Does your Fibromyalgia flare with seasonal or weather changes? | Support Fibromyalgia Live

Is there a link between Fibromyalgia and Weather/Seasonal Changes?

What have you noticed? How do you take care of this when it happens?

Some patients with Fibromyalgia have reported that they are more sensitive to changes in the weather, to bright lights, noise etc. Some studies report that barometric pressure affected Fibromyalgia pain positively while yet others find no association.

A 2013 study published in Arthritis Care & Research involved 333 women with fibromyalgia. They had the women answer daily questions about their pain and fatigue, then compared them to meteorological data. Researchers found a "significant but small" effect on pain or fatigue in five (10%) of the 50 different weather comparisons they performed. They also found significant but small and inconsistent differences between participants when it came to random effects of weather variables. They concluded that there's no uniform impact of weather on symptoms, but left open the possibility that weather could have an effect on some, saying: "These findings do not rule out the possibility that weather-symptom relationships may exist for individual patients. Some patients may be more sensitive to weather or weather changes than other patients, and some patients may also be affected positively and other patients affected negatively by specific weather conditions."

A 2015 study in The Journal of Rheumatology suggests a relationship between humidity and joint pain in osteoarthritis, with humidity in cold weather having a greater impact than in warm weather. There is a definitive association between flare up of rheumatoid arthritis symptoms and weather changes. A wetter and colder climate usually affects arthritis pain adversely. Low back pain worsens with weather and so does osteoarthritis pain due to changes in humidity and temperatures.

A 2010 Rheumatology study found that cold weather was associated with more pain, including chronic widespread pain. Researchers stated that, as you'd expect, winter was the worst season, followed by autumn and spring, and that summer was the best season.



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