Skip to main content

Moonlight and the darker you

Image
By
The suspicion that the moon might be affecting our moods and actions refuses to die down. A doctor colleague frantically approached me yesterday to seek help for an uncontrollable aggressiveness that he was experiencing towards his colleagues, patients, staff, and even his small child. When I opened the paper after having dispensed the usual advice to consult a psychiatrist, I realized that it was full-moon time, and that the moon had come as close to the earth as it possibly could.
One could argue that this was mere coincidence, but a possible link between the lunar cycle and its effect on mood and behaviour prompted me to explore the internet with Google throwing up 10 million results in a fraction of a second.
My suspicion was well founded as there were enough accounts. A police dispatcher recounted how full-moon nights were busy nights, when crime rates and murders soared, the police stations were full and people behaved aggressively. Back in the 1970s, a study published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, found that homicides in Dade County, Florida appeared to rise and fall with the phases of the moon over a 15-year period. In other words, the murder rate rose with the full or new moon. A similar study from India was published in the prestigious Bitish Medical Journal in the 80’s from Patna.
 If the moon can cause tides in oceans by its gravitational pull, why can’t it affect our brains? Psychiatrist Arnold Lieber, theorizes that since humans are composed mostly of water (like the earth), our bodies might have "biological tides" in the brain that influence our emotions.
Abnormal mood and behavior is often reffered to as ‘lunacy’, which is defined in the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary as "intermittent insanity once believed to be related to phases of the moon." In fact, in England in the 18th century, a person who committed a murder during a full moon could plead "lunacy" and get a lighter sentence.
Hospital workers also seem to notice increases in strange behavior with the full moon. A study published in the Journal of Emergency Medicine in 1987 found that 80 percent of emergency room nurses and 64 percent of physicians agreed that the moon affected their patients' behavior. In fact, the nurses were so overwhelmed by their workload during the full moon that they asked for bonus "lunar pay." The sections of staff who noted an association more often were mental health professionals, social workers and clinical psychologists.
There are many however who pooh-pooh this theory as superstition. It is understandable as the moon’s presence in the sky often going unnoticed by most modern urban dwellers. But just as sailors and coastal fishermen swear by the lunar tides, the night sky may hold the key for some moody people  and observant policemen. 
As published in HT City ( Hindustan Times) dated 6 May, 2012.  
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Food Fads in Liver Disorders

By
In an attempt at trying to do well to those they love, spouses and parents often enforce diets on patients of liver diseases that often turn out to be detrimental. The commonest food fad is pale insipid boiled cabbage being doled out to nauseous patients suffering from hepatitis that makes them puke even more.  The liver, in a way, is a buzzing manufacturing unit that requires lots of energy to keep its multiple functions going. And it derives all this from the food we eat. During disease, such as during an attack of jaundice, when many of the liver cells get killed, the liver attemptsdamage control by trying to regenerate quickly. For its cells to multiply however, it requires a generous supply of energy that comes from carbohydrates, and protein, the building block for its cells and tissues. Boiled green vegetables unfortunately have neither of these. Hence the situation often progresses to that of a starved liver unable to recuperate due to cut-off food suppl...
2 comments
Read more

The Doctor’s Dress

By
The familiar white coat worn by physicians as their distinctive dress for over 100 years, has started generating  murmurs  of controversy. It is not uncommon to find the blood pressure to be higher when measured by a white-coat-wearing-doctor in the hospital or clinic than the readings obtained at home by relatives.  This is due to the anxiety that the white coat and the hospital setting evokes in patients, and has been termed “White Coat Hypertension”. Mature clinicians often routinely subtract a few points from these measurements when entering records in case charts or calculating the dose of anti-hypertensive medications to be prescribed. The white coat scares children too.  Kids often express their dislike for this dress by crying and screaming and by denying access to their bellies or chest for examination by paediatricians in this attire. Many pediatricians across the world have folded up their white coats and taken to informal colourful dressing to...
2 comments
Read more

Uberification of Health Care

By
The imaginative concept of matching transportation demands of people with cab facilities using a smartphone platform that Uber is credited to having created is now beginning to be applied to health care as well. At the outset, let me share with you what I understand of Uber. It is an on-line transportation company that develops, markets and operates the Uber mobile app, which allows consumers with smartphones to connect with Uber drivers through a software platform for taxi service. Uber itself does not own any assets such as cars, or hire the drivers. Uber was founded by Tavis Kalanick and Garrett Camp as recently as 2009 in San Francisco, but the impact and success of this “start up” has reverberated across the world, being now valued at US $ 62.5 billion. Fresh successful ideas in one domain often tickle the minds of entrepreneurs in other fields. Healthcare experts are now trying to explore if they can bring about a revolution in their sector as well. The proposition se...
Post a Comment
Read more