For women, there seem to be even more benefits, with the study finding that summer baby girls actually start their periods later than those born during the rest of the year – which is an indicator of female adult health.
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The author of the study, Dr. John Perry, explained the researchers’ reasoning behind choosing to study month of birth: “It’s not affected by social class, your parents’ ages or their health-so looking for patterns with birth month is a powerful study design to identify influences of the environment before birth”.
Researchers along at the University of Cambridge in the Simply.K. discovered that baby dolls conceived in summertime are better in comparison with their friends delivered to the nation in other season. For girls, previous studies have shown that reaching puberty later is strongly linked to a healthier development as an adult from a medical perspective.
It’s also important to note that while this study found a link between birth month and certain health outcomes, it wasn’t created to prove a cause-and-effect relationship between those factors. Wild outliers in birth weight and age of puberty were excluded (assuming they were “special cases”).
The environment in the womb leads to differences in early life – including before birth – that can influence health in later life.
The results revealed that babies born in June, July and August were heavier at birth and taller as adults.
For their analysis, the researchers used data from the UK Biobank, a database that contains detailed health information on more than half a million United Kingdom adults who were aged between 40 and 69 at the time of their enrolment in the study (2006 to 2010). Summer babies were 10 per cent less likely to be of short stature – under 5ft 9 inches for men and 5ft 3 inches for women.
“We don’t know the mechanisms that cause these season of birth patterns on birth weight, height, and puberty timing”, said Dr. Perry. He said the scientists believe that vitamin D exposure is important and hopes the team’s results will inspire others to research the link between long term effects of early life vitamin D and health and puberty timing.
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While further research is required to determine the causation of this phenomenon, the researchers believe it is linked to the amount of vitamin D expecting mothers acquire from sunlight. Babies born in autumn and winter are more likely to develop food allergies – with sunlight exposure during pregnancy and vitamin D levels also thought to play a role in this.
