The Moon Affects Your Sleep: Fact or Fiction?

The Moon Affects Your Sleep: Fact or Fiction?

There are many popular beliefs about the moon and its alleged impact on sleep. Almost as numerous as the stars in our night sky. Since time immemorial, the effects of the full moon on sleep have given rise to stories, myths, and urban legends that are not necessarily conducive to good dreams. Do we all have a werewolf within, ready to wake up on full moon nights? What is the real impact of the moon on sleep quality? There are many questions, especially concerning the second question (serious studies on werewolves being, alas, much less common!). For a long time, the scientific community had difficulty establishing a concrete link between the full moon and sleep, but in recent years, significant discoveries have been made.

There are new discoveries to get our werewolf teeth into, and they don't have to be (crescent moon-shaped) croissants!

We asked the moon why we didn't sleep  

Long before it inspired a song by the French band Indochine, the lunar star was much talked about, giving rise to popular beliefs that still have a lot of resonance in our society today. A belief is, by definition useless to justify or to verify a scientific theory. The impact of the lunar cycle on our sleep has not yet been demonstrated, at least not more than the existence of big hairy creatures. Beyond the link between sleep and the moon, it is believed the latter would have an influence on the criminal behavior of certain individuals. Between werewolves and criminal night terrors, the full moon doesn't get a lot of good press!

Scientists, to be more down to earth, have sought a correlation between the quality of sleep and the full moon.

Besides its links with our werewolf friends and the data about the increase in crime, can we really establish a relationship between the full moon and sleep? A lot of research was been done in this direction, without any clear results. Indeed, in 2008, a study stated that "there is no solid evidence that human biology is regulated by the lunar cycle".¹. This study, like others before it, tends to establish a link between daylight and our circadian rhythm. Our biological clock is partly regulated by light: wake-up and sleep times are, to a large extent, determined by an endogenous time cycle that uses sunlight as a driving signal. So isn't the moon "the sun of our nights"? This is essentially what the research concluded, until not so long ago, before a scientist published a study putting the moon back in its rightful place: at the heart of our nights.

Objective: to the moon! 

In Basel, in 2013, an experiment was conducted by Christian Cajochen on this subject. Well, not quite, because, originally, his study analyzed the effects of age on sleep. It was only after, during a night at the bar with his colleagues from the University of Basel, that Professor Cajochen had the idea of using the results of his study to verify the impact of lunar cycles on sleep. The study of this cross-analysis was published in 2013 in the renowned Current Biology². The verdict? Moon Landing Successful: yes, the full moon does have an impact on the quality of our sleep! But not as one might think. It is not because of the light it shines (like the sun), but rather because of the rhythm of its cycles. Indeed, the subjects of the study were locked up during the whole duration of the experiment, without contact with an external light source. The electroencephalogram (ECG) used during this study showed that during the full moon phases, REM sleep decreased by 30% and sleep time was reduced by 20 minutes. Moreover, the level of melatonin was measured at 4 pg/ml (picogram per milliliter) in the blood at the time of the full moon, whereas it was twice as much during the following lunar phase (new moon).Our biological clock would thus be set on the cycles of the moon, even though we do not see it directly and its light does not reach us.

And to think that this study was not premeditated, so we can say thank you to the scientists when going out for a drink after work!

A small wine glass for Man, a big step for the sleep of Humanity 

It is with this lunar saying that we could remember the study of Professor Cajochen. It is now scientifically known that the lunar rhythm can modulate the structure of sleep in an individual when it is measured under the strictly supervised conditions of a circadian study protocol, without any temporal reference. This study has since inspired others, notably in 2014³ and has been fairly unanimously recognized as relevant by the scientific community. Apart from any myth or popular belief, the moon does have a direct influence on the tides as well as on the biological rhythm of certain species, including humans.⁴.

If it is now proven that the full moon has an impact on the quality of our sleep, we still wonder about its influence on other more mysterious phenomena such as the increase in crime or... our transformation into werewolves! We can now look the full moon straight in the eyes, being scientifically sure that its rays do not affect us: we will not turn into werewolves. But did we really need a scientific study to reassure you on this point? In any case, this is good news for Little Red Riding Hood. She is sure to have some wonderful and safe starry nights ahead of her!

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