Does birth date affect your health in later life? (From Lancashire Telegraph)

Does birth date affect your health in later life?

12:30pm Friday 10th April 2009 in

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Does the time of year we are born make a difference to the illnesses we are prone to later in life? I’ve heard that people who later develop schizophrenia are more likely than others to have a spring birthday. Are there other connections like this?

For what it is worth, here they are. None of them can be used to predict future illness because the relationships are so tenuous, but, because the research is so easy to do, papers have been published on them. Babies born in February to April have a slightly raised chance of having schizophrenia in their teens. April to June birthdays suggest a slight extra risk of anorexia, depression and suicide. Dyslexia is linked to births from May to July. Male alcoholics are slightly more likely than others to have been born from September to November, but women alcoholics are born equally at all times of the year. Prone to panic? Then you are slightly more likely than others to have been born between September and December. In fact the only months not statistically connected to a later illness are January and August. Please put all these figures into context. The differences between the ‘risk’ months and the others are very small, and the vast majority of children born at any time of the year turn out to be healthy.