Many people think the weather affects their back pain, but a new study shows they are probably wrong. Australian researchers studied 993 cases of sudden, acute back pain in primary care clinics in 2011 and 2012.
They gathered weather information from Australia?s Bureau of Meteorology. Then they compared the weather when each patient first noticed back pain to the weather one week before and one month before.
The study, published online in Arthritis Care & Research, found no association of temperature, relative humidity, barometric pressure or precipitation with episodes of pain. Wind speed and gusts were associated with a slight increase in the risk of back pain, but the effect was not clinically significant.
