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There are definitely some simpler animals that have strong links between behavior and moon cycle. Lots of amphibians will mate or lay eggs only during a full moon for example.

There are also definite impacts from daylight cycles on humans, is it at least plausible that there are some internal clocks which are influenced by the lunar cycle, particularly for people who actually regularly see the moon. This should be all kinds of noisy with indoor living and lighting, I rarely see the moon at all much less sleep outside with the different levels of nighttime illumination.

But let's be pretty cautious about the superstition feeling lots of people have, plenty of anecdotes around here about folks like nurses saying they notice patterns... let's get some real data like gunshot victims or psych ward admissions vs lunar cycle instead of anecdotes about people's impressions.



And that data does not prove out the assumptions. This is why common sense reasoning is a double edged sword.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9841136/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31012946/


And here on the other side is very convincing evidence that the moon phase can have pronounced effects on sleep

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abe0465

And the literature about how sleep affects mental health is legion.

So it's not at all nonsense, the effect size might be small. You might not see it at all in hospitals because the lighting in hospitals isolates you from the moon.

It is really easy to be swayed by anecdotes and equally easy to be swayed by a little scientific evidence to the contrary.


I am comfortable with saying that light keeps us from sleeping.




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