Seeking the link between pain and rain

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/oct/16/researching-the-link-between-pain-and-rain-weatherwatch

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The link between weather and pain is well established in the minds of many arthritis sufferers. Some associate it with rain and others with a rapid change in pressure.

The theory has been around since 400BC when Hippocrates made a link between some illnesses and changing seasons, but modern science has been sceptical. This is partly because pain is impossible to measure and each individual describes it differently.

So the only way to be sure there is a link is to get an enormous number of people who suffer regular pain to record on a daily basis how they feel and compare it with the weather. That way exactly how much it hurts matters less than recording whether the level goes up or down with a change in meteorology.

This is exactly what Manchester University is doing with its Cloudy with a Chance of Pain project. Over 18 months patients with chronic pain are recording their daily pain symptoms while their smartphone GPS systems record the hourly weather.

So far 9,000 people have joined the project and interim results show a link between sunny days and rainfall levels. In three cities, Leeds, Norwich and London, as the sunny days increased between February and April this year the number of days spent in severe pain decreased – but went up again in June when the rain returned.

The hope is that if enough people join the project, the link between weather conditions and pain can be established. This will give researchers a chance to find new treatments and allow patients to plan their activities for low pain days.