Undying Myth: Why Patients Call Weather The Cause of Joint Pain

In 1982, at a medical station in the frozen Canadian town of Davis Inlet, a young medical student made an unpleasant observation about arthritis.

“On the northern shore of Labrador, the weather is terrible, I tell you, you can play snowballs in July,” recalls Donald Redelmeyer, now a professor of medicine at the University of Toronto. - The weather there is tough and extreme, but no epidemic of osteoarthritis is not observed. People, of course, suffer, but their suffering is not different from the suffering of other people, which I observed in the suburbs of Toronto. "
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Usually nobody pays attention to the absence of epidemics. But in this case, Redelmeyer came to grips with the deeply rooted myth of grandmothers and fishermen, who rely on pain in the joints as their own meteorological channel.

It was 35 years ago. The town in which Redelmeyer stitched wounds and took delivery does not exist anymore. The Canadian government closed it in 2002, and moved its inhabitants to the mainland, nine miles to the west. But the question remained, as if a weed, which is difficult to get rid of. “Almost all people suffering from arthritis have a belief that their condition is affected by the weather,” says Dr. Timothy McAlindon, the head of the rheumatological department at the Medical Center. Tufts in Boston.

The same applies to patients with fractures, back pain, fibromyalgia , anything - feeling the weather changes "bones". When the scientists checked these statements, the results were completely fragmented. Now two studies from Australia are hoping to restore order in this area. They found that osteoarthritis and back pain do not depend on the weather.

This question was not new even when Rödelmeyer was interested in them. Back in the 5th century BC Hippocrates, the “father of modern medicine,” wrote that in swampy regions, icy winter rains cause unpleasant feelings in the shoulders and collarbone, not to mention the fact that they are subject to “pneumonia and insanity diseases”, and that “their internal organs are drained, which requires the use of stronger drugs. "

A couple of millennia later, in 2007, Makalindon decided to independently understand the beliefs of his patients, and found interesting, though ambiguous , results. An increase in atmospheric pressure — usually an improvement in the weather — was associated with a slight increase in osteoarthritis pain in the knees. But the pain in patients intensified during a cold snap. It was not clear how this study can fit into the overall picture. “In my opinion, there is a data conflict,” said McAlindon.

According to him, the effect of a change in pressure on pain in the knee makes sense. In osteoarthritis, the cartilage is often worn out, so nothing already protects the bone from the pressure in the joint. And since there are nerves in the bone, unlike cartilage, an increase in atmospheric pressure can be felt in the joint - nerves in the bare bone can feel it, turning it into pain.

In a new study of osteoarthritis of the knees, researchers asked 345 patients to go to the website every time they feel pain for 8 hours or more. Then, scientists associated these episodes with temperature, relative humidity, atmospheric pressure and precipitation observed in the patient’s area of ​​residence according to the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. Also, scientists took into account the weather in those days when patients did not hurt anything. They did not find a significant connection between pain syndromes and weather changes. The same result was achieved when studying back pain.

“The good news is that we cannot influence the weather, but we can change what reliably affects back and knee pains: stress and weight,” says Manuela Ferreira, first author of the study of knee pain, a professor from the University of Sydney Institute of Bone and Joint Research.

The results are consistent with what Redelmeyer discovered when he studied this phenomenon in patients with rheumatoid arthritis while working at Stanford University in the mid-1990s. He worked with an Israeli psychologist — and a sports fan — Amos Tverskoy, famous for researching the fallacies of human thinking.

The professor had previously pondered the riddle: if a basketball player threw the ball, does the likelihood that he throws it again increases? In other words, is there really a success streak, or does it all depend on the case? Tversky concluded that the “lucky streak” is a delusion.

“I have always criticized Amos for spending too much time watching sports,” says Redelmeyer. “Why not engage in real people and their suffering?”

So they went looking for the connection between the joints and the weather. And just as in the case of the “lucky strip”, they found that people tend to see patterns where there are none. If the patient believes that the pain in his joints is related to the weather, he pays more attention to the clouds when his knee hurts. "People grab for the proof of their theories and ignore everything that does not fit in them, as well as incorrectly assess ambiguous events," says Redelmeyer.

But people then did not give up their convictions, and Redelmeyer believes that they will not give up now. “Twenty years have passed, and this faith has not faded away,” says Redelmeyer. - And why would? Science is gradually changing perceptions, and myths are hard to eradicate. ”

People still tell him that their arthritis depends on atmospheric pressure. Rödelmeyer does not believe them. After all, in the end, we all use elevators, and to take the elevator in a skyscraper means to undergo a serious change in pressure . But epidemics of pain in the joints in the halls and penthouses of skyscrapers are no more observed than on the north shore of Labrador.