Winter, a fatal season for back pain?

Who hasn't heard that wet weather is bad for rheumatism? Or his grandmother predicting bad weather by a sudden worsening of his back pain? The popular belief that the weather influences musculoskeletal diseases is widespread.

However, contrary to popular belief, back pain is not aggravated by bad weather and is not even related to the weather.

What the research says

In 2014, a team of Australian researchers published a major study to assess the relationship between weather conditions and the occurrence of lower back pain. ⁽¹⁾

Between October 2011 and September 2012, 993 patients with acute low back pain participated in this initiative. They had to communicate to the researchers the date of occurrence of their painful episode. At the same time, the researchers collected data from the Australian Bureau of Meteorology. They then compared the weather conditions from when the patient first felt pain, with the weather conditions a week and then a month before.

Their conclusions? There is no relationship between sudden and acute episodes of low back pain and temperature, humidity, air pressure, wind direction, or precipitation. Strong winds could barely influence, with an effect considered relatively small by the study.

Winter, an aggravating factor for back pain?

In 2016, a new team of researchers, once again Australian, studied the medical records of 1604 patients in order to verify the potential existence of links between the different elements of the weather and the painful intensity of acute low back pain ⁽²⁾.

They therefore recorded and rated the patients' pain daily, on a scale of 0 to 10, for two weeks. By comparing this data with information collected from the Australian Bureau of Meterology over the period concerned, the researchers were unable to observe a relationship between weather conditions and the onset or intensity of pain.

They conclude: "Contrary to popular belief, the results showed that the meteorological parameters of precipitation, temperature, humidity and air pressure did not influence the intensity of pain reported by the patient during an episode of acute low back pain."

So why this belief?

In 2017, two new studies have again challenged this well-established myth. The first compared visits from patients dependent on Medicare (Medicare is a U.S. federal program that provides health coverage for people over 65 or with a severe disability regardless of income.) over 65 consulting for joint pain or back pain with rainfall ⁽³⁾. The second compared the weather conditions of the same day and the 2 days preceding a painful episode in 981 patients ⁽⁴⁾.

For both studies, the same conclusion was always the same: the impossibility of weaving a relationship between the weather and the occurrence of low back pain.

But while scientists can't find a link between weather and back pain, they can't prove the absence of that link either. Thus, some put forward the hypothesis of a "psychological" origin of pain. Others cite contextual reasons, such as decreased activity when the weather is bad. It would be inactivity, rather than cold and wetness, that would exacerbate the pain. The absence of a link would also be less significant for pain caused by pathologies such as lumbar osteoarthritis. One thing is certain: the debate is far from over.