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The month of your birth influences your risk of developing dementia. Although the effect is small compared to risk factors such as obesity, it may show how the first few months of life can affect cognitive health for decades to come.
Demographers Gabriele Doblhammer and Thomas Fritze from the University of Rostock, Germany, studied data from the Allgemeine Ortskrankenkasse – Germany’s largest public health insurer – for nearly 150,000 people aged 65 and over. After adjusting for age, they found that those born in the three months from December to February had a 7 per cent lower risk of developing dementia than those born in June to August, with the risk for other months falling in between.
There’s nothing astrological about the effect, however. Instead, birth month is a marker for environmental conditions such as weather and nutrition, says Gerard van den Berg, an economist at the University of Bristol, UK, who studies the effects of economic circumstances on health.
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Other early-life shocks such as recession and famine are known to damage later cognitive health, but these tend to have long-lasting effects on people’s circumstances and lifestyles. The link to birth month is important, says Doblhammer, because it pinpoints the significance of the first few months of life.
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