So for most people, the middle of the night and the very early morning are not great times to make decisions, to say nothing of making policy pronouncements or political commentary. At those times, you are likely to be close to so-called REM or dream sleep, which we all know brings about intense and often distorted emotions and thoughts, often about the events in our everyday lives. These are times for reflection, not for social media.

Not surprisingly, the president makes his sleeping habits, like so much else, a point of pride, bragging about his allegedly Spartan need for slumber. “You know, I’m not a big sleeper, I like three hours, four hours, I toss, I turn, I beep-de-beep, I want to find out what’s going on,” he told the Chicago Tribune.

Whether the president actually gets as little sleep as he claims is open to question. But if true, it certainly isn’t helping with his famously irascible behavior and impulsive decision-making style.

Might we have a sleep-deprived occupant in the White House? Quite possibly — and that’s something that should worry us, because it could contribute to the political chaos that Mr. Trump generates.

Sleep deprivation can impair attention, memory, thinking speed and reasoning. This is something that all physicians know firsthand from their days of residency training, when they spent many sleepless nights on-call.

For example, studies show that medical residents who slept less than five hours a night were much more likely to make medical errors and report serious accidents. They were also more prone to get into arguments with colleagues and to drink alcohol. Indeed, last year researchers estimated that medical errors may cause more than 250,000 deaths a year. Some of these surely originate with sleep-deprived doctors.