Help us Mother Moon!!!

[PeanutBean]

There's a full moon three days after my due date so we'll see!

 

[Sarahkka]

Very interesting stuff, Peanut.
I haven't read the whole thread, so this might have already been mentioned, but I wonder if the study that concluded that lunar phase has no effect on labour accounted for the fact that light pollution seriously interferes with the human body's photo-reception or ability to perceive the moon phases by increasing and decreasing light exposure at night?
This hasn't been studied all that much, but there is a whole school of thought that one of our major triggers/responses (how much light the moon gives us at night) to the phases of the moon has been totally compromised by modern city lighting. I've read about fertility philosophies that are based on artificially creating a "moon cycle" in your house through lighting, to try to influence conception.
I know the light from the moon is minimal compared to the sun and that cloudy weather would have affected the moon's light influence on populations of the past, but it is pretty interesting to think about.
I would imagine that the gravitational pull is far more significant.

 

[PeanutBean]

Very interesting stuff, Peanut.
I haven't read the whole thread, so this might have already been mentioned, but I wonder if the study that concluded that lunar phase has no effect on labour accounted for the fact that light pollution seriously interferes with the human body's photo-reception or ability to perceive the moon phases by increasing and decreasing light exposure at night?
This hasn't been studied all that much, but there is a whole school of thought that one of our major triggers/responses (how much light the moon gives us at night) to the phases of the moon has been totally compromised by modern city lighting. I've read about fertility philosophies that are based on artificially creating a "moon cycle" in your house through lighting, to try to influence conception.
I know the light from the moon is minimal compared to the sun and that cloudy weather would have affected the moon's light influence on populations of the past, but it is pretty interesting to think about.
I would imagine that the gravitational pull is far more significant.

This is totally true. From the perspective of animals that have circalunar body clocks the light can interfere. In fact in people the light at night also interferes with our normal 24hr body clock and that's compared to sunlight which is orders of magnitude brighter than the moon. The gravitational pull can exert a noticeable influence and of course that's not affected my cloud etc.

The obvious explanation for our approx. 28 days menstrual cycle is that it is a remnant from a lunar cycle in an ancestral animal (probably a worm haha!). There are genes that control the timing of body clocks that work on an approximate cycle, that's why a guy in a cave with no sunlight tends to naturally get up each day but at a period of say 25 hours instead of 24. The clocks are reset each day (or lunar cycle) by environmental stimuli, usually light, but also food and social stimuli. It's most likely that our menstrual lunar cycle just got disconnected from the outside environment which is why we run along at our own speed and out of synch with one another. However, it has been shown that women who are live together tend to synchronise periods and that's because of pheromones so we might not be so disconnected as it sometimes appears.

All the study looked at was how many women came to the labour ward over a number of lunar cycles, not at any possible causes or influences. There is a lot to be said for people's beliefs. Humans have long thought the moon exerts a huge influence on us one way or another and it's easy for people to see patterns (even at a big scale) where really one doesn't exist. On the flip side, sometimes people can notice subtle patterns that statistics doesn't count.

Can you tell I had three years looking into this? Haha!