One for the biologists here.

My wife has a long term back injury, and whenever it’s cold, raining, wet or just “damp”, she will say that the damp is making her back hurt. I hear other people saying the same thing - blaming the damp for exacerbating a joint problem.

The problem for me is how “the damp” is getting into a joint - through the various tissue layers and cartilage and whatever else is in the way to have this effect. Given that the body is around 75% water anyway, you’d wonder how the few molecules that get through could cause such problems.

So, what actually is the cause for this? It does seem that it can be certain weather types where this phrase is used more often - or is it a a case of coincidence being mistaken for a cause, and the increased discomfort would have happened anyway, but people connect it to the weather?

I don’t know the answer to it myself, but I kind of feel that there are other forces at work which are not meteorological.

Damp air conducts heat better. Unless it is really hot, the body will lose heat faster at the surface.

Could you buy a dehumidifier for the house?

It's not that kind of damp. The "damp" I am referring to is the kind that people talk about when it's foggy, or raining, as in "damp winter morning".

There is no evidence that this happens. The joints are essentially supposed to be sealed. The other theory is that when the weather is crap, the air pressure drops causing the joint pressure to changed. Agan, joint fluid is incompressible and doesn't change with pressure.

The prevailing thought is that it is psychological in origin. We know that people have a lower pain threshold when they are unhappy. The change in weather can alter a person's mood sufficiently to make the notice the pain.

It might also be that the persons is not distracted by other events and so concentrates on something that is worrying them like a joint. Though whether this is psychosomatic or just increases sensitivity to some pain is down to the individual. All I know is that when I distract myself with something I do not notice other signals my body is sending like I am hungry.


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Is the pain eased with warmth, eg going to bed?

The cold makes my shoulders hurt.

My mother's getting injections in her shoulder so I must ask if the weather affects it.

I have 'weather' ribs, but they mostly only indicate a change in pressure rather than any particular weather conditions. I guess if things have been fine and are about to get damp then my ribs would warn me just the same, but I don't associate it only with a degradation in the weather, it works equally well when things are about to get lovely as well.