[ad_1]
SEATTLE, Washington – Do you feel like weird things always happen when there is a full moon? You might be right, but the reason isn’t in the stars, it might be in your bedroom. Lunar cycles can have a major impact on human sleep patterns, new study finds.
Researchers from the United States and Argentina say people go to bed later and sleep less on the nights before a full moon. For centuries, people have blamed the moon for accidents, natural disasters, and even their mood. As far as people are concerned at least, the study suggests that being cranky during a full moon may have more to do with a person’s rest.
The authors of the University of Washington study found that the sleep cycles in people oscillate during the 29.5-day lunar cycle. In the days leading up to a full moon, people typically go to bed later at night and then sleep fewer hours.
Biology professor Horacio de la Iglesia has observed changes in both bedtime and sleep duration in urban and rural areas; from the indigenous communities of northern Argentina to students living in Seattle. The main US city in the Pacific Northwest has over 700,000 inhabitants.
No matter where you live the moon affects you
The study’s authors found that the phases of the moon cause oscillations regardless of an individual’s access to electricity. The variations are, however, less pronounced among individuals living in urban environments such as a bustling city. The research team adds that the increase in patterns may indicate that human circadian rhythms are somehow synchronized with phases of the lunar cycle.
“We are seeing a clear lunar modulation of sleep, with decreased sleep and later sleep in the days leading up to the full moon,” the Iglesia professor explains in an academic statement. “And while the effect is more robust in communities without access to electricity, the effect is present in communities with electricity, including undergraduates at the University of Washington.”
Using wrist monitors, the team examined the sleep patterns of 98 people living in three indigenous Toba-Qom communities in the Argentine province of Formosa.
One of the communities had no electricity, while another had limited access to electricity – as a single light fixture in the house. Unlike these rural areas, the third community was located in an urban setting with full access to electricity.
Previous studies by the Iglesia professor’s team and other groups have found that access to electricity can impact sleep. These results appeared again in this study because Toba-Qom in the urban community went to bed later and slept less than the rural participants.
However, residents of the three communities also showed the same changes in sleep when the moon completed its monthly cycle. Depending on the location, the total amount of sleep varied throughout the lunar cycle between 46 and 58 minutes. In addition, bedtime has changed by about half an hour.
Feel the full moon a week earlier
Researchers say the impact of the full moon begins to be felt almost a week in advance. In all three communities, people started going to bed later and sleeping as little as possible three to five days before the full moon.
When they discovered this pattern in Toba-Qom participants, the study authors analyzed sleep monitoring data from 464 Seattle-area students. These students had been part of a separate study, but their results revealed the same oscillations.
The researchers confirmed that the evenings before the full moon provide more natural light after dusk than the rest of the month. The waxing moon becomes brighter and brighter as it reaches its climax each month; usually rising in the late afternoon or early evening. This places it high in the sky in the evening after sunset.
After a full moon, waning moons also give off significant light, but in the middle of the night. This is because the moon rises so late in the evening during these times of the lunar cycle.
“We hypothesize that the patterns we observed are an innate adaptation that allowed our ancestors to take advantage of this natural source of evening light that occurred at a specific time in the lunar cycle,” explains the lead author of the study Leandro Casiraghi of the University of Washington.
Connecting Moonlight to your own lights
Professor de la Iglesia believes that lunar effects may also explain why access to electricity causes such pronounced changes in humans’ sleep patterns.
“In general, artificial light disrupts our innate circadian clocks in specific ways: it causes us to fall asleep later in the evening; it makes us sleep less, ”explains the professor. “But in general, we don’t use artificial light to ‘move forward’ in the morning, at least not on purpose. These are the same patterns we have seen here with the phases of the moon.
“At certain times of the month, the moon is an important source of light in the evening, and this would have been clearly evident to our ancestors thousands of years ago,” adds Casiraghi.
“In general, there has been a lot of suspicion that the phases of the moon might affect behavior such as sleep – although in urban settings with large amounts of light pollution, you might not know not what phase of the moon you go out or look out the window. Future research should focus on how: does it work through our innate circadian clock? Or other signals that affect when you sleep? There is a lot to understand about this effect. “
Results appear in the journal Scientific advances.
SWNS writer Stephen Beech contributed to this report.
[ad_2]
Source link