Chances are, you’ve heard at least one person talk about having “bad weather aches.” Unlike regular chronic pain, weather sensitive pain seems to flare up with changes in the weather. To the average person, there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason for it — how can the weather cause someone pain? Is it an old wives’ tale? The truth is, weather sensitive pain is all too real for the people suffering from it.

What triggers weather sensitive pain?

Many people assume their bad weather aches and pains come from bad weather, like rain, cold fronts, and dark cloudy days, but, for the most part, there’s a completely different culprit – barometric pressure (atmospheric pressure that indicates the pressure exerted by the weight of the air in the Earth’s atmosphere). Typically, people experience pain when the pressure is falling, but it is not impossible for them to experience pain from rising pressure either. The reason pain most often correlates with bad weather is that falling barometric pressure usually means a rain or cold front is on the way.