Re: Being born in the summer increases your chance of being short sighted

Lance wrote:
On Aug 27, 10:38 am, "Peter H.M.Brooks" <pe...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Lance wrote:

Forming a large multi-center Israeli team, the scientists took data on
Israeli youth aged 16-23 and retroactively correlated the incidence of
myopia (short-sightedness) with their month of birth. The results were
astonishing. Babies born in June and July had a 24% greater chance of
becoming severely myopic than those born in December and January -
the group with the least number of severely myopic individuals. The
investigators say that this evidence is likely applicable to babies
born anywhere in the world.
If that is actually what they mean to say, then it isn't summer that
does it.

As far as I can see they haven't any data from the Southern Hemisphere
so they have no idea whether it's summer that does it.

I wondered about that. I did an informal survey around the tea-table
and yes, it was the case that in this small sample all the short
sighted folk were born in the (southern hemisphere) summer. It would
be fun to see if the pattern holds up in a larger survey.

Well, if we're going to extend the anecdotal information, my brother and I maybe fit the profile, just (February and September), but our sister doesn't (July). I'd say, that September is more Spring, though. So that'd make it something like 1.5:1 against.


Are equatorial people less likely to be myopic? If summer birth or winter conception had anything to do with it you'd expect so. What about Eskimos and the inhabitants of Dunedin?




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