How the full moon can put you to sleep WORSE than scientists discover the link to the lunar phases

According to a new study, a full moon can make you sleep worse.

Scientists have linked the lunar cycle to sleep patterns – saying that the changing brightness of the moon may be to blame for a lack of sleep.

A new study suggests that the lunar phases can change how long we sleepCredit: Getty Images – Getty

The news came last night in front of a full wolf moon, which can cause some restless nights.

“Moonlight is so bright to the human eye that it is perfectly reasonable to suggest that, in the absence of other light sources, this source of night light could have played a role in modulating human nocturnal activity and sleep,” explained the researchers from the University of Washington.

“Whether the lunar cycle can modulate human activities and sleep, however, remains a matter of controversy.”

To find out if the moon does affect sleep, the researchers conducted a study with more than 500 participants.

There are 8 phases in the lunar cycleCredit: Alamy Live News

Each participant wore a wristband that monitored their sleep pattern.

The study included 98 Toba-Qom people from rural Argentina, many of whom did not have access to electricity and artificial light sources.

Their sleep pattern was compared to 464 people living in the busy American city of Seattle.

Sleep was monitored during a lunar cycle.

Interestingly, it appears that the participants in the sleep study similarly affected their sleep through the lunar cycle.

Artificial light sources were not as relevant as you might think.

Senior author de la Iglesia explained: ‘We are seeing a clear lunar modulation of sleep, with diminishing sleep and a later onset of sleep in the days before a full moon.

“Although the effect is more robust in communities without access to electricity, the effect is present in communities with electricity, including undergraduate students at the University of Washington.”

Overall, the data suggested that people sleep less on the nights leading up to the Full Moon.

On these nights, the moon is brighter after dusk.

The researchers concluded: “Together, these results strongly suggest that human sleep is synchronized with lunar phases, regardless of ethnic and sociocultural background and level of urbanization.”

The moon appears to change shape depending on where it is in orbit

They think less sleep when the Moon is brighter may be an evolutionary trait that helped our ancestors do more when they were brighter.

The researchers added: “Although the true adaptable value of human activity during lunar nights must be determined, our data show that humans – in different environments – are more active and have less sleep than moonlight available during the early evening.

“This finding, in turn, suggests that the effect of electric light on modern humans may have had an ancestral regulatory role of moonlight on sleep.”

The lunar cycle involves 8 different lunar phases, each with a different brightness.

The cycle lasts 29.53 days and affects how much of the moon we see as it orbits the earth.

The moon seems to change shape, because where it is in orbit, it affects how much of the moon’s surface is illuminated by the sun.

It then changes how bright the Moon is.

The phases are New Moon, Waxing Crescent, First Quarter, Waxing Gibbous, Full Moon, Waning Gibbous, Third Quarter and Waning Crescent.

A new moon is not visible, so the least bright and a full moon is completely visible and therefore shines the brightest.

You can read the full study in Science Advances.

The Moon – explained our nearest neighbor

Here’s what you need to know …

The Moon is a natural satellite – a spatial body orbiting a planet
It is the only natural satellite of the earth and is the fifth largest in the solar system
The moon measures 2,158 miles wide, about 0.27 times the diameter of the earth
Temperatures on the moon range from minus 173 degrees Celsius to 260 degrees Celsius
Experts assumed that the moon was another planet until Nicolaus Copernicus explained his theory of our solar system in 1543
It was finally assigned to a ‘class’ after Galileo discovered four moons orbiting Jupiter in 1610.
It is believed that the moon formed about 4.51 billion years ago
The strength of its gravitational field is about one-sixth of the earth’s gravity
Earth and the moon have ‘synchronous rotation’, which means we always see the same side of the moon – hence the phrase ‘dark side of the moon’
The moon’s surface is actually dark, but looks bright in the sky due to its reflective ground
During a solar eclipse, the moon covers the sun almost completely. Both objects look similar to the sky because the sun is both 400 times larger and further
The first spacecraft to reach the moon was in 1959 as part of the Soviet Union’s lunar program
The first manned orbital mission was Nasa’s Apollo 8 in 1968.
And the first manned lunar landing was in 1969 as part of the Apollo 11 mission