Inside ‘eclipse sickness’: Many claim to be plagued by ‘weird’ feelings, headaches and insomnia
They’re feeling a total eclipse of their health.
Excitement isn’t the only feeling in the air ahead of this afternoon’s much-anticipated solar eclipse.
Many concerned social media users are claiming that the cosmic overlap is causing them to suffer from “eclipse sickness,” with symptoms like insomnia, headaches and even wonky menstrual cycles.
These allegations of somatic foreshadowing surfaced in the week leading up to Monday’s celestial event, which will see the moon shroud the sun, plunging large swathes of the US into darkness for up to several minutes.
Needless to say, concerned parties accused the pending totality of putting their health in retrograde.
“Any of u also experiencing headache bc of the solar eclipse?” inquired one under-the-weather X user.
Another concerned citizen declared, “Been feeling physically sick for a few days now and I feel like it’s because of the Mercury retrograde and the upcoming solar eclipse. Does anyone else feel off/sick these days?”
“A lot of people talking about the Total Solar Eclipse and Full moon… but us anyone else actually FEELING it,” claimed a third. “This just has me wiped out feeling weird.”
“Anyone else suffering from weird insomnia, no appetite and other weird s–t that can’t be explained,” fretted another worrywart. “Someone told me the eclipse might have something to do with it but I don’t get how. What the f–k is going on?”
As in years past, many even blamed the eclipse for messing with their menstrual cycles.
Fortunately, scientists haven’t yet found a correlation between totality and human health, indicating that this appears to be nothing more than a case of cosmic hypochondria.
“There is no physical relationship between a total solar eclipse and your health, any more than there is a relationship between your health and a new moon,” NASA declared on its website during the Great Eclipse Of 2017. “Among a random sample of people, you may find such correlations from time to time but they are outnumbered by all the other occasions during which your health was excellent.“
Everything to know about the 2024 solar eclipse
- The solar eclipse will take place Monday, April 8, blocking the sun for over 180 million people in its path.
- The eclipse will expand from Mexico’s Pacific Coast across North America, hitting 15 US states and pulling itself all the way to the coast of Newfoundland, Canada.
- New Yorkers will experience the solar eclipse just after 2 p.m. Monday.
- A huge explosion on the sun, known as a coronal mass ejection, is anticipated, according to experts. This happens when massive particles from the sun are hurled out into space, explains Ryan French of the National Solar Observatory in Boulder, Colorado.
- To avoid serious injury to the eyes, it is necessary to view the event through proper eyewear like eclipse glasses, or a handheld solar viewer, during the partial eclipse phase before and after totality.
- The next total solar eclipse will take place on Aug. 12, 2026, and totality will be visible to those in Greenland, Iceland, Spain, Russia and a small slice of Portugal.
That being said, the eclipse can be detrimental to human health in one notable way: By destroying our eyes.
Stargazers who look on the blackout sans the proper eyewear risk damaging their retinal cells, potentially resulting in impaired vision or even permanent blindness.
These complications are concerning given that the market has been infiltrated by fake solar eclipse glasses from China.
The suspect frames are ripoffs of legitimate lenses made by the Chinese company County Qiwei Craft Co., and can be quickly ID’d as fakes because they are no darker than normal sunglasses.
Real solar glasses should be “at least 1,000 times darker than even the darkest regular sunglasses,” advised Rick Fienberg, Project Manager of the AAS Solar Eclipse Task Force.
