Dr. Don W. Alves

"You can find almost anything blamed on the poor moon and the fact that it's full, and we even had (doctors) who blamed the full moon for cardiac arrests," said Dr. Don W. Alves of the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore in a Reuters Health interview.

Alves and his colleagues studied a database detailing over 2.3 million emergency visits in seven northern New Jersey emergency departments and factored in lunar cycles during the 4,000-day period of the study.

"We didn't find any correlation whatsoever with full moon.But we did find a decrease of 6.5% in incidence of cardiac arrest during new moons," Alves told Reuters Health.Alves guesses, although it's a long shot, that perhaps more people stay indoors and are less active during the new moon.Or the finding, which has weak statistical significance, may be just a statistical blip due to chance.

"Despite the conventional wisdom that more cardiopulmonary arrests occur during the full moon," he and his colleagues conclude, "we were unable to identify a statistically significant difference on full moon days."

Source: Reuters

Donald W. Alves
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Donald W. Alves, MDEMS Fellow, University of Maryland