Weather and joint pain: what the research really says

People with osteoarthritis have said for centuries that they feel a change in the weather in their joints. For a long time science could not confirm it. One large study changed that, and the outcome is more measured than you might hope.

1Why studies kept missing it

The idea that people feel the weather coming is not new. The problem was always the measuring. Research into weather and pain worked with small groups, often ran for only a few weeks, and used readings from a station that could sit tens of kilometres away. Someone living in a valley or by the sea has different weather from the airport the figures come from.

On top of that, pain swings from day to day for reasons that have nothing to do with the weather: a bad night, a busy day, a joint you loaded awkwardly. In a small group a small weather effect drowns in that noise.

2What the Manchester study did differently

In Cloudy with a Chance of Pain, the University of Manchester took a different approach. More than 13,000 people with long-term pain recorded their symptoms daily on their own phone for fifteen months. The phone also supplied the location, so the weather could be matched to the place where the participant actually was at that moment.

The way of comparing mattered just as much. Not people against each other, but each participant against themselves: days with more pain against days without, inside the same body and the same circumstances. That removes the differences between people and leaves what changes from day to day.

3The outcome: humidity first

On humid, windy days with low barometric pressure, the chance of a more painful day was about 20 percent higher. The order of importance was clear: humidity weighed the most, then low pressure, then wind.

Two things are worth noting. Cold on its own turned out not to be an independent factor, even though cold is what many people name first. And the link held up after the researchers corrected for mood and for how much someone moved, two explanations that would otherwise have been obvious candidates.

So how large is the effect? The researchers put it plainly themselves: from roughly 5 to 6 painful days in 100. That is a real shift, and a modest one at the same time. Anyone hoping the weather explains why a whole week was hard will be disappointed.

4What you can do with it

The gain is in planning, not in avoiding. You cannot change the weather and you do not need to stay indoors for it. But if you know that humid, windy days with falling pressure are unfavourable for you, you can move the heavy jobs. The moving boxes, the garden, the long day out: better on a day that falls more kindly.

That only works if you know whether it applies to you. The average from a study of 13,000 people says nothing about your knee. Some people react to humidity, others to pressure, and a share of them to none of it.

5What it does not mean

The weather does not cause osteoarthritis. It appears to be linked to how a day feels, not to the condition arising or worsening. Moving to a dry climate is therefore not a treatment, and nobody in this research was cured of their osteoarthritis by it.

It is not a forecast either. A chance that sits a little higher remains a chance. A humid day can turn out fine and a dry day can turn out badly.

Sources: Dixon WG et al., Cloudy with a chance of pain: engagement and subsequent attrition of daily data entry in a smartphone pilot study tracking weather, disease severity, and physical activity. npj Digital Medicine, 2019. nature.com · Press release, University of Manchester. manchester.ac.uk

Artrio is a diary, not a diagnostic or treatment tool. For questions about your symptoms or your medication, see your GP, physiotherapist or rheumatologist.