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Photo credit: David Govoni

Every single person I know who has chronic pain response whether. Get any of us together in a room and the conversation will inevitably turn to have the current weather is making us feel. Exactly how this is in which kind of weather makes it worse, can differ from person to person, but there is consensus the weather sucks. I wrote about this and how to cope in my new column for HealthCentral:

“Ah, summer! The season of sticky popsicles, a thousand hues of green, and for me, a dramatic reduction in pain. I thrive this time of year, loving the heat, the humidity, and even getting caught in warm rainstorms. Summer heals me and I take every opportunity to find a sunny spot and “bake my bones”—yes, that’s what I call it—reveling in the sensation of the sun’s rays permeating my body (beneath a good covering of SPF 50, of course).

If I listen closely, I can hear every cell sigh contentedly with the bliss of it. And well before the weatherman announces the arrival of the first autumnal drop in temperature, those same cells begin to whine and complain with new aches and pains.

Ask anyone who lives with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) or other types of chronic illness, and they, too, will swear that their bodies are more reliable weather prognosticators than meteorologists with all their fancy technology. Some people flare more in the heat of summer, others during winter’s cold—but we can usually agree on a special loathing for weather changes, sure to trigger flares. From the senior with an osteoarthritis knee, to the woman with migraine and all of us with inflammatory arthritis, we know first-hand the frustration of being at the mercy of Mother Nature’s whims.

But are we actually human weathervanes? People with arthritis might feel certain that weather changes = flares, but the science does not fully support this conclusion. A 2020 review of studies in the journal Pain confirmed what other research has indicated: There seems to be some association between weather and musculoskeletal pain, but findings tend to be not statistically significant. According to the Arthritis Foundation, changes in barometric pressure can cause expansion or contraction in tissues and tendons, which can lead to arthritis pain, but overall, the scientific jury is still out on this topic.”

Read the full column about weather and rheumatoid arthritis on HealthCentral.