Does Moonlight Affect Your Sleep?
THE STRENGTH OF THE VAMPIRE is that nobody will believe in him. Today, I am not here to chat with you about vampires. Instead, we turn to a provocative new question asked by Yale anthropologists Claudia Valeggia and Eduardo Fernandez-Duque: Do the moon’s phases affect our sleep schedules? The answer appears to be yes.
The timing and length of human sleep have changed over time, concurrent with social organization changes and subsistence. Given our reduced vision in lower light conditions, nomadic groups may have timed their sleep onset to the time after dusk when it became too dark to hunt and gather safely.
With the rise of industrial societies and the widespread use of artificial light, we could accommodate our sleep cycles to more modern societal demands. Unfortunately, artificially illuminated environments can inhibit sleep. The study authors observe that artificial lighting can entrain our central body clocks in the brain, affecting sleep initiation and duration. Put more simply, exposure to non-natural light delays sleep onset and results in shorter sleep.
When I think of the most critical source of light, I think about the sun. It helps synchronize our circadian rhythms. But what about the moon? Does it help modulate our night activities? I think you may already know the answer. Let’s look at how the researchers found the answer.
The investigators did a study with three Western Toba/Qom communities of the Argentinian province of Formosa. They tested the theory that in communities without electricity, moonlit nights would lead to more nocturnal activity and less sleep. Three populations served as the focus:
- one urban group with electricity
- one rural group, with limited access to electric light
- one rural group with no access to electric light
The study authors report that shorter sleep duration and delayed sleep onset were associated with increased electric light access. It gets even more interesting to me: Both the course and sleep onset time showed changes throughout the moon cycle, a phenomenon observed in all communities.
The peak in sleep onset and the low point of sleep duration occurred three to five days before the night of the full moon. The researchers concluded this:
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