A lot of my patients tell me their pain is worse because of the “weather today”. Even if it’s the most beautiful day of the year, they’ll say “I can feel it’s going to rain soon”, and then when it eventually rains in the next day, week or month, they’ll be happy because they predicted the weather. Now it’s possible that cold weather can actually affect your pain. Since we know what pain is, we know that we have specific danger messengers (nociceptors in the biz) that become activated by extreme heat or cold. These temperature specific danger messengers can become overly sensitive. That means they become activated by temperature that doesn’t usually cause a reaction.
For example, remember the last time you got a sunburn? Then later that night, you set the shower to the water temperature that you usually set it to and now all of a sudden, it’s too hot for your sunburnt skin. Thats your temperature specific danger messengers becoming sensitized and over reacting to warm water that isn’t actually dangerous to your body.
Now it’s possible that these danger messengers and your nervous system can be so sensitive, that they over react to the weather outside, just like with the sunburn. And with that, the weather itself is the dominant cause of your pain. You can test for it. If the weather is the dominant cause of your pain, you should be able to go outside, make your pain worse, come inside, and make your pain better. If that little experiment of yours can be reproduced every day, I’ll agree, the weather is a big part of why you feel pain. (Besides the sunburn example, So far I’ve met one patient who would pass that test occasionally with cold weather and I know of at least one other therapist who has treated a case like that).
But that doesn’t happen too often. What is more likely is that in a person with an already sensitive system, where the temperature specific danger messengers are more likely to activate without actually being in danger, that person’s brain now has one more threat they have to deal with. Meaning it is just another straw that you can add on to the camels back. Patients can just be more sensitive to movement in the cold. Where on a sunny day, they can bend over and feel no pain. But on a colder, rainy day, they can bend over and feel a lot of low back pain. There will probably also be some local inflammation which can activate the chemical specific danger messengers. On top of that, the stretch/pressure (mechanical) specific danger messengers are going to be activated as well. And I didn’t even get to how sensitive your spinal cord and brain can get (but I will). All this data, not only coming from this patient’s low back, but coming from the spinal cord, and data in the brain, can come together to make the brain feel threatened and make you experience pain. So does that mean the cold, rainy day caused their pain? Yes and no. It can be considered threatening data that the brain has that can make it more likely to feel in danger…which can increase the chance of experiencing pain but it won’t be the direct CAUSE of the pain.
THIS IS REALLY GOOD NEWS! If the weather did cause pain, we would be screwed because we can’t change the weather. But we can change the pain. I see it in front of me all the time. If you can change the pain without changing the weather, the weather CAN’T be the sole cause of your pain…but I’m sure it can play a role in it.
Know Pain Physio 