It's Official: the Moon Doesn't Make You Crazy
The moon has enjoyed its time in the spotlight as the bringer of craziness for quite some time. The word "lunatic" is derived from "luna," the Latin word for "moon;" and throughout history there have been countless tales of hospitals and psych wards filling up each time the moon fills our sky. Finally though, science has put an end to that connection. The moon, the researchers found, doesn't make us all crazy after all.
The most persistent cited "theory" of why the moon makes us zany is that it's because our bodies are made up of mostly water and, like the oceans, the moon's mass creates a gravitational effect on said water inside us and our brains. Even with our limited understanding of science, gleamed from half-remembered episodes of Bill Nye the Science Guy, we know that's wrong. The moon's gravitational pull is not anywhere near strong enough to alter our behavior. Yes, the moon's pull does cause the tides, but as the famous Farmers' Almanac points out, "a mosquito sitting on your arm exerts more gravitational force on your body than the moon does." The rest of the "evidence" cited by people who believe the moon does change us is all circumstantial and hearsay. People see something weird when there's a full moon, and let that serve as evidence that the legend is true. This is what people on CSI (we think) call "confirmation bias," which is the notion that people favor information that confirms what they already think.
But the myth has persisted for so long that scientists finally decided to put an end to it. A new study, being published in Canada's General Hospital Psychiatry journal, took into account 800 patients who visited a Montreal hospital for "unexplained chest pains." They did this because people who cite chest pains often suffer from something mental, not physical, like anxiety, mood disorders, and more. The team then studied the moon's lunar phases — new moon, first quarter, full moon, and last quarter — and compared that against the number of patients reporting that they had unexplained heart issues and/or mental anguish. They found no correlation to the cycle of the moon and the number of patients reporting.
"These findings encourage ED [emergency department] professionals and physicians to abandon their beliefs about the influence of lunar cycles on the mental health of their patients," reads the Canadian report, titled "Impact of seasonal and lunar cycles on psychological symptoms in the ED: an empirical investigation of widely spread beliefs." The author later add: "Such unfounded beliefs are likely to be maintained by self-fulfilling prophecies."
There it is. It's over. Pulling down your pants in front of your neighbor during the full moon and yelling "Check out this full moon bro!" can no longer be blamed on the celestial body's gravitational pull. However, that is totally something a Libra would do. Go with that.
[Image via Flickr - Smemon]
