How you sleep at the full moon

A lot is said about how full moon can or could influence the sleep of people. And like so often, opinions differ on this subject. Some are certain that they sleep poorly or have a restless sleep around the time of full moon and are not able to fall asleep for a long time. Others sleep like a log … in between there are many who are not aware of any of this and not able to determine by their sleep patterns whether it is full moon or not.
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The day-night rhythm of people is controlled, amongst others, by the hormone melatonin. In darkness, the melatonin levels rise and the body ensures that we are feeling tired. This shows in winter, for example, where due to the less amount of daylight, more sleep hormones are being produced. Now one could get the idea to argue, because of full moon the night is brighter and therefore less sleep hormones are distributed. This assumption is relativized immediately, if you look at the brightness of the full moon light (max. 1 lux) in comparison to the sun light (up to and over 100,000 lux). The moon light should effectively not play a large part for the melatonin. Also, most of us nowadays, change night into day and generally have the possibility to darken their bedrooms. So there have to be other reasons if someone does not sleep well at full moon.

To get to the bottom of this, a series of researches have been conducted, where sleep behaviour of participants has been observed during the moon cycle phases. Miscellaneous universities and sleep laboratories tried to shed light into dark. But over and over again, you can read the same results: no measurable connection between the full moon and the sleep quality or duration!
We were merely able to find a Swiss study from 2006 that was able to assess a connection:
»… Subjective sleep duration varied with the lunar cycle, from 6 h 41 min at full moon to 7 h 00 min at new moon (P < 0.001). […] There was also evidence that rating of fatigue in the morning was associated with moon phase, with more tiredness (P = 0.027) at full moon. …«
Röösli M, Jüni P et al.
J Sleep Res. 2006 Jun;15(2):149-53
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed
This study is insofar interesting, because the focus of the research had originally other contents. The test subjects were actually not aware of the connection to the moon activities. However, the result is rather insignificant in comparison to all those many studies that do not establish any connection at all.
Now that looks a proper mess: Many sleep poorly and nobody can prove it? Everything just imagination or the famous »self-fulfilling prophecy«? It appears to turn into one of these full moon subjects again that move between scepticism and mysticism, between feelings and mind. A lot more time may pass by, until more clarity can be obtained as how you sleep at full moon.
Until then, we would like to wish all our readers: Sleep well!