How Weather May Affect Your Joint Pain
Lacey 
Usually when people think of weather affecting joints, they remember how old people in movies could predict rain because their joints start hurting. You may chalk this up to just being movie stuff, but there is some validity to it.
How Does Weather Cause Pain?
While rain may not be the only cause, it certainly can play a role in aggravating joint pain. Really the main factor at play is barometric pressure, which is the weight of the atmosphere that surrounds us. Usually, the pressure around us is just enough to keep some tissues around our joints from expanding, but before some bad weather starts to set it barometric pressure will drop. This means that those tissues around our joints can expand and put pressure on our joints — causing pain. People with chronic pain are more likely to experience more pain since their nerves are more sensitized to it. This can also happen in planes at high altitudes, albeit less so, usually only your feet will swell a bit.
Is There a Way to Reduce Pain When the Weather Changes?
Many people may recommend that you move to a milder area like San Diego. While this may be nice to think about, ultimately it won’t help with any of your joint pain caused by weather changes. In fact, the people that live there are more sensitive to weather changes, even minute ones. You can’t really point to an area and say ‘The weather here is perfect and people here hardly have any joint pain’, pain will follow you wherever you move, so it would be best to just stay where you are.
- Really the ways to prevent pain when the weather changes are simple;
- You’ll want to stay warm when it starts to get cold, so wrap yourself up in blankets or invest in an electric blanket.
- Purchasing compression gear like socks and gloves will help those suffering from arthritis.
- This may sound strange but even wearing Spandex gloves when you sleep can reduce swelling in your hands caused by arthritis.
- When you need to go outside try doing some exercises beforehand to warm up and loosen the joints that hurt.
A big factor in reducing pain is keeping yourself in a good mood. Your brain is pretty cool and it can sometimes override some sensations. By keeping yourself in a good mood you can effectively ignore the pain — the power of your mind. Some good tips for keeping yourself in a good mood are to pace yourself throughout the day, break things down into manageable pieces, and get some quality sleep.
Muscle Activation San Jose finds some clients experiencing pain due to weather temperature changes can benefit from more regular visits. If you are a client, ask about at-home activities you can do or adding an additional session to address the weather change pains.
You’ll also want to keep in mind that this pain isn’t permanent, the weather will pass and things will go back to normal. So be kind to yourself and know that this too will pass eventually.