Planning when to make a baby is a matter of choice. But for parents who wish to see their child grow healthy, they better plan conceiving a baby at the third season of the year. That is according to a new research which discovered that summer is the best time for a mother to give birth to her child.
Researchers from the Medical Research Council (MRC) Epidemiology Unit, University of Cambridege, UK, proposed the idea that birth month does affect the weight of people (specifically females) both at birth and later at their puberty stage. This, overall, determines their health and wellness along the process of becoming adults in the near future.
As EurekAlert writes, environmental factors influence the development of babies even when they are still inside their mother's womb. Conceiving and giving birth to babies occur at random as they depend on the parents' choice. So with this knowledge, there must be an existing pattern which could explain the differences of weight and height of babies outside the scope of inherited genes, as explained by Dr. John Perry, principal author of the research.
Around 450,000 volunteers from the UK Biobank Study were compared in terms of growth and development. Their findings reveal that babies born in summer had heavier weights at birth and are much taller in their adult life. They also found that females who were born in the same season started puberty later, an indication of better health towards adulthood. Early developers, on the other hand, were at higher risk of acquiring heart disease and diabetes, says the Telegraph.
It is indeed the first time that puberty onset is linked to season.
"We were surprised, and pleased, to see how similar the patterns were on birth weight and puberty timing," Dr. Perry was quoted saying by EurekAlert. "Our results show that birth month has a measurable effect on development and health."
However, researchers emphasized that there is a need for further research to fully understand this relationship. They pinpointed the possibility that the amount of sunlight that the mother gets during pregnancy is the primary reason. Sunlight exposure converts cholesterol to vitamin D - a special component that is associated to bone health and normal cellular processes.
"We need to understand these mechanisms before our findings can be translated into health benefits," says Dr. Perry.
The research appears in the journal Heliyon.