Science Advances: Didn't get a good night's sleep, and it was the moon's fault? Human sleep with the moon cycle

Yesterday's study explores the effects of the lunar cycle on women's menstruation.
that while the study has not yet been able to prove causation, some of these features support the rationality of a causal relationship between the lunar cycle and the female menstrual cycle.
, let's take advantage of the heat to continue to concreteize clues about the human impact of the lunar cycle.
this time, not only does it affect women's physiological periods, it also silently affects our sleep.
first: the interval between the two full moons is 29.53 days.
a study published in Science Advances on January 28th, 29th of the lunar calendar, from the University of Washington, the National University of Quelmes in Argentina, and Yale University in the United States Looking at the sleep of 562 people in urban and rural areas, it was found that the human sleep cycle oscillated in the lunar cycle of 29.5 days: in the days before the full moon, people went to bed later at night and had the shortest sleep duration.
, many people are skeptical that the lunar cycle may affect behaviors such as sleep.
that's because in a light-polluted modern environment, if it's not for activity in the evening, or on the way home from work too late, who's going to pay attention to the changes in the moon? Just occasionally exclaims, "Wow! Today's moon is so big and round" that even many people have not thought about a fact since ancient times: "Fifteen moons are sixteen circles".
in human society before man-made light, moonlight was the only light source that promoted nighttime activity.
as this study shows, in certain living environments, a person's sleep time is synchronized with the lunar cycle.
, our natural circadian rhythms are somehow synchronized with, or at least related to, a stage in the lunar cycle.
to prove this, the team first used wristband monitoring devices to track the sleep patterns of 98 villagers living in three Toba/Qom native communities in the Argentine province of Sherlock.
The electricity situation in these communities is different: the first rural community has no electricity, the second has limited access to electricity, such as only one artificial light source in the house, and the third community is located in an urban environment and is fully able to use electricity.
, the researchers collected sleep data for one or two full lunar cycles for nearly three-quarters of the participants.
researchers found that participants in all three communities showed the same sleep oscillation patterns as the moon went through its 29.5-day cycle: total sleep time varied by an average of 46 to 58 minutes over the lunar phase cycle, with bedtimes varying by about 30 minutes.
average, all participants went to bed the latest and had the shortest sleep three to five days before the full moon.
researchers believe that the moon phase is associated with predictable and biologically related changes in sleep time on the day.
the team discovered the pattern among argentine soil participants and then d'Italians d'Italians d'Ath, analyzing sleep monitoring data from 464 college students at Washington University and discovering the same oscillation pattern. "We observed that the moon has a significant regulatory effect on human sleep, with people going to bed later and sleeping less in the days before the full moon," said
study co-author Horacio O. De la Iglesia, a professor of biology at the University of Washington.
the impact is more pronounced in communities without electricity, it is also present in communities without electricity, including college students.
past research by De la Iglesia's team and other research teams has shown that artificial light affects sleep.
also observed this in the study: participants in urban communities often slept late and slept less than rural participants in two other communities with limited or no power.
researchers have confirmed that more natural light is available after dusk a few days before the full moon (the participants go to bed the latest and sleep the shortest): as the full moon approaches, the moon becomes brighter.
the second half of the full moon to the monthly loss period will also emit a brighter light, until midnight will not be dark.
"We assume that the pattern we observed was a congenital adaptation pattern that allowed our ancestors to take advantage of this natural light source at specific times during the lunar cycle," said Leandro Casiraghi, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Biology at the University of Washington.
whether the moon affects human sleep has been debated by scientists.
some studies suggest this effect, but others contradict it.
De la Iglesia and Casiraghi say the study shows a clear pattern, and the team used sleep data collected through wristband monitoring devices, rather than user-reported sleep diaries or other methods;
, these "noises" are caused by changes in individual sleep patterns and major differences in sleep patterns between individuals in an electrically or un powered environment.
addition, the team found another sleep pattern, the "half moon" oscillation, which appears to be a new moon and full moon cycle, i.e. a 15-day cycle to regulate the main rhythm.
effects of this half-month shock are relatively small, only in two Toba-Qom rural communities.
Future studies will certainly confirm the effects of this half-moon shock, which may be influenced by factors other than light, such as the moon's greatest gravitational impact on the Earth at the new and full moons, according to the researchers.
De la Iglesia added: "These effects of the moon may also explain why (artificial light) in an electric environment causes such a noticeable change in our sleep patterns.
generally speaking, artificial light disrupts our innine biological clock in some ways, making us sleep later at night and shorter sleep times.
but usually we don't use artificial light to get the morning to come early, at least not in general.
this is the same as the pattern of moon phase changes we have observed here.
future research will focus on how the lunar cycle works through our innational biological clock, or whether there are other signals that affect sleep time, the researchers said.
much to know about this impact.
s only now that we find that at some point in the month, the moon is an important light source at night, as our ancestors knew thousands of years ago," said Casiraghi, a researcher.
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