Contrary to what one might think, joint pain is not favored by rainy weather. Harvard Medical School looked into the issue and found no cause and effect relationship.
Rainy weather has long been blamed for painful joints. This is wrong, according to a new study from Harvard Medical School. The research, published in the BMJ, notes that no relationship between rain and joint or back pain is possible.
The idea that these symptoms are related to time has persisted since ancient times. Hippocrates required those who wished to understand medicine to observe the seasons and study the prevailing winds in order to see how the weather affected health.
The recently published analysis by Anupam Jena used a “big data” approach, associating millions of doctor visits for joint pain with daily rainfall reports from thousands of weather stations.
From imagination to pain
” No matter how we looked at the data, we saw no correlation between rainfall and doctor visits for joint or lower back pain ”, assures Anupam Jena, associate professor at Harvard Medical School.
The research team is convinced that the human brain is good at finding explanations for its symptoms, which turn into often “self-sustaining” beliefs. If you expect your knee to suffer in the rain but not rain, you will forget about the pain. On the other hand, if the pain does appear and you complain about the rainy weather, it will tend to stick in your mind. ” As doctors, we should be sensitive to the things our patients tell us: pain is pain, with or without rain., explains Anupam Jena. But it is important to know that at a clinical level, joint pain does not seem to fluctuate with inclement weather.. “
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