Autumn of your Life: Longevity Tied to Season of your Birth

Autumn Colours

People born in autumn are more likely to live for 100 years compared to those born in summer, according to a report in the Journal of Aging Research.

Researchers from the University of Chicago have found that people, who are born in autumn, from September to November, are likely to live for 100 years compared to those who are born in March.

The discovery was made while analysing data from the Rootsweb ancestry website.

Researchers conducted a study on more than 1,500 centenarians born in the United States between 1880 and 1895. The data obtained from the study was compared with 10,855 shorter-lived siblings and 1,083 spouses.

"Centenarians (cases) were compared to their "normal" shorter-lived siblings (controls) or spouses using a within-family analysis.

This approach allows investigators to study the within-family differences, not being confounded by the between-family variation.

Long-lived persons born in 1880-1895 were used as cases," said Leonid A Gavrilov, researcher at the University of Chicago, in a statement.

The study found that people who are born in September, October and November have a longer life span compared to their siblings born in March, April, May, June, July and August.

"These results demonstrate that persons born in September-November have significantly higher chances of exceptional longevity than persons born in March.

This survival advantage of persons born in the fall months is consistent across different lifespan cut-offs suggesting long-lasting influence of season of birth on longevity," said Natalia S Gavrilova, researcher at the University of Chicago, in a statement.

Researchers are not sure as how month of the birth affects mortality and health in later life but they have suggested some theories.

One is that the nutritional status of mother during pregnancy might have a long lasting effect on the child in later life, which in turn can increase the mortality risk.

Another theory is that children born between March and August are likely to be affected by several infections and disease, which in turn increase their mortality rate.

According to the researchers, the human enterovirus and it's cousin, poliovirus have epidemic peaks, only in the months of July and August.

The effect of environmental temperature during the time of birth may be another possible explanation for low proportion of centenarians among individuals born during the summer and spring months.

For example, Britons, who had experienced higher summer temperatures during their first year of life, had severe diarrhea and dehydration in infancy and they had higher blood pressure at older ages, according to the Journal of Aging Research.

Rising levels of Diabetes in developing countries

As income levels rise around the world, health experts expect a more troubling figure to increase as well: the number of diabetics in developing countries.

In China and India, two of the world’s most populous nations with fast-paced economies, the prevalence of diabetes is expected to double by 2025.

Between 15 and 20 percent of their adult population will develop the disease as household budgets increase, diets change to include more calories and new health problems emerge.

Clearly, China, India and other developing countries are not fully prepared for, nor are they willing to deal with, the rising trend of diabetes

Not surprisingly the growing number of diabetics are currently not getting the care they need to prevent serious complications, Stanford researchers say.

Even looking at it from the unrealistic US medical insurance perspective, many diabetics cannot afford, nor have access to, essential medications that could help them manage their conditions.

In many cases, people are spending a great deal of their household incomes to pay for treatment, said Jeremy Goldhaber-Fiebert, an assistant professor of medicine who led the research team.

“The US model of Public and Private health insurance programs are not openly in place or are simply unaffordable for the majority of citizens in India and China, so this is not an option in providing sufficient protection from diabetics in most developing countries,” said Goldhaber-Fiebert, a faculty member at Stanford Health Policy at the university’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

“The very few people who can afford some form of insurance aren’t doing any better than those who don’t have it because it is not controlled or legislated properly."

"Health insurance and health systems in developing countries need to be 're-oriented' to better address long term conditions and chronic diseases like diabetes.”

Findings from the study are online and will be published in the Jan. 24 edition of Diabetes Care, the journal of the American Diabetes Association. 

Personality Types - Longevity and the nature of the beast

A team led by Vincent Careau, a PhD student at University of Sherbrooke, gathered data on many aspects of dog biology published in disparate fields of study such as psychology, longevity, and veterinary research.

The information was well known in the respective research domains, yet they were never collated or put together. By doing so, the authors show that obedient breeds - on average - live longer than disobedient breeds. They also show that aggressive breeds have higher energy expenditure.

The late Don Thomas said, "It is hard to imagine how an aggressive personality could be adaptive if it lacked the energetic and metabolic machinery to back up the threats. Simply put, 100 pound weaklings don't kick sand in weight-lifters' faces and survive in nature."

This study contributes to the growing body of research revealing that personality is related to many crucial aspects of an animal's life - such as its energy needs, growth rate, age of first reproduction, and lifespan - and takes us a step closer to understanding the evolutionary causes and consequences of different personality types.

This study hints at the existence of underlying genetic linkages between personality, metabolism, and longevity -- meaning that selection for personality traits also invokes unintentional results on energetic and life history traits.

Link: http://www.journals.uchicago.edu