Some promising new research has surfaced that indicates that tall people are less likely to suffer strokes, psychotic breakdowns or die from heart disease than the shorter of the breed. However, the same research says that these same vertically-endowed humans are doomed at best, to die of cancer.

This alarming research, which was recently published in the International Journal of Epidemiology, is based on data of over one million people born between the years of 1900 and 1960, including their causes of death.

Study participants included men with an average height of five-feet-eight and women with an average height of five-foot-three – 85 percent being Caucasians from North America and Europe.

What they found was that while shorter people are more likely to drop dead from issues resulting from heart failure, stroke and mental illness, taller people are more likely to suffer the wrath of cancer.

According to David Batty, an epidemiology and public health researcher at the University College London, who was not a part of this study, height has been linked with cause of death for some time, and back in the day, insurance companies even linked height with a person’s survival rate.

This is due to height often being an indication of many childhood conditions. Things like genetic factors, nutrition, stress, as well as social circumstances, have all been labeled as childhood factors in adult height, according to Batty, not to mention the socioeconomic factors that are commonly linked with height, since the class a person is born in is often symptomatic of the class they will dwell in as adults.

Batty adds that taller people have larger organs that increases the likelihood of developing cancerous cells, while shorter people tend to have higher cholesterol and blood pressure, which is why more of them die from heart related issues.

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