(WKBW-TV), Buffalo — We're taking a deeper dive into a question that I get frequently and that you may have asked yourself — can the weather be responsible for aches and pains…or is it really….all in our heads?
The belief that weather influences people’s health has been prevalent for thousands of years. Studies have come and gone in modern times but never were quite as conclusive… until just recently in 2020. That’s when a study conducted by scientists and published in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society solidified some of the things that many of us thought for some time.
The study had more than 10,000 participants, using their smartphones, entering data on their experiences with pain over the course of fifteen months. The scientists then analyzed the data set gathered comparing it to historical weather patterns, and daily weather observations of pressure, humidity, precipitation and wind.
What they were able to come up with revealed a key parameter that was associated with a prevalence of either high pain or low pain across the population. The key: the barometric pressure.
Here's the bottom line: The human body is a confined space. Changes in air pressure force muscles, tendons, and other tissues to expand. When this happens, it can cause discomfort, and for some, especially with past injuries, the discomfort is heightened. When the air pressure is low, experiences with pain increase. When the air pressure outside is high, pain experiences decrease.
So the next time you complain about your aching back, or a creeky joint, it’s more than likely that the change in the air pressure around you is responsible for those aches and pains. It really isn’t altogether just in your head!
Got a weather question that you’d like answered? E-mail me at weather@wkbw.com, and your weather question could be the subject of the next Josh’s Weather Academy.
