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Urban legends have linked full moons to every little thing from werewolves to erratic behavior, but a brand new study links them to something else—sleep deprivation. Study in January 27, 2021 Advances in science It found that individuals fell asleep later and slept less within the three to 5 days leading as much as the complete moon. The effect was also more pronounced in areas where people had less access to artificial light.
To reach their findings, the researchers studied people from three communities in Argentina: one on the outskirts of a city, a small rural settlement with limited access to electricity, and a bunch of individuals in a distant area with no access to electricity. The study authors also analyzed the sleep of 464 University of Washington students who participated in a sleep study. All participants wore sleep tracking devices for no less than every week and in some cases for as much as two months. The researchers compared their sleep patterns to the phases of the moon. It took between 30 and 80 minutes for people to go to sleep before the complete moon, and folks lost between 20 and 90 minutes of total sleep on those nights. The researchers said it's possible that the complete moon made people more energetic at night, which is why sleep differences were more pronounced in communities with less access to electricity. He said that artificial light can produce an identical effect.
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