Rain, rain, go away!
The phenomena of ‘rain pain’ is often dismissed as a myth – but is it really just all in the mind? Rain pain reportedly emerges when sufferers of conditions like arthritis and chronic pain can use their level of discomfort to determine when the weather is about to change.
The phenomena of ‘rain pain’ is often dismissed as a myth – but is it really just all in the mind? Rain pain reportedly emerges when sufferers of conditions like arthritis and chronic pain can use their level of discomfort to determine when the weather is about to change.
ABC reports an abundance of evidence is more surfacing to suggest the notion of
rain pain does in fact exist.
Supporting the idea of weather-inflected pain, Dr Graeme Jones at the Menzies Research Institute tells ABC arthritis sufferers’ pain levels are “without a doubt” affected by the weather.
“The higher the ambient temperature, the better the symptoms are; the higher the humidity or dew point, the worse the symptoms are; and changes in the barometric pressure, so when a cold front is coming through and when the pressure drops, people tend to ache in their joints before that,” Dr Jones explains.
However, refuting Dr Jones’ claims is specialist in spinal pain Professor Nikolai Bogduk from the University of Newcastle.
“There is a theory, unproven, that when the barometric pressure drops the ambient pressure is lower and so joints expand, so if you have a painful knee it swells, and that’s what makes it more painful,” Professor Bogduk argues.
He tells ABC a patient without pain will likely feel “more miserable when the weather is
miserable”, adding the “miserable” weather may give people an “amplified
measure of their pain on that particular day”.
“There may actually be no difference to the pain, but because they feel worse, they will report their pain as being worse,” Professor Bogduk explains.
Do your joints hurt when the weather changes? Share your thoughts on ‘rain pain’ by commenting in the box below.
