Tuesday, December 5, 2017

Joint Pain? It Isn't the Weather's Fault

It's a common for people to blame aches and pains on the weather, I've even done it myself, but two new Australian studies suggest that the common blames of air pressure and rain are not the true culprits.

Both studies were conducted by researchers at The George Institute for Global Health at the University of Sydney in Australia. These studies compared people's reports of pain to weather data from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.

Researchers found that there were zero links between the weather and people's reports of low back pain in one study and knee arthritis in the other. The first study, published in December 2016, included around 1,000 adults with low back pain. This was done over a four-year period, with researchers gathering data from doctors across Sydney who saw patients who reported having back pain within those past few days, but also those who said they had been pain-free for at least one month before the pain started. This was then compared to weather data from the week of each subject's visit and the weather the month before, coinciding with when they stated that were pain free.

No links were found between a number of weather parameters, including precipitation, air pressure, wind speed, humidity, and people's back pain.

The second study focused on 350 subjects who had knee arthritis. At the start of the study, participants reported how severe their knee pain was and then to report if any severe pain occurred at any point throughout the study. Researchers then compared the flare-ups to meteorological data and found no link between weather and pain.

Though, in my own experience, it is scars and past surgical spots that have the "rainy-ache". Does that type of ailment get affected by the weather or is it just a placebo affect? Hopefully more studies will address this. 

Original article by Sara G. Miller found here: https://www.livescience.com/57451-joint-pain-not-linked-weather.html

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