Does Weather Make Jaw Pain Worse? Poll Results
If you’ve been a part of a pain support group, Facebook page, or have read a blog by a chronic pain patient, you have probably seen comments discussing the weather and pain. Here at TMJ Hope, our Facebook page frequently contains comments from patients who are going through a rough flare-up, and many times they mention the weather being a factor. So we wondered…. does weather really make jaw pain worse? or is it just an old wive’s tale? Here is what we found…
559 chronic pain patients in four cities were surveyed by Dr. Robert N. Jamison and colleagues at Brigham and Women’s hospital in Boston. The findings revealed that “weather affects pain no matter where people live”. Dr. Jamison said, “the findings suggest that our bodies adjust to local climate and when changes happen in that climate, we react to them with an increase in pain.” He went on to further explain, “If you spend two weeks in Florida sipping pina coladas, you may feel a lot less pain than you did shoveling snow at home in Boston. But if you move to Florida, and your body adjusts to that climate, when the temperature drops, you may hurt just as much as you did when the weather changed in Boston.”
The take home here is that, possibly, instead of searching for a warm dry climate (like we’ve always thought), you should instead stay where you are (since your body has already adjusted) or look for an area that has a constant climate – one that does not change often.