EDIT: Let’s cool it with the downvotes, dudes. We’re not out to cut funding to your black hole detection chamber or revoke the degrees of chiropractors just because a couple of us don’t believe in it, okay? Chill out, participate with the prompt and continue with having a nice day. I’m sure almost everybody has something to add.
Full moons do not have an impact on people with mental illness, make weird things happen, increase work load, or increase the chance of going into labor. I have worked in three separate hospitals in three separate states and the consensus is: full moons bring out the crazies and the babies.
It’s not true. Your observations may be affected by confirmation, bias, or other things.
https://www.dukehealth.org/blog/myth-or-fact-more-women-go-labor-during-full-moon
However, barometric pressure can apparently induce labor
The first part is what my husband tells me.
I do recognize that Medical Laboratory Scientists are a very superstitious lot especially funny since our degree and certification include Scientist. Don’t say it’s slow or quiet because it’s getting to get stupid busy (and everyone will blame you). Don’t run quality control more than required because you are tempting failure and will have to do a look back of all the testing to make sure it was accurate. We jokingly put an elf on the shelf out that had FDA written on the hat and the FDA showed up for an unannounced inspection a week later. I’m a Lead and every time I bring my Lead work to the bench with me, we get so busy with patient samples and orders that I can’t touch it. All are definitely confirmation bias situations.
That’s actually really interesting, the medical professionals I’ve been acquainted with never seemed to mention that theory to begin with.
Hypothesis*, and it is very popular with nurses. Unfortunate, but people still believe many strange things.
It’s entirely confirmation bias. The crazies come out, must be a full moon. It isn’t? Oh, then it’s just a bad day. It is a full moon? See, I told ya. Full moon and no crazies? Didn’t even notice.
I have witnessed this exchange >.<
Unrelated - kind of - but I believe there are two documented cases of obscure programming bugs that manifest according to the phase of the moon!
I believe there have been multiple studies that found that full moons affect most people sleeping and make sleep a bit harder
I sleep in a completely blacked out room yet I know when it’s near the full moon because my sleep gets very broken and restless.
The only difference between a full moon and a new moon is how much light it reflects towards the earth. The moon is still there. If there were some sort of magnetic or gravitational effect on you while you slept, the effect would be the same whether the sun was shining on the side you can see or not.
The reason there is a difference in how much light is reflected, is because the moon is in a different position. During a new moon, it’s on the day side of the earth (so in between the sun and the earth) while during a full moon, it’s on the night side.
So there could theoretically be a gravitational effect, although I don’t think it would impact anyone’s sleep.
If anyone is noticing a difference in sleep quality, it’s most likely indeed to do with the amount of light.
Statistics shows that the belief is wrong. It’s funny I think that despite the hard numbers the people working there still strongly believe it.