Cold and wet weather might not aggravate aches and pains after all, reveal two research studies from the George Institute of Global Health. The studies showed that has revealed that weather conditions play no part in symptoms associated with either back pain or knee pain in people suffering from knee osteoarthritis.
About a third of the world’s population is likely to have back ache at any given point of time, while about 10% of men and 18% of the women over the age of 60 have osteoarthritis. People suffering from back pain should, according to the new findings, focus on how they can control or manage the pain, as opposed to focusing on the weather, said associate professor Manuela Ferreira at the George Institute and at the Institute of Bone and Joint Research at Sydney Medical College.
In one f the studies, 981 people with lower back pain, and around 350 with knee osteoarthritis were recruited. The researchers compared the weather at the time patients first noticed pain to weather conditions one week and one month before the onset of the pain. The second study with knee osteoarthritis patients as subjects had 345 participants.
Both studies concluded said that weather paramaters such as precipitation, humidity, wind speed, wind gust, wind direction and air pressure were not associated with the onset of acute lower back pain or knee osteoarthritis. In fact, higher temparatures did slightly increase the chances of pain in the lower back, but the amount of increase was not “clinically important,” the study said.
While the study on lower back ache was published in the journal Pain Studies, the one on osteoarthritis was published in Osteoarthritis and Cartilage.
