THE star you were born under influences the person you become. Not something you expect to hear from scientists but, incredibly, it seems to be true. There is firm evidence that the time of year you are born affects not just your personality, but also your health, specifically your chances of developing serious mental illness. But don't expect to find clues in your horoscopes. The star in question is the star we were all born under - the sun.

Being born at certain times of year gives a small but significantly increased risk of problems such as depression, schizophrenia and anorexia nervosa. The question is no longer if the seasons affect mental health, but how. Pinning this down could yield vital clues on how to intervene to prevent mental illness.








The effect was first noticed as far back as 1929, when Swiss psychologist Moritz Tramer reported that people born in late winter were more likely to develop schizophrenia. We now know that for people born in the northern hemisphere in February, March and April, the risk of developing schizophrenia is between 5 and 10 per cent greater than for those born at other times of the year. The effect has been replicated numerous times over the decades and is far from trivial. According to a study carried out at Aarhus University Hospital, Denmark, the increased risk of schizophrenia that comes with a winter birthday is almost twice the increase in risk linked to having a parent or sibling with the disorder.



Season of birth seems to be linked to other conditions, too. A recent study of more than 25,000 suicides in England and Wales found that 17 per cent more people who had committed suicide had birthdays in April, May and June than in the rest of the year. That's late spring and early summer in the northern hemisphere. Similarly, people with anorexia in the northern hemisphere are 13 per cent more likely to have been be born between April and June than in other months. That doesn't necessarily mean that it's best to be born later in the year, however. Autumn birthdays are associated with an 8 per cent increase in the likelihood of suffering panic attacks, for example, and a small but significant increase in alcoholism in men.

Finding out just how the changing seasons change the risk of certain psychiatric conditions is proving a daunting task for epidemiologists. Until recently, the leading hypothesis on why winter and spring births increase the risk of both schizophrenia and anorexia centred on the health of a mother during pregnancy. Perhaps a viral infection in the mother at a key stage of the baby's development could somehow interfere with brain development or damage early brain tissue. Several studies in the 1980s seemed to have found spikes in the number of schizophrenia cases in people born in the months following outbreaks of viral diseases such a flu and measles. But several large studies, in particular one in 1999 by Stephen Miller at the University of Georgia, Athens, which looked in detail at patient records for 750,000 people, failed to find a similar correlation between epidemics and rates of schizophrenia.

Seasonal fertility
While the idea that infections can affect the development of a fetus's brain still has some support, more recent explanations have concentrated on the more direct effects of the seasons on the mother: how much sunshine a pregnant woman is exposed to, for example, or the effects of temperature.

The hormone melatonin, which regulates the sleep-wake cycle and is suppressed by sunshine, could play a role during gestation or early life, says consultant psychiatrist Emad Salib of Peasley Cross Hospital in St Helens, Merseyside, UK. Salib was lead author on the study linking birth in late spring to suicide, published in the British Journal of Psychiatry last year. Several other studies have found that suicide itself also follows a seasonal pattern, peaking in the month of maximum daylight. Salib reasons that as people born in April, May and June were conceived in July, August and September, high melatonin levels during crucial months of development could prompt changes in the brain, and then stimulate the act of suicide later in life.

Beth Watkins, an eating disorder researcher at St George's Hospital Medical School in London, has suggested a more subtle reason for the season-of-birth link to anorexia, which follows a similar pattern to that for suicide. Her idea is not that the seasons cause changes in the fetus, but rather that seasonal effects allow babies vulnerable to the condition to be conceived and born only at certain times of the year. People with anorexia are eight times as likely as the general population to have a parent or sibling with the disorder. Often that relative is the mother, and this got Watkins thinking. Was there something about overly thin mothers that might vary by season? "Their actual fertility is on a knife-edge," she says, and babies born in the months most strongly linked to anorexia were conceived in July to September - which follow the northern hemisphere's warmest months. Could the higher temperature allow an anorexic mother to conserve just enough energy to tip her into a fertile state?

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg1 ... -sign.html

hmm a broad range there.
Only problem I was born in september and I do not suffer from either

Not yet you don't

Nothing like a positive prophesy!

I was born in September and you can kiss my arse!

Born in June, and I don't have dyslexia.... deffinetly not anorexia , and suicidal.......

Well I am 24 so let them kick in already. Ok well atleast the drinking, that could be fun! :roflmao:

Hahaha. Love it!

Year of the Dragon. July, 64.

This is total garbage...

What affects every person is where the planets are when you are born. So there are billions of possible combinations and effects. So it is way to general and it is focusing on the bad, which will not even affect most people. Old school astrology is way more accurate then this crap.

(sorry)

Well seeing as how I'm a January birth I would have to disagreeeeeeee