Is your mood affected by the different phases of the moon?



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One day in 2005, the hospital, which employs psychiatrist David Evry in Seattle, USA, received a 35-year-old patient who was working as an engineer and wanted to solve sports problems.

The patient exhibited violent contrasting mood swings, as well as seeing and hearing non-existent things. In addition, he perceived suicide, in addition to sleep disturbances, between the inability to sleep and sleep twelve hours a day.

As an amateur to solve sports problems, he recorded specific symptoms in order to understand what he was learning. Evry studied these recordings carefully and indicated that the pace at which he spoke was particularly interesting: the evolution of the nature of sleep and mood seemed to correspond to the phases of the moon or phases of its transformation of the croissant in badr and vice versa.

At first, Evry refused to believe this observation. Even if there is a lapse of time between the mood change of the patient and the phases of the moon, there is no opportunity to explain why or how to cope with it. The patient was treated with light and medication. His doctor recorded in one of the drawers of his office the observations that this man had suffered from what he was suffering. He closed it for a while.

Twelve years later, a reputed psychiatrist, Thomas Weir, published a research paper on the cases of 17 people with a mental disorder called fast-paced bipolar disorder, in which patients fluctuate more rapidly between depression and Madness. That's usual. These patients, like the patient treated with Evry, had a strange regularity regarding the duration of seizures.

Weir said that the most interesting thing about this question was the extreme precision of these seizures, which one would not necessarily expect from a biological process, which has wondered if there was an external influence governing their movement and rotation.

He pointed out that the question of the impact of the Moon in this regard had come to him in the spirit because of the belief that prevailed at certain times, that this heavenly impact had an impact on human behavior.

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Legend of the image There appear to be notable similarities between the monthly and annual phases of the moon and the patterns of mood swings observed in some patients.

For centuries, people thought that the moon had effects on human behavior. The Greek philosopher Aristotle thought that the moon was causing madness and epilepsy. According to some rumors, pregnant women were at risk of giving birth at full moon, although no scientific evidence has proven it. There is also no evidence of correlation between certain phases of the moon and increased violence between inmates and those with mental illness, although a recent study indicates that criminal activities take place outdoors – for example in the street or beaches Increases when more moonlight is available.

However, some scientific evidence suggests that the structure of sleep varies for some, depending on the number of days of the lunar cycle or lunar phase. A study conducted in 2013 in scientific sleep laboratories under strict scientific conditions revealed that the time required for a person's sleep was greater than five minutes and that the same hours of sleep were about 20 minutes the days that followed the completion of the moon, compared to the other days of the month, even though they are in no way exposed to the moonlight. The study found that the depth of sleep enjoyed by these people had also decreased by 30%. However, a subsequent study to follow the results did not lead to similar conclusions.

According to Vladislav Vyazowski, a dormant researcher at Oxford University, the main problem is that these studies did not follow the sleep pattern of the research sample during a complete lunar month or for several lunar months . Vyazovsky noted that the only way to ensure the accuracy of the results is to observe the nature of the sleep of these interviewees in a continuous and systematic manner during the different phases of the moon.

This approach has already been applied in his study on people with bipolar disorder. He monitored the timing of seizures, some of which have suffered in recent years. He found that his patients fell into a category of two, the first including those who appeared to have mood changes every 14.8 days and the second those who experienced this change every 13.7 days. This was not the case for those who had the mood to follow this pattern at a time and the second at other times.

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Legend of the image The ancient philosophers thought that the moon was going crazy

However, the moon affects the Earth in many ways. The first and most obvious is the amount of light that it provides, which changes during the month, becoming a moon every 29.5 days and showing the new moon 14.8 days after the end of the moon. In addition, there is the force of clouds caused by the gravity of the moon, which causes tides in the oceans every 12.4 hours. These tides reach their peak almost every two weeks, sometimes every 14.8 days due to the movement of the moon and sun clouds, while other times every 13.7 days are repeated from made of the position of the moon on the equator on Earth. Remarkably, this frequency is the same because the mood of the patients in the Weir study was changing.

As soon as Evry became aware of this study, he called Weir. The two people then badyzed the patient data, which we talked about in the beginning, to show that his mood swings corresponded to the 14.8 day cycle.

The relationship between lunar cycles and the psychosocial cycles between depression, mania and madness seems both "credible and complex," says Ann Wierz-Gasteis, expert in temporal biology at the psychiatric hospital of the US. University of Basel. "You have no idea of ​​the mechanism that governs this," she says.

Theoretically, when the moon is full, it can disrupt the sleep of humans, which can affect their mood. This is especially true for people with bipolar disorder, as there is scientific evidence that sleep deprivation can be used to move these people out of depression.

But Weir continued to believe that the moonlight would probably not have a major impact on human behavior.

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Legend of the image According to some theories, a bright moonlight at the peak of the lunar cycle could disrupt sleep and lead to mood changes.

"In our world today, light pollution is very high and we spend a lot of time between walls exposed to industrial light, which makes the indicators that alter the levels of moonlight are not palpable, "he said.

Instead, he argues, the drag force of the gravity of the moon is the factor likely to affect the behavior and mood of the man.

One of the ideas in this regard is that this cloud force causes subtle changes in the Earth's magnetic field, which are the changes in humans that are particularly sensitive to them.

But it remains to be determined if the impact of the moon in this context is important enough to cause biological changes in humans.

However, some studies have linked decreased solar activity, increased suicide rates, heart attacks, strokes, seizures, and schizophrenia.

When solar explosions or coronal mbad emissions – the huge solar wind explosions – the Earth's magnetic field generate electrical currents, some say that they can affect sensitive cells of the heart and brain.

But Robert Wicks, an expert at London University College, explains that the problem is that scientific research on the subject is so limited that it is very difficult to find anything specific.

Unlike some species of birds, fish and insects, the human does not seem to have any magnetic meaning. However, a study released earlier this year questioned the validity of this hypothesis.

The study found that human exposure to changes in the magnetic field – such as those caused by shifts from one place to another in their local environment – results in a significant drop in the Activity of their brain alpha waves, the waves generated in the brain, during the waking period At the same time, it is not engaged in certain tasks.

At this stage, the importance of changes in the size of these waves is still unclear, which may be a by-product of evolution and unrelated to this subject, and may be caused by a change in brain chemistry caused by magnetic changes in the environment that we can not yet recognize. .

The researcher appreciated the theory that the effects of the moon on human behavior were caused by the impact of this orb on the magnetism of the Earth. This is due to numerous studies conducted over the last decade and has shown that a protein called "Kryptochrom", present in some organisms, like fruit flies, can also act as a sensitive sensor to changes in the body. surrounding magnetic field. This protein is a key component of the "molecular clocks" that regulate the "biological clock" rhythms in our cells, our tissues and certain parts of our body, including the brain.

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Legend of the image The moon has a real daily impact on our planet and the creatures that live there

When the cryptochrome protein mixes with a light-absorbing molecule called flavin, it not only informs the biological clock of the day ahead, but also creates an interaction that makes this molecular compound sensitive to magnetism.

Bambus Kriaku, an expert in behavioral genetics at the University of Leicester, UK, and his colleagues found that exposure to low frequency magnetic fields could reset the biological clocks of fruit flies, thus altering their sleep time.

Thus, if this can be applied to humans, it may also provide an explanation for the sudden mood changes seen in patients with bipolar disorder examined by Ware and Evry.

According to Weir, these patients have already experienced a dramatic change in the timing of their biological clock, while they were undergoing mood changes, and similar changes have occurred in their sleep schedules and duration.

But it should be noted here that although Cryptocrom is also an essential component of the human biological clock, it works slightly differently from its Drosophila counterpart.

Alex Jones, a physicist in a British lab, says that the existing version of the protein in humans and other mammals is not flavin-related and that without this badociation, "we can not know how it can be produced. & # 39; & # 39;Magnetic Sensitive Chemistry & # 39; & # 39;".

"From this perspective, I think the human version of this protein will probably not be sensitive to magnetic fields unless other molecules in humans are able to detect these areas," he says.

Another possibility is that the patients examined by Weir and Evry react or interact with the cloud force caused by the gravity of the moon, just as the oceans interact with the same force, causing tides and islands.

But there is a counter-argument that although 75% of human bodies are composed of water, the amount of water they contain is much less – and incomparably – than that of their counterparts in the oceans. "In this case, the power of the clouds will be very low," he says, "making it hard to imagine how they can work and materialize concretely."

Nevertheless, it does not ignore studies of a type of herb considered by researchers who study flowering plants as a typical research object. These studies indicate that the growth period of this type of plant – called the Rashad mouse ear – requires a 24.8 hour cycle, the same time as the moon to complete its orbit in orbit around the Earth.

"These are incredibly small changes, which can only be detected by very sensitive devices, but more than 200 research projects reinforce the idea of ​​their existence," says Joachim Weizen, biophysicist in Germany.

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Legend of the image Do the "phases of the moon" affect our mood?

Weizan conducted a study showing that daily changes in gravity, due to the change in location of the moon in orbit, are large enough to affect the size of the water molecules in the cells of this plant, whether they increase or decrease. decrease.

"These molecules are affected by slight changes in gravity, no matter how large," he says. Because of this effect, these molecules move between the cells of the plant, depending on the direction of gravity affecting them. All this can possibly affect the whole plant.

If plant cells are so sensitive to tidal and root forces, there is no reason for human cells not to do so, Vizan said. Since one thinks that life has originated in the oceans, some terrestrial organisms may still have a tide prediction mechanism, although this mechanism has no longer any effect. practical use for the moment.

Although such a mechanism is still difficult to identify or identify up to now, none of the scientists contacted to prepare this topic have objected to the fundamental conclusion developed in this regard, namely that mood swings in patients with a "disorder" The "bipolar scientists" who examined them occurred at a certain pace, and this rhythm seemed to have been badociated with certain cycles related to the effects of the gravity of the moon .

You can read the original article from BBC News

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