Scientists at the University of Basel, Switzerland say they have found the first reliable evidence that sleep patterns are influenced by lunar changes. The study, published in Current Biology, shows brain activity related to deep sleep in volunteers dropped by 30 percent around the full moon. The study subjects also took longer to fall asleep and had shorter nights.

“It could be important,” said Eric Chudler, executive director of the Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering at the University of Washington in Seattle. The Swiss researchers aren’t “saying the moon controls the person’s sleep pattern, they’re saying the body has an internal clock that’s similar to the lunar cycle. It’s different to the traditional myth.”

The full moon has been blamed for murder and mayhem since ancient times. The term lunacy was coined in the 16th century to refer to an intermittent form of insanity believed to be related to the moon. For generations, people around the world have passed down tales of werewolves and other moon-related curses. Scientists have attempted over the years to discover a link between the satellite’s impact and human behavior. These latest findings may provide a boost to the field.

Researchers at the Centre for Chronobiology at the Psychiatric Hospital of the University of Basel originally set out to examine 33 volunteers’ circadian rhythms, which are physical, mental and behavioral changes that respond to light and darkness over a 24-hour cycle.

One evening at the pub several years later….

.. Earlier studies have provided promising yet ultimately inconclusive glimpses of the moon’s impact on humans and animals.

The British Medical Journal published two articles on dog bites and the full moon in its Dec. 23, 2000 edition. One showed the number of people bitten by animals “accelerated sharply” at the time of a full moon based on 1,621 patients seen in the emergency room at Bradford Royal Infirmary in Bradford, England, over a two-year period. The other, based on admission rates for dog bites over a one-year period at public hospitals in Australia, showed no moon impact…

.. That hasn’t stopped police from drawing their own conclusions. In the seaside resort of Brighton, England, the police department decided in 2007 to put extra officers out on the streets during full moons after comparing crime data and lunar graphs and finding that violence waxed and waned along with the moon…

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-25/blaming-full-moon-for-sleep-troubles-may-not-be-lunacy.html

I always slept badly around full moon at the ex parents-in-law’s place. Their bloody roosters would crow all frigging night instead of only around dawn. Oh, the nights I used to lie awake scheming ways to put them out of my misery…

Ian said:

Scientists at the University of Basel, Switzerland say they have found the first reliable evidence that sleep patterns are influenced by lunar changes. The study, published in Current Biology, shows brain activity related to deep sleep in volunteers dropped by 30 percent around the full moon. The study subjects also took longer to fall asleep and had shorter nights.

“It could be important,” said Eric Chudler, executive director of the Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering at the University of Washington in Seattle. The Swiss researchers aren’t “saying the moon controls the person’s sleep pattern, they’re saying the body has an internal clock that’s similar to the lunar cycle. It’s different to the traditional myth.”

The full moon has been blamed for murder and mayhem since ancient times. The term lunacy was coined in the 16th century to refer to an intermittent form of insanity believed to be related to the moon. For generations, people around the world have passed down tales of werewolves and other moon-related curses. Scientists have attempted over the years to discover a link between the satellite’s impact and human behavior. These latest findings may provide a boost to the field.

Researchers at the Centre for Chronobiology at the Psychiatric Hospital of the University of Basel originally set out to examine 33 volunteers’ circadian rhythms, which are physical, mental and behavioral changes that respond to light and darkness over a 24-hour cycle.

One evening at the pub several years later….

.. Earlier studies have provided promising yet ultimately inconclusive glimpses of the moon’s impact on humans and animals.

The British Medical Journal published two articles on dog bites and the full moon in its Dec. 23, 2000 edition. One showed the number of people bitten by animals “accelerated sharply” at the time of a full moon based on 1,621 patients seen in the emergency room at Bradford Royal Infirmary in Bradford, England, over a two-year period. The other, based on admission rates for dog bites over a one-year period at public hospitals in Australia, showed no moon impact…

.. That hasn’t stopped police from drawing their own conclusions. In the seaside resort of Brighton, England, the police department decided in 2007 to put extra officers out on the streets during full moons after comparing crime data and lunar graphs and finding that violence waxed and waned along with the moon…

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-25/blaming-full-moon-for-sleep-troubles-may-not-be-lunacy.html

methinks the police knew what they were doing

Divine Angel said:

I always slept badly around full moon at the ex parents-in-law’s place. Their bloody roosters would crow all frigging night instead of only around dawn. Oh, the nights I used to lie awake scheming ways to put them out of my misery…

I stopped keeping chooks long ago and moved to where there weren’t any.

Yeah.. I always assumed from my own occasionally manic behavior during the full moon that there must be a correlation.

Then there there was this well know science communicator, who shall be nameless (initials KK), who on a number of occasions claimed that the science had been looked into (probably quoting that Australian hospital admissions study) and that any moon/sleeplessness/madness correlation was bunk.

Ha

how many lunar changes are there?

I can think of gravity and light

a full moon puts out more light, so the moons reflected light changes but generally follows a pattern, from waxing to waning

and regular gravitational changes

its known that light levels can effect sleep

I haven’t heard anything about the moons gravity effecting sleep

what other possibilities

maybe the Earths magnetic field being effected by the moon

I know the sun magnetic field interacts with the earth’s magnetic field

I haven’t heard any sleep studies involving gravity or magnetic changes

I’m too lazy to google, maybe there are studies “out there”

I can understand crimos making use of moon light

don’t blame it on the sunshine

don’t blame it on the moonshine

blame it on the boogey

>>I always slept badly around full moon at the ex parents-in-law’s place. Their bloody roosters would crow all frigging night instead of only around dawn. Oh, the nights I used to lie awake scheming ways to put them out of my misery…”

:), yeah thought i’d have a couple as pets, they got closer and closer to house until they’d be outside the window crowing very early, very loud creatures too, anyway to cut a long story short one of them developed nasty stealth tactics and jumped up onto the back of my head and copulated violently with it (it had been getting seriously aggressive for a while), so one day when arrived home they were in chicken yard alone so slammed door shut, chased them and grabbed around necks, very firmly for quite a while, then some.

I don’t take lightly to being sexually assaulted by a rooster.

Funny story in retrospect, but one of these creatures was quite nasty.

On subject of lunar cycles, it’s important IMO that very dark nights historically inclined limited outdoor activities because its dangerous to get around, but nights with a full moon is quite a different situation.

Good time for that outdoor naughty stuff, romance and its partner.

So someone needs to compare city to country patterns. More light generally all the time in the city. Gets really dark without a moon out here in the sticks.

buffy said:

So someone needs to compare city to country patterns. More light generally all the time in the city. Gets really dark without a moon out here in the sticks.

I’ve always wondered about that. How do others cope in cities. I always slept fitfully in the cities. The complete absence of light we get in the bush, just isn’t possible in cities. Even in rural areas near towns the glow and the noises travel quite a ways. I can see my rural city from 100 km away at night.

Not sure about city comparisons, significance of or what might be derived, a lot of what is city life is insulation from external variables, as any residence is, and full moons might send a lot of people indoors, not incline them outdoors of the night in the modern context.

Back to the evolutionary perspective, the likes of say foraging at night can be dangerous, or at least inefficient, and winter nights can be deadly cold, + ambushing possibilities.

Just silhouettes helps for getting around, which I think human eyes are quite well adapted for. There’s a lot of difference between low light and no light.

Wind might be a big thing, you can’t hear down wind very well, so I reckon windy full moon nights might be a substantially different influence to full moon with no wind. The cold don’t seem so bad when dead still, another factor.