Full moon may affect your child’s sleep pattern, says study

Your child having trouble sleeping in the night? According to a new study conducted on kids from 12 countries, including India, children may sleep less when there is a full moon, but only by a few minutes.

However, the study failed to find a link between the occurrence of the full moon and kids’ activity levels, debunking the myth that children are more hyper during a full moon.

Researchers from the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute in Canada analysed information from over 5,800 children, ages 9 to 11, from 12 countries -- India, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Colombia, Finland, Kenya, Portugal, South Africa, the UK and the US.

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The children wore accelerometers -- devices similar to fitness trackers that record body movement and can be used to monitor sleep -- 24 hours a day, for at least seven days.

Results showed that children’s activity levels -- including the amount of time they spent doing high- and low-intensity activity, and their sedentary time -- were about the same during a full moon and new moon. However, children’s sleep time was about 5 minutes shorter on nights with a full moon, compared to nights with a new moon, Live Science reported. This is about 1 per cent of children’s total sleep time, researchers said.

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One possible reason could be that the brightness of the full moon interferes with children’s sleep, they said. The study was published in the journal Frontiers in Pediatrics.