Rainfall and joint pain – fact or fiction?
Rainy weather has long been blamed for achy joints. Unjustly so, according to new research from the Harvard Medical School.
The analysis, published in BMJ, found no relationship between rainfall and joint or back pain.
The notion that certain symptoms and weather go hand in hand has persisted since antiquity.
Hippocrates, writing in On Airs, Waters, and Places, exhorted those who wish to understand medicine to look at the changing seasons of the year and study the prevailing winds to see how the weather they bring affects health.
The belief has endured over the centuries and well into the present, likely fuelled by a combination of folklore and small studies that have repeatedly yielded mixed results.
The newly published analysis led by Anupam Jena of Harvard Medical School's Department of Health Care Policy, used a "big data" approach, linking insurance claims from millions of doctor's visits with daily rainfall totals from thousands of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration weather stations.
"No matter how we looked at the data, we didn't see any correlation between rainfall and physician visits for joint pain or back pain," said Associate Professor Jena.
Do you think there is a link between joint pain or inflammation and impending bad weather? Are you able to feel a storm coming ‘in your bones’?
A DEFINITE FACT!!!!!!!!