How the Weather Affects Your Life

from a story by Lucas J. Mire, The Weather Channel

Editor’s Note: None of the conditions listed in this article are linked to VHL. However, people with VHL do experience a number of symptoms similar to the conditions described here. Often they are caused by increased pressure in the brain or spinal cord, or scar tissue from prior surgeries, and can be made worse by weather conditions. Keep a log, and report these issues to your physician.

For as long as people have been aware of weather, they’ve pondered its impact on their health. The Greeks noted the effect of “hot and cold winds” on pain and illness 2,400 years ago. During the Civil War, physicians wrote about amputee soldiers sensing pain in their “phantom” limbs when the weather changed. And folk wisdom tells of people who “feel the weather in their bones.”

In modern times, doctors continue to explore the connection between weather and pain, especially in relation to chronic conditions such as migraine headaches and arthritis.

While many people maintain that the weather affects how they feel, scientific studies linking weather to chronic pain don’t always agree. Some doctors say it’s a matter of perception; patients might feel worse on a rainy day, they say, just because it’s gloomy. But others say the pain is very real. Not all people who suffer from chronic pain feel effects from the weather. Among those who do, reactions depend on the individual and can be hard to measure.

For those people who are sensitive to weather, changes in weather are generally more likely to affect them than specific weather conditions. Doctors who specialize in chronic pain sometimes suggest that patients keep a detailed journal of weather conditions to establish a possible relationship to their pain.

In particular, the following weather factors may contribute to aches and pains:

Barometric pressure is the weight exerted by the air around us. Rapidly falling barometric pressure generally signals the onset of stormy weather, and is believed to have a strong correlation with the potential for feeling aches and pains. Rising pressure may also affect some people.

Humidity is the amount of water vapor in the air. It can be expressed as “absolute humidity” (the amount of water vapor per unit of air) or the more familiar “relative humidity” (the amount of water vapor relative to the amount of moisture the air can hold at a given temperature). An increase in absolute humidity, especially in the summer, can lead to an increased potential for aches and pains. Some research also finds a correlation between dry, cold air and migraine headaches(1).

Precipitation includes not only rain, but also snow, sleet, hail or any other form of water that reaches the ground. It is considered a factor in aches and pains because stormy weather accompanies changes in barometric pressure and humidity. For those sensitive to hot weather, such as some people with multiple sclerosis, rain can cool the atmosphere and may bring some relief.

Temperature. Rapidly rising or falling temperatures are a hallmark of big weather changes, indicating underlying shifts in barometric pressure. Extremes in temperature, not just changing temperatures, can also affect the potential for feeling aches and pains. Low temperatures may trigger migraine headaches, exacerbate circulatory conditions such as Raynaud’s phenomenon (2) and contribute to arthritic joint stiffness. Cold weather has also been associated with an increase in asthma-related hospital admissions.

Wind often results from big shifts in weather, indicating that barometric pressure and other factors may be changing rapidly. Wind is also a health consideration because it can carry pollution and allergens far distances, therefore affecting people with respiratory ailments such as asthma.

Weather is considered a possible influence on a wide variety of health conditions. In some cases, such as migraine headaches, weather may bring on an episode. In other cases, weather factors may make existing pain worse.

Notes:

(1) Drs. Matthews and Rappaport reported to the 10th Annual International Headache Congress (2001) that their patients could tell, based on the onset of their headaches, that there was a weather change coming the next day. “People often implicate high temperature and humidity as the most common contributing factors,” Birgeneau Prince said in a statement. “But our study suggests a combination of low humidity and cold weather is even more common than the opposite in triggering migraines.”

(2) Raynaud’s phenomenon is a condition in which blood vessel spasms disrupt blood circulation to the fingers or toes. The phenomenon, which turns one or several digits pale or bluish, can last minutes or hours, but generally does not cause tissue damage. Pain is uncommon, but there may be partial, temporary paralysis in the affected area. Emotional reactions and cold weather are two known triggers.

From a story by Lucas J. Mire, The Weather Channel, July 2001, Copyright 2005, The Weather Channel Interactive, Inc., www.weather.com

As printed in the VHL Family Forum 13:1, April 2005. For permission to reprint, please contact VHL Family Alliance, editor@vhl.org. Further information is available from the VHL Family Alliance, info@vhl.org.