake in the scanner, some short sleepers may have briefly drifted off – even those who claim they don’t get tired on little sleep.
TV’s short sleepers: Chat show personalities Kelly Ripa and Jay Leno also claim to be bright and shining after as little as five hours sleep
According to Dr Jeff Anderson, a radiologist at the university who co-authored the study, this is hardly surprising: most of us don’t realize when we’ve drifted off for a minute or two.
For the short sleepers who deny dysfunction, one hypothesis is that their wake-up brain systems are perpetually in over-drive.
However, when they’re doing something boring that doesn’t require attention – like lying in an MRI scanner – the tiredness kicks in.
This could also be true for other boring situations, like driving a car at night without much interesting scenery or light to focus on.
The researchers found that short sleepers who denied dysfunction showed enhanced connectivity between sensory cortices, which process external sensory information, and the hippocampus, a region associated with memory.
‘That’s tantalizing because it suggests that maybe one of the things the short sleepers are doing in the scanner is performing memory consolidation more efficiently than non-short sleepers,’ Professor Williams said.
Tech short sleepers: Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer and Twitter’s Jack Dorsey also espouse less sleep
She said, in other words, some short sleepers may be able to perform sleep-like memory consolidation and brain tasks throughout the day, reducing their need for sleep at night.
Or they may be falling asleep during the day under low-stimulation conditions, often without realising it.
The next phase of the team’s research will directly test whether short sleepers who deny dysfunction are actually doing fine.
Professor Williams added: ‘We are particularly interested in understanding the discrepancy between people’s perception of their functioning and how they’re actually functioning. Not everyone is equally accurate.’
The findings were published online by the journal Brain and Behaviour.
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