If Your Sleep Schedule's Totally Off, It Could Be Thanks To The Pink Moon

It's hard to imagine something that sounds more magical than the Pink Moon, don't you think? In case you didn't know, the Pink Moon is the last full moon in April, and it will grace the night sky this Sunday, April 29. But with every magical lunar event inevitably comes the slight internal panic that your body's about to freak TF out, without warning. And you know your body's barely recovered since we moved the clocks forward in March, so if the Pink Moon affects your sleep, too, you just might just lose it. But do you really need to prepare to toss and turn more than usual once the Pink Moon appears in the sky?

Well, according to astrologer Linda Furiate, the Pink Moon, which is named for the sprouting grass and blooming (pink) flowers of spring, shouldn't really affect your sleep schedule too much, at least not more than any other full moon.

"Jokingly, I say maybe it may affects our sleep due to the chirping birds in the wee hours of the morning now that it is spring and warming up!" Furiate tells Elite Daily — and, honestly, I'm totally OK with waking up to the soothing sound of little birdie chirps. But that's just me.

While the Pink Moon may not change your sleep patterns that much, Furiate says the spring season itself can sometimes give you a little boost of energy that makes you need, or want, to sleep less.

"Spring is a time when we tend to feel and look more alive," the astrologer tells Elite Daily. "This may be reflected in the fact that we require less sleep, as our natural rhythm is telling us to blossom and feel more of what life has to offer us."

Nevertheless, it doesn't hurt to make sure you've got your sleep mask and chamomile tea close by, because the truth is, any full moon could potentially lead to some restless nights — seriously. According to a study published in the journal Current Biology, your sleep patterns really can be affected by lunar phases.

The study authors wrote that, on average, someone could lose roughly a half hour of sleep during a full moon.

What's especially wild about this study is, according to CNN, neither the researchers nor the participants — who were sleeping in a controlled lab setting with no windows, meaning they had no way of seeing the moon — knew that this study had anything to do with moon phases at all. This basically ensured that the researchers could measure the volunteers' sleep patterns without any interfering bias about how they might think the moon was affecting the study.

The researchers found that, across the board, the volunteers in the study lost about 25 minutes of sleep during a full moon. So yeah, it might be a good idea to try some calming meditations before bed on the night of any full moon, including this Sunday's Pink Moon.

BTW, I hate to get to your hopes up, but apparently the Pink Moon won't actually look like a big round Valentine.

According to The Farmer's Almanac, every month's full moon has a special name, and April's Pink Moon comes from the blooming flowers and the change of season that comes with this time of year:

This name came from herb moss pink, or wild ground phlox, which is one of the earliest widespread flowers of the spring.

Other names for this month’s celestial body include the Full Sprouting Grass Moon, the Egg Moon, and among coastal tribes the Full Fish Moon, because this was the time that the shad swam upstream to spawn.

But hey, if you do find yourself having trouble sleeping this Sunday night, maybe you can take a look at the sky and see what color it really is with your own eyes. I'm sure it'll be a gorgeous view no matter what.