Weather and Chronic Pain
Many Bertolotti Syndrome sufferers believe that the weather has an effect on when their symptoms flare up. While research has produced inconclusive results on the influence of weather on chronic musculoskeletal pain, it appears that this is a common symptom for many people with Bertolotti Syndrome.
Why Some People With Bertolotti Syndrome Feel Worse Before Weather Changes
☁️If the pressure is dropping, the storm may be coming. Falling pressure causes expansion of the soft tissues, including joints. This can stimulate sensitive nerve fibers and result in increased low back and SI joint pain, radiating leg pain, heightened nerve sensitivity, and increased stiffness.
Evidence suggests that falling pressure is a trigger for increased low back pain and SI joint pain in some chronic pain patients, including patients with musculoskeletal disorders such as Bertolotti syndrome.
💧 High humidity may also be a pain trigger. Humid air (which often accompanies storms or drops in atmospheric pressure) can make you feel uncomfortable. You might feel joint pain, stiff muscles, a lack of energy and reduced mobility due to humidity because humidity has been found to contribute to pain and stiffness in some people living with chronic pain.
❄️Muscles can contract during cold weather, and connective tissue can become stiff. Movement may be decreased, leading to muscle spasms, reduced range of motion, and increased back pain. Low temperatures may be a pain trigger in some chronic pain patients.
In patients like me with a chronic pain state and a history of persistent back pain, a rapidly changing environment and the associated drop in pressure could trigger a hyper-reaction in the nervous system.
⚡This would increase pain pathways and increase pain intensity. This might include sensations of burning or worsening sciatica without any new physical injury or tissue damage to the lumbar spine. Increased pain severity is driven by sensitization of the nervous system, and this is associated with the weather conditions, studies show. You may experience low back and SI joint pain, increased hip or buttock pain, sciatica, muscle spasms, sleep disturbance😴, and stiffness when pain is triggered by a change in the weather. However, sleep disturbance itself increases chronic pain severity in a vicious cycle.
🌕I have also found that some chronic pain patients report that they get worse during the full moon.
✔ Stiffness
✔ Tingling
✔ Fatigue
This could be due to changes in quality of sleep, fatigue, or an awareness of symptoms. In fact, clinical trials have not shown that pain is worse during a full moon in patients with Chronic Pain Syndromes.
💡 Reminder: Weather does not cause Bertolotti Syndrome; but it may influence how you experience your symptoms. Keeping a symptom diary that includes weather changes may help you identify your unique triggers.