The Guardian: A study suggests our ability to sleep is distinctly affected by the lunar cycle, even when taking into account artificial sources of light.
Using wrist monitors, researchers tracked sleep patterns in 98 individuals living in three indigenous communities in Argentina over the course of one to two months. One rural community had no electricity access, a second rural community had limited access to electricity, while a third community was located in an urban setting and had full access to electricity.
Participants in all three communities showed the same pattern of sleep oscillations as the moon progressed through its 29.5-day cycle, with sleep duration changing by between 20 and more than 90 minutes, and bedtimes varying by 30 to 80 minutes.
In each community, the peak of participants sleeping less and staying up later occurred in the three-to-five-day period leading up to full moon nights, and the opposite occurred on the nights that preceded the new moon, the authors found.
