Do the Phases of the Moon Alter Sleep Patterns and Behavior?

The full moon makes people crazy. Don’t believe it? Ask any Emergency Room MD or nurse. Full moons always bring out the crazies and the most bizarre circumstances. Common things present in odd fashions; odd things become downright bizarre. Can’t prove that scientifically but experience suggest it’s a fact.

During my medical training at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, you could count on having a busy and eventful day (and night) during the full moon. If you added that to a payday weekend, you had a recipe for chaos. The “Friday-night Knife and Gun Club” was especially busy on pay weekends and under full moons.

Probably has to do with tidal shifts in the brain or something like that. Excess water in your brain pan is never a good thing.

One example is The Bean. He’s our Bengal cat. Nocturnal and noisy by nature, he often gets completely out of hand around the full moon. We call it Moon Bean.

The Bean

Now research done at the University of Gothenberg in Sweden suggests that the cycles of the moon alter sleep patterns. If so, these cycles might also alter behavior. Poor sleep leads to poor decisions, labile emotions, altered perceptions (see previous post), reduced hand-eye coordination, diminished attention, and these can in turn lead to mistakes—-many of which will land you in the ER. Never a good place to be.