Can There Be A Lunar Effect On Your Sleep?

A change in our sleep in itself has a large impact on our day- to-day working life and also on our mental and physical health. You know the various reasons that affect our sleep like your bed or mattress on bed, the room environment, your stress level etc. You may, however, not be knowing one particular thing which can disrupt your sound sleep on its own and you do not have any control on it. The cycles of the moon, latest research says, can be your culprit.

Since ages moon is believed to be affecting human behaviour in various ways. They call it the lunar effect. In recent years, the complex relationship of the moon phase with your sleep has been a major subject for research. After a lot of work, scientists have found evidence that there is surely a connection between your sleep and the full moon cycle.

​Man And The Moon

It does not make any difference even if you sleep in a completely dark room fully curtained and without a window to allow practically no light even in a full moon night. The experiments were conducted on full moon and sleep in the year 2000 on a large no of people in various age groups and on both males and females. Their brain activities were also closely monitored by EEG.

The aim of doing this large scale experiment was to find out and establish if at all there is a relationship between the lunar cycle and sleep of human beings. Interestingly none of the subjects or even the investigators were told about finding a relationship between the lunar cycle and human sleep aspects. So the experiments were fully subjective and unbiased. A large amount of data was tabled to draw conclusions.

An interesting sleep pattern was observed during 3-4 days around a lunar cycle i.e. before, during and just after the full moon. During this period people were found to take a bit longer time to get into sleep and also woke up little early than their usual time. They also complained about shallow sleep and didn’t feel fresh in the morning on the day of full moon. Their melatonin level was found to be almost 30% on the lower side.

This melatonin is a sleep related hormone secreted by tiny pineal body situated in our brain. It governs your internal clock and plays an important role in your sleep habits. In children, it is supposed to be on a higher level than an adult and as you grow old, its level decreases.

​Finding The Reason

Scientists have, however, not been able to establish how this actually works. Is it the moonlight or is it the gravitational pull affecting sleep? Moonlight does not seem to be the right answer as the experiments were conducted in dark rooms completely eliminating the moonlight. They are also not sure about the gravitation pull as it can have only negligible impact on the human brain. It is for the science yet to establish it.