Cloudy with a chance of pain? Wet weather and a lack of sunshine DOES make chronic pain worse

tunisante September 7, 2016 Health

Patients are scoring their symptoms every night on new app
Symptoms are compared to forecast to see if weather affects condition
Found increase in wet weather was linked to increased chronic pain levels
It’s hoped the data will be used to create a daily pain forecast for sufferers

Kate Pickles For Mailonline

Published:
07:00 EST, 7 September 2016

|
Updated:
07:00 EST, 7 September 2016

e-mail

View
comments

It’s long been said that cold, damp, weather can make aches and pains worse.

Now doctors investigating whether there really is a link between the weather and pain believe it’s more than just an old wives’ tale.

Bad weather – particularly rain and a lack of sunshine – can make chronic pain worse, initial findings of a large study suggests.

Medics have asked thousands of sufferers across the country to take part in their research by providing data using their mobile phones.

Bad weather – particularly rain and a lack of sunshine – can make chronic pain worse, initial research using a mobile phone app has found

And they hope that soon the information could be used to provide a daily ‘pain forecast’, in a similar way that the pollen count is now included in weather forecasts.

The Manchester University study involving more than 9,000 people who suffer chronic pain found a link between the number of sunny days plus rainfall levels and changes in degrees of pain.

Would YOU ditch your morning coffee for a green tea? From…

‘My IBS was actually cancer’: Massage therapist is left with…

Why GARDENING could be the best medicine: Prescribing…

Cancer that killed world’s first face transplant recipient…

As the number of sunny days increased from February to April, the amount of time spent in severe pain decreased.

But pain levels increased again in June when the weather was wetter and there were fewer hours of sunshine, the University of Manchester-led project found.

The interim data review focused on Leeds, Norwich and London, asking long-term pain sufferers to record their daily pain symptoms on a special app.

The app also independently captures hourly weather conditions using the smartphone GPS, joining pain data with real-time local weather events.

Pain levels were found to increase during cold and wet weather and decrease when there were more hours of sunshine, A University of Manchester study has found

Professor Will Dixon, a rheumatologist and clinical epidemiologist at the University of Manchester, said the early results were encouraging but urged more people to take part in the study.

He said: ‘Once the link is proven, people will have the confidence to plan their activities in accordance with the weather.

‘In addition, understanding how weather influences pain will allow medical researchers to explore new pain interventions and treatments.

‘To work out the details of how weather influences pain, we need as many people as possible to participate in the study and track their symptoms on their smartphone.

‘If you are affected by chronic pain, this is your chance to take do something personally – and easily – to lead to a breakthrough in our understanding of pain.’

Professor Dixon is due to speak at the British Science Festival about the interim findings.