Surrounding the mystery of the moon lie innumerable folk tales by the ancients of the world.
Why is the moon scarred?
There are fang marks left by Alkha, a monster with huge impenetrably black wings, a personification of the darkness of the darkness of the sky. It feeds on the moon every month, slowly nibbling at it until it disappears. But the moon does not agree with the monster, who vomits it out into the sky, bit by bit, eventually re-creating the full moon. A folktale from Serbia.
Some Native American legends see the moon as a hostage. It is captured each night by a hostile tribe, and a pair of antelope is entrusted with rescuing it and handing it over to a good tribe. But the coyote gets there first, tossing the moon into a river.
A woman, Chang’e, from China, a once immortal being, was turned mortal (along with her husband) for bad behaviour. Both try to get back into the Gods’ good books by taking an elixir. But she drinks too much of it and ends up floating to the moon, making it her home.
In New Zealand, the Maori myth, the moon, Marama, is male, with a wife and two daughters. The indigenous people also believe that the moon is the husband of all women, given how he affects a woman’s reproductive cycle every month.
Along with all these tales, there are also myths and truths floating around. Since ancient times, full moons have been associated with mental health behavior like sleepwalking, suicide, violence. Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine (5C B.C.) “One who is seized with terror, fright and madness during the night is being visited by the goddess of the moon.”
In India, Lunar Eclipse or ‘Chandra Graham’ has a set of superstitions around it. Eating causes indigestion, watching the full moon with a naked eye causes blindness, Cutting yourself will bleed for longer and the scar will stay lifelong, Pregnant women should not look at the moon as it will give birth to a deformed child.
Does the Lunar Cycle affect how you sleep?
A research collecting sleep-data on ninety-eight Toba-Qom people in Argentina, tracking their sleep patterns across different levels of access to electricity over one to two Lunar Cycles —
- One community had no electricity.
- Another had limited access to electricity, such as a single source of artificial light.
- A third community lived in an urban setting with full access to electricity.
Findings —
All three communities showed the same sleep pattern changes as the moon progressed through its 29.5-day cycle.
On average, people went to bed latest and slept the least three to five days before a full moon, their sleep was shortest before a full moon.
Dr. De la Iglesia “Although we had hypothesized that sleep would be inhibited during moonlit nights, we were particularly surprised by two findings —
First, we did not see a maximal inhibition of sleep exactly during the full moon nights, as we had predicted; instead, nocturnal activity increased and sleep was shortest starting a few nights before the night of full moon.
Second, we were extremely surprised to find that the effect, although smaller, was present regardless of the access to electricity, and in fact, even in university students living in Seattle!”
De la Iglesia also said “He initially believed this was because more moonlight is available during the first half of the night, but not necessarily the nights that follow the full moon (because the moon rises later every night). The main limitation of the study is that they can’t establish a causal link between moon phase and the changes in sleep. Obviously, sleep timing is synchronized with the moon phases, but we still do not know how this happens. We believe that the gravitational pull cycles associated with the lunar month may predispose humans to be particularly sensitive to the effects of light, moonlight, or artificial, on the nights close to the full moon,”
What Are Moon Phases?
The moon’s cyclical transformation is divided into eight phases —
The new moon
The waxing crescent
The first quarter
The waxing gibbous
The full moon
The waning gibbous
The third quarter
The waning crescent
Each indicating the precise shape created by visible reflecting sunlight and whether the shape is in the process of increasing (waxing) or decreasing (waning). Each phase correlates to distinct positions of the Moon, Earth, and Sun. While the moon appears to undergo a physical transformation each night, it is merely an illusion of the position of the earth and the sun. The moon does not produce its own light but is illuminated by the sun, depending on where the sun, moon and earth are placed in orbit; different amounts of reflected light are visible from Earth. This repositioning creates the ever-changing shapes of the moon as well as the timings of moonrise and moonset. It is during the new moon phase that the sun and moon both rise and set together.
All in all here are some plausible findings from prominent experts and researchers —
Dr. Alex Dimitriu (Psychiatry & Sleep Medicine)
‘The moon most likely exerts its effect by an increase in evening or nighttime light. This might suppress melatonin (a sleep hormone), which affects the onset and duration of sleep. It does seem that there is a significant delay and decrease in total sleep time on nights leading up to a full moon, we know that light whether artificial or natural — from the moon, or the setting sun — can have a suppressant effect on melatonin, so it is plausible that moonlight could have a natural wake promoting effect.’
Dr. Steven H. Feinsilver (director of the Center for Sleep Medicine at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York)
‘The point of all this is humans are really light sensitive. We all have a circadian rhythm, a built-in body clock, it doesn’t necessarily run a 24-hour cycle, and probably runs slower in most people — a 25-hour cycle, it’s exposure to light that trains us into a normal 24-hour cycle, and that light is the thing that really turns your brain on. But there is a gravitational pull of the moon, and I am unsure about lunar gravity having any appreciable effect on sleep and that’s a lot harder to understand, there’s not even a biological known basis for that.’
FACT FILE—
- Moonlight brightness is only 7% the strength of sunlight, which is a relatively low intensity. People are frequently exposed to far more artificial light at night than the amount reflected by the moon.
- A sleep loss of twenty to thirty minutes is generally well tolerated in someone who ordinarily gets about seven to eight hours of sleep per night but problematic for people who sleep fewer than seven hours on average or who don’t usually sleep well.
- A new study finds we sleep less on the nights leading up to a full moon rather than on full moon night.
- Researchers looked at people who live with no, limited, and full access to artificial lighting to find the same changes in sleep as the lunar cycle progresses.
- Experts say there’s still no evidence that lunar gravity can affect sleep, and that light in some way is likely causing this effect.
- The Lunar impact on biological rhythms is well documented in the natural world. It is during this phase that humans take five minutes longer to fall asleep, sleep for twenty minutes less and take longer to reach REM sleep.
Bottom line —
Can the moon phases affect sleep?
Research on the potential for moon phases to affect humans is less clear—most studies are small with somewhat inconsistent findings. Nevertheless, compelling evidence suggests that lunar cycles may compromise sleep, with the full moon phase being most disruptive. The fact that the human body is mostly water, and lunar gravity has a noticeable effect on ocean tides. Critics of this theory cite that the gravitational pull of the moon is extraordinarily small in humans. Researchers estimate that the impact of lunar tides on a person measures less than one-millionth of the size of an atom. The moon’s gravitational pull is also roughly equal during the full moon and new moon. Therefore, any sleep changes that occur during a singular lunar phase are unlikely to be caused by changes in gravity alone.
The word ‘Lunacy’ and ‘Lunatic’ come from the Roman Goddess of the moon LUNA.
So let’s not get ‘Luni’ about the moon.
