Lunacy and
the Full Moon
LA LUNA
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It's an enduring bit of
folk wisdom, spurred by modern-day rumors that emergency rooms fill up,
oddballs act odder, and dogs howl in the streets when the moon beams.
Furthermore, there are lots of perfectly rational people who will assure you
they just feel a little restless around the time of the full moon. The very
word "lunatic" is built on the Latin word for moon, luna. So, is there proof?
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If nothing else, there's proof that scientists take the question with a surprising seriousness. . |
Biologists,
psychologists, even a dentist, have taken a crack at correlating full moons
with foolishness. The results have been mixed, and mysterious:
· A 1983 study of calls to a poison center
found that unintentional poisoning increases at the full moon; and that
suicide attempts and drug abuse increase with the new moon. A 1980 study,
though, couldn't link drug overdose to any lunar phase.
· A 1991 study found that women in a
treatment center who were developmentally delayed misbehaved more often on the
full moon. But a 1994 study found no full-moon correlation with admissions to
a psychiatric hospital, and a 1997 study said doctors see no increase of
depressed and anxious patients.
· A study of a suburban hospital's emergency
room concluded the full moon brought no howling hoards.
· A study of workplace absenteeism actually
found more people at work on the
full moon.
· Another inquiry revealed that people ate 8
percent bigger meals and drank 26 percent less alcohol on full-moon days than
on new-moon days.
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Fun stuff, though not exactly a series of smoking guns. . |
One
man, a dentist at the University of Pittsburgh, took this whole business
seriously enough to examine the cosmological underpinnings of the whole
debate: What possible excuse would a full moon have for working mental
mischief?
To understand what a full
moon actually is, draw a small circle on a piece of paper, and put Africa in
it so you'll know it's the Earth. Draw another circle (the moon's 29.5-day
orbit) around the Earth, and make a bead on each compass point. Off to the
right, draw a beaming sun. Blacken the left half of each moon-bead and leave
the halves facing the sun white. Your right bead is the new moon, its dark
back to us. Your left bead is the full moon, its entire, sunny face visible.
The upper and lower beads are hatchet-lit half-moons.
Frankly, the full moon's
most obvious feature doesn't look very incriminating: An extra bit of
reflected sunlight is making us cuckoo? Next theory, please.
Both the moon and Sun
have a gravitational effect on the Earth. When they're both on our right (new
moon), their combined forces tug up big ocean tides; when we come between
them (full moon), they pull opposite each other.
So if it's a
gravitational alteration that's making us nuts, we should be looking at the
new moon as well as the full moon, says Dr. Daniel Myers, the dentist who has
studied the effects of gravity on migraine headaches.
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Or, alternatively, we shouldn't be looking at it at all. . |
"I'm
not saying there's no full-moon effect," he says. "It's just not
caused by gravity."
What else could it be? I
found no study that looked closely at moonlight, its potential for disrupting
sleep, or its facilitation of night-time misbehavior. It might be interesting
to compare cloud-covered full moons to clear full moons, with respect to one
loony behavior.
And speaking of loony,
when the word first appeared in the language, it was used interchangeably
with "luny." This suggests that the word evolved from the older
word, "lunacy" and the moon, rather than from "loon," the
name of the spotted bird with the demented voice.
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Vocabulary protective, adj. A British study of hospital admissions for self-poisoning found that women make up 60 percent of patients at the new moon; but only 45 percent on the full moon. Hence, the study concludes, "the full moon is protective for women."
BUT I WOULD LIKE TO ADD THAT I DID NOT SLEEP ALL NIGHT..NOW SOMETHING INSIDE ME IS UPSET(:
MAYBE I HAVE EATEN SOMETHING OR DO IT REALLY BUT ON THE TIME OF FULL MOON I AM DIFFERENT PERSONALITY.PANIC ATTACS ARE FREQUENT AND FIRE FROM UNKNOWN..MY CAT
IS ALSO UPSET ON ALL HIS HEAT ODD FOR THIS TIME OF YEAR
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