No. This is a pervasive myth, and occasionally a study will claim a correlation between the full Moon and hospital admissions, crime, psychiatric episodes, suicide or just about anything else. But psychologist Ivan Kelly et al examined 81 of these studies in 1986 and 1996, and found that none of them showed a reliable or statistically significant correlation.
The explanation usually offered for any imagined lunar effect is that the Moon’s gravity is exerting a tidal force on the water in our bodies, which affects our state of mind. But the Moon’s gravitational pull is weak and only affects the tides because the seas are huge bodies of water.
A mother exerts 12 million times the gravitational pull on the baby in her arms than the Moon does, simply because she is a lot closer.
At the other end of the scale, some people don’t sleep very restfully. Stress, a bad bedtime routine or an uncomfortable bed can also mean you need more hours in bed to get the same amount of rest.
Read more:
- What would happen if there were no Moon?
- Is it coincidental that the human menstrual cycle is about the same length as the Moon cycle?
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