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Long Life Begins in the Fall

Thu, 04/26/2001 - 12:00am — Karen Stevenson
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Gabriele Doblhammer and James W. Vaupel of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research studied remaining life expectancy at age 50 of people in Denmark, Austria, and Australia, and found that in northern hemisphere countries, people born in the fall months of October-December had longer life expectancies than those born in the spring months of April-June. They found that the pattern was repeated in the southern hemisphere, where everything shifted by six months so that, again, those born in fall months had the longest life expectancies. The researchers reported that these findings are based on population data with more than a million observations. They also found a correlation between the month of birth and chronic diseases related to the cardiovascular, respiratory, and digestive systems, as well as for infectious diseases such as pneumonia and influenza. They speculate that these differences may be partly due to the fact that many years ago people were likely to eat much better in the summer than in the winter, thus mothers who gave birth to babies in the fall would have had better nutrition throughout most of their pregnancy than those who were pregnant during winter months. The report was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

Gabriele Doblhammer and James W. Vaupel of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research studied remaining life expectancy at age 50 of people in Denmark, Austria, and Australia, and found that in northern hemisphere countries, people born in the fall months of October-December had longer life expectancies than those born in the spring months of April-June. They found that the pattern was repeated in the southern hemisphere, where everything shifted by six months so that, again, those born in fall months had the longest life expectancies. The researchers reported that these findings are based on population data with more than a million observations. They also found a correlation between the month of birth and chronic diseases related to the cardiovascular, respiratory, and digestive systems, as well as for infectious diseases such as pneumonia and influenza. They speculate that these differences may be partly due to the fact that many years ago people were likely to eat much better in the summer than in the winter, thus mothers who gave birth to babies in the fall would have had better nutrition throughout most of their pregnancy than those who were pregnant during winter months. The report was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.