A new data-backed study has revealed which months of the year Americans are most likely to die.
It started with a query from a reader who wrote to The Washington Post: ‘I’ve got a hunch that there seem to be noticeably more celebrity deaths, obituary notices, and deaths of my family members and friends in November, December and January than in other months.’
After crunching the data, the newspaper found Maryland resident Laurie Schwede’s theory to be mostly true.
January is the deadliest month on average in the US, according to an analysis of 66.8million deaths compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 9.2% of the deaths annually came in January based on the data dating back to 1999. The deadliest day was the first of the year.
Roughly 20% more people died in January than in August, which had the lowest mortality rate for deaths per day.
The second deadliest month on average was February, followed by March, the study found.
A line graph charting the data from 1999 to 2019, and 2020 to 2023, showed both lines were essentially U-shaped, with the greatest number of deaths in January, February and March, and December and November on the other end. The lines dipped in the middle of the graph, around June to September.
Some experts confirmed that the seemingly seasonal pattern in deaths can indeed be attributed at least in part to weather.
Hitting middle age and onward, humans ‘are less able to withstand adverse environmental conditions’, demographer Roland Rau told the newspaper.
‘The data suggest that your body is not able to cope well with cold temperatures.’
Some of the biggest causes of death, respiratory infections and heart disease, happen in the colder months.
The cold weakens people’s immunity to pneumonia, bronchitis and the flu. And human blood vessels contract in colder temperatures and force the heart to work harder, which can lead to blood clots, heart attack and stroke, according to a 2017 report by experts from Australian Catholic University and the University of Glasgow.
‘There is strong evidence that colds and flu leave you vulnerable to acute event, probably by provoking inflammation, which can mean existing blockages in our arteries becoming inflamed and the blood becomes “stickier,” leading to a potentially deadly clot,’ said Simon Stewart, one of four authors of the review.
Meanwhile, fans of cold weather can take comfort that other major causes of deaths – cancer and accidents – did not show upticks in the winter.
Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.
For more stories like this, check our news page.
