Short Index Fingers Mean Higher Prostate Cancer Risk, Study Finds
Lisa Flam
Contributor
AOL News Surge Desk
(Dec. 1) -- Fellas, quick, take a look. Which is longer: your ring finger or your index finger?
A longer index finger gives men a lower risk of prostate cancer, Reuters reports. Men with an index finger longer than their ring finger are one-third less likely to get the disease than men whose finger lengths are the opposite, according to researchers from Britain's Warwick University and the Institute of Cancer Research.
"Relative finger length could be used as a simple test for prostate cancer risk, particularly in men aged under 60," Ros Eeles of the Institute of Cancer Research, who helped lead the study, told Reuters.
Researchers found that the size of index and ring fingers is determined before birth and is believed to be linked to the amount of sex hormones that a fetus is exposed to in the womb, Reuters said. It's not the first study to look at finger length, which has also been linked to fertility, self-confidence and reaction times, according to Reuters.
Surge Desk did some digging and came up with a few other unlikely consequences of finger size.
Running Faster
Men with ring fingers longer than their index fingers run faster because of their testosterone levels, The Daily Telegraph reported last year, citing a report from Southampton University that studied boys ages 10 to 17.
Aggressive Behavior
Canadian researchers found that the shorter a man's index finger is when compared to the ring finger, the more physically aggressive he will be, the BBC reported. The same did not hold true, however, for verbal aggression or hostile behavior.
Heart Trouble
Researchers at Liverpool University found that boys with shorter ring fingers were at the greatest risk of suffering a heart attack in early adulthood, the BBC reported.
