Cosmopolitan

What Your Birth Month Can Tell You About Your Future Health

Living a healthy lifestyle comes down to a few different factors, including diet, exercise, and unescapable genetics. No matter how many pecans you eat regularly or how much pickle juice you drink, some facets of your health are left to fate. Whether or not you believe in astrology, you might take your birth month a little more seriously after this news. A new study in the Journal of American Medical Informatics Association titled "Birth month affects lifetime diseases risk: a phenome-wide moethod" states that your birth month can actually predict over 55 different health conditions.

The study began as a way to further research the link between an individual's birth month and the diseases they developed during their lifetime, like asthma, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and myopia. The study began with a data set of 1,749,900 individuals born between 1900 and 2000. Using logistical regression, these individuals' records were monitored using associations between birth month and 1,688 diseases. What the study found was this:

Lifetime disease risk is affected by birth month. Seasonally dependent early developmental mechanisms may play a role in increasing lifetime risk of disease.

So what does it all mean? We've broken down the study seasonally with the help of an infographic from Cosmopolitan.

Selected Findings

The study found that participants born in the autumn (September through December) had a lower risk of cardiovascular conditions than those born in the winter (January-March) and spring (April-June). The study also found that people born in October, November, or December lived longer than those born in April, May, or June. The study links longevity and cardiovascular disease together to show that those born in autumn months with longer lifespans typically did not have cardiovascular diseases that inevitably cut their lives short.

However, researchers also found that those born in the autumn months of October, November, and December experienced a higher risk of developing a reproductive, neurological, or respiratory condition that those born in the winter months of January, February, and March did not experience.

Apart from the overall findings of the study, the health risks by month are concluded in the above infographic. Do you feel this is accurate to your own experiences?

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