This and my acupressurist hearing about a study about weather afflictions on TV made me curious enough to search pubmed for "fibromyalgia weather".
My results from 7 articles, 2002-2021 show that it seems:
- it's likely a subgroup and an individual matter ("associated with emotional factors", e.g. stress). Research'll have to distinguish.
- most have more pain and stress as barometric pressure decreases, but some when it increases. Humidity only increased pain when the barometric pressure was higher. Barometric pressure in combination with temperature makes pain more intense, plus more unpleasant esp. when both are lower (less pressure, colder).
- good mood makes you more resistant, depressive or irritable temperament doesn't, whilst changeable or anxious temperament is worst.
- People having FM >10 years seem to be more resistant. But the following seems to partly contradict that:
- "Depression, anxiety, pain duration in years, hours of pain per day, number of pain-related diagnoses, and gender were additional predictors for weather sensitivity." (I couldn't get any deeper what they mean with this...)
- Hot/warm weather tends to trigger distress rather than pain in FM as opposed to CRPS, that and cold causing pain is more prevalent in these two than in other pain condtions. Pain from the cold is more common.
- Animal studies suggest it possibly has to do with cytokine pathways.
So like we experience it:
Barometric pressure in association partly with humidity and temperature seems to influence pain severity & unpleasantness.
And I'm not abnormal that I'm not that influenced by the weather, praps just a different subgroup and with a positive temperament.
Fagerlund et al 2019 (Blame it on the weather?), Oniszczenko, 2020 (Affective Temperaments) Berwick et al 2021 (A systematic review), Ten Brink, 2020 (Sensitivity...) as well as Haghighi et al. 2017 (Twitter), Bossema et al 2013 (Influence of weather), and Fors & Sexton (2002).