A recent claim suggests that the season of your birth could influence your body shape.
Research results have shown that the time of conception and birth can affect your body constitution and fat accumulation.
Interestingly, people conceived during colder seasons might have lower body mass indexes (BMIs) and less belly fat than those created in warmer months.
Takeshi Yoneshiro, an associate professor at the Graduate School of Medicine at Tohoku University in Japan, studied 683 people, ages 3 to 78, to see how their conception season affected their body fat. They zeroed in on brown fat, like your body’s built-in heater. Unlike regular white fat that stores calories, brown fat burns energy to keep you warm and is linked to better metabolic health.
People conceived between October 17 and April 15 (the colder months) exhibited more active brown fat. Conversely, those conceived between April 16 and October 16 (the warmer months) showed less active brown fat.
Specifically, only 66% of individuals conceived during the warm season had highly active brown adipose tissue compared to 78.2% of those conceived during the cold season. Naturally, a lower body mass index (BMI) and less visceral fat tend to result from the body utilizing more energy when brown adipose tissue activity is higher.
This suggests that a person’s metabolic health can be influenced by their environment during pregnancy and their genetics, diet, and exercise habits. Little research has been conducted on how environmental factors like weather and seasonal variations can impact the formation of germ cells and the early stages of fetal development.
Yoneshiro explained, “While your environment after birth plays a role, the season you were conceived in might be setting the stage for your metabolism right from the start.” But there’s still more to learn about exactly how this works.
This study, published in Nature Metabolism, has scientists buzzing about new ways to examine body types, obesity, and metabolic health. It’s opening up exciting new avenues for research on how seasons affect our health.
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