Does Weather Affect Joint Pain?

The skies are clear blue, but your ankle starts flaring up with arthritispain. Could a storm be looming? You feel it in your bones, but is it just an old wives' tale? Or can joint pain actually predict weather changes?

Believe it or not, your weather forecasting might have some validity, thanks to the effects of barometric pressure changes on your body.

It's common for people to blame increased pain on the weather, according to Robert Newlin Jamison, PhD, a professor in the departments of psychiatry and anesthesiology at Harvard Medical School and a researcher who has studied weather's effects on chronic pain patients.

"Everyone's got an aunt who complained that her knee or ankle would flare up. Or Uncle Charlie's shoulder would give him trouble and he would say, ‘Oh, the weather's changing,'" he says.

But Jamison, who is also the chief psychologist at the Pain Management Center at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, has seen patients worry about being ridiculed. "For whatever reason, people with chronic pain are real shy about saying it, because they think other people think they're nuts," he says.read more