Predominantly, participants were people living with arthritis. Participants were asked to record their daily symptoms and other factors that affected their pain levels such as how well they have slept or how much exercise they have done with an app on their smartphones, while GPS in their phones provided accurate weather reporting. A sample of 2, people who recorded their experiences on most days for six months or more showed that people experienced greater discomfort on humid and windy days, whereas dry days were least likely to be painful.
We spoke to some of the people who took part in the study to find out what this research means to them. Nora Boswell, 70, was diagnosed with osteoarthritis five years ago. Nora decided to take part in the Cloudy study as she thought it was an interesting and much more in-depth way of researching her causes of pain. The results helped her to discover that inactivity raises her pain levels and on the dull, damp and grey days, she finds it difficult to stay motivated.
Nora also finds that exercise lowers her pain levels. Janet Norris, 80, has lived with osteoarthritis for half of her life. They found that over a two-year period, pain and stiffness were slightly worse with rising barometric pressure and humidity, although the overall average impact was small. The second study included more than adults living in one of six European countries and who had osteoarthritis of the hip, knee, or hands.
Although changes in weather did not seem to affect symptoms, higher humidity was linked with increasing pain and stiffness, especially in colder weather. A third study recruited more than "citizen scientists" with chronic pain mostly due to various types of arthritis to report daily symptoms through their cell phones. Researchers compared symptom reports for more than a year with data regarding local weather and found "modest relationships" between pain and higher humidity, lower atmospheric pressure and higher wind speed.
So, while these studies varied in the specifics, we now have a bit more evidence linking weather to joint symptoms. You probably know someone who swears they can predict the weather by their arthritis pain.
You may even be one of these people. Most people who believe their arthritis pain is affected by weather say they feel more pain in cold, rainy weather than in warm, dry weather. There is some research to support the arthritis-weather connection, but some studies fail to provide conclusive evidence.
According to the Arthritis Foundation , some studies show a relationship between barometric pressure and arthritis pain. A study of patients with OA of the hip seemed to support that barometric pressure and relative humidity influence symptoms. Another study showed that each degree temperature drop was linked with an incremental increase in pain. And that rising barometric pressure also triggered pain in people with arthritis.
Many people with arthritis feel worsening symptoms before and during rainy days. A drop in pressure often precedes cold, rainy weather.
This drop in pressure may cause already inflamed tissue to expand, leading to increased pain. But it can temporarily cause it to hurt more. According to the National Psoriasis Foundation , warm weather may improve symptoms for some people with psoriatic arthritis. However, there is no conclusive evidence proving this link.
But summertime may prove to be an easier time of year to be active outdoors. The Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons also links rainy weather and changes in weather to the potential for increased aches and pain of arthritis in the knees , hands , and shoulders.
Should you move to a warmer climate to escape arthritis pain? I have osteoarthritis in both hands. Since the weather turned cold I can barely use my hands because they hurt so bad. I wish I was back where it is warm.
Maybe asking those around me whom I talk to ahead of weather events would be a better way to gauge. Almost everyone I know that reacts to weather changes connects it to barometric pressure changes. Most of us dislike cold, but, hey, we tense up in the cold, and we use heat to sooth soreness.
Might I design the study? Recruit a study group, with arthritic patients and controls; have them input their symptoms in a computer program at the time the symptoms occur to rule out a change in perception of symptoms over time, that perception possibly affected by seeing a change in the weather ; compare each individual symptom to all weather changes — temperature rising and falling , barometric rising and falling , humidity increasing and decreasing and whatever else there is. A little actual scientific control would be nice.
For me, I know and love with arthritis, osteo, cold, damp, stress knock me for a loop and I disregard this points. Likewise, it is hard to imagine how the temperature outside your house would affect the temperature inside your joints, while sitting inside your temperature controlled house, in your recliner while watching the weather channel on TV.
Perhaps the problem lies in assuming that doctor visits are a significant indicator. I just shake my fist at the sky and bear it.
Many arthrities sufferers are elderly, and we—for I am among them—are famously cranky about seeing the doctor, especially when our pain has already been resistant to treatment.
Because, ultimately, the truth is not necessarily based on facts or scientific studies; it is much more personal and self-evident. It is subject to personal experience and observation. If its true for me, it works for me, but, it may not work for someone else; someone that may, for example, be biologically different to me.
Their biology or chemistry is different from mine. Truth then is a relative thing, no matter what, where, when, or why. My physical therapist said bursa ca swell when the atmospheric pressure drops, and that can cause sensitivity and pain. I think it is barometric differences as I live just submarctic and we have rapid pressuremchanges as the polar vortex drops down driving westerlies southmand tjentemperwture drops percipitously or tjenopposite occurs.
I know exactly what I feel and I think the studies are flawed. It would be nice that research scientists and not doctors do such studies as the medical research I often read lack proper controls and obvious errors in tjenpwrsnrers of the studies make me laugh at the conclusions. I agree with you, sir. They can do all the research they want. I know what I feel in cooler temperatures compared to the warmth of summer. So, in my opinion, info is skewed. I never believed until I developed arthritis.
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