I don’t know if I worded the title right but I’ve always heard older people say something like “my knee hurts, we must be getting rain soon” and just assumed it’s and old wives tale or something. Is there any science to back that up?
In: Biology
The barometric pressure changes with storms. It’s not completely an old wives tale because some people’s joints can feel the change but not everyone’s.
I’m relatively young but I have bum knees and can feel major shifts in weather. Mostly when high and low pressure systems move in and out.
I can tell when it’s gonna rain. Sometimes I’ll be all achy and not know why. Then I’ll go outside and realize it’s rained. I have arthritis.
Rainstorms absolutely affect the pressure I feel in my joints. We have fluid between our joints and things like barometric pressure or rapid season changes can absolutely affect that.
Like all the best old wives’ tales, there’s some truth! Our bodies have pockets of air in them in various places (such as the nitrogen bubbles that cause the distinctive “popping” noise when you crack your knuckles, or the air that occupies your sinuses). Those air pockets are usually in balance with the atmospheric pressure, which is basically the weight of the air around your body. This means there’s roughly equal pressure inside the bubble as outside.
However, certain weather changes are accompanied by different atmospheric pressure. In particular, right before big storms, the air pressure often drops, meaning there’s less air weight pressing on your body. This in turn can cause the air bubbles in your body to swell up, because now there’s more air pressure inside the bubbles than outside. That swelling can cause pain, especially in places which are already sensitive to swelling like joints, sinuses, and old injuries.
It’s definitely not a perfect weather forecast, though. Anything that causes a change to atmospheric pressure can cause symptoms, even if it’s not a storm rolling in. And not all joints have a noticeable reaction even to big changes in atmospheric pressure, if the swelling is minor or not in a place where it’s pushing on nerves.
The spot where I busted my arm hurts more the day before the wind switches directions and we get serious blizzards. Not so much an afternoon thunderstorm.
I have arthritis which affects my feet / knees and I can definitely feel a difference based on the weather; usually if a storm is coming I’ll have more pain; though it’s not something I’d say gives me predictive powers – usually by the time I notice the pain is worse the storm is already looming and everybody knows anyway!
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