Apparently the month you were born can tell you how many diseases you'll get.

Image: Sorry, October babies. (via Warner Bros Pictures)

Forget all about birthstones and horoscopes. A new study has found your birthday month could actually tell you something far more important about your life.

Researchers from the Columbia University Medical Research Centre say there is sound evidence the month you were born in could dictate what diseases you’re likely to get. And the findings will make May babies very happy.

RELATED: Why having a big bum could make you healthier – and maybe even smarter

In the report published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, scientist Dr Nicholas Tatonetti and his team studied data from over a million patients who had visited the centre over the past 14 years. (Post continues after video.)

“We looked for significant deviations, whether particular months or seasons of the year that seemed to indicate a higher risk of developing a particular disease,” says Tatonetti.

From the 1,688 conditions for which patients were seen, 55 showed a strong relationship with birth month that could not be put down to chance alone.

RELATED: You’re familiar with menopause – but did you know about perimenopause?

“What we found is that there are high risk months to be born and low risk months to be born. The lowest risk month to be born is May and the highest risk was actually in October and November. Those were associated with the most disease,” Tatonetti says.

"With cardiovascular diseases, we found the highest risk months to be born in was the early spring (Australian autumn) so March and April, as opposed to respiratory diseases where it's October and November."

"Not only was it surprising that nobody had studied the relationship between heart disease and birth month yet, but we found not just one association but several with the same trend of increased lifetime risk of heart disease for those born in late winter and early spring,” Tatonetti continues.

RELATED: 16 (very convincing) reasons winter should be your favourite season

“That’s suggestive of a mechanistic relationship, although we don’t yet know what that is.”

The study also found a person's risk for developing asthma was significantly higher if they were born in July and October, and one out of every 675 diagnoses of ADHD was someone born in November.

An October baby? See your celebrity birthday twins. (Post continues after gallery)

With both neurological and reproductive diseases, the highest risk time to be born was found to be November. However, it's not all doom and gloom for those born towards the end of the year.

"It's important not to get overly nervous about these results, because even though I'm saying there are higher risk results and we do find significant associations, the risk is not that great that you should worry about when your baby is going to be born or when you might have been born," reassures Tatonetti.

RELATED: Farting, sweating, enormous nipples: The 5 pregnancy symptoms nobody ever warns you about

"There are a lot of other variables that account for diseases, so what we're interested in now is expanding on this analysis and really trying to understand those other environmental variables," he says.

The researchers say the data findings could help scientists uncover new environmental risk factors and help doctors close the disease incidence gap. They also stress that unlike astrology, this does have scientific basis.

"Astrology puts a lot of stock on what month you were born in, and that really hurts this type of research, since there isn’t much scientific evidence to support that,” says Tatonetti.

RELATED: Sorry, but your star sign probably isn't your star sign any more.

"But seasonality is a proxy for variable environmental factors present at the time of your birth, and we are learning more about the very large role that environment, and gene-environment interactions, plays in our development. This could be one way to start mapping out those gene-environment effects.”

Which month were you born? Do you believe our month of birth influences our health?