How Your Body Forecasts Changes in the Weather


How many times have you heard someone complain that they feel “under the weather” or knew a storm was coming by the "way their bones felt?" No doubt about it… Weather affects all of us in one way or another, but some people seem more strongly bothered by the weather than others. Which begs the question: Can the human body actually forecast a change in the weather?

A biometeorologist is someone who studies how the daily and seasonal changes in the weather influence both humans and animals. These "weather-biologists" say that while changes in the weather affect everybody, about one in three people are extremely sensitive to these changes and that they may express one or more of over forty different symptoms associated with changing weather.

For instance, pains in the joints or other parts of the body that precede a change in weather have been known since the times of ancient Greece. Rheumatism sufferers are the most affected—sometimes up to two days ahead of the changes in the weather. Many people with fractures, dislocations, burns, and even chafed areas or corns have a sort of weather barometer "in their bones." Other symptoms that accompany weather changes in sensitive people are migraine headaches, back pain, upset stomach, irritability, loss of appetite, severe depression, feelings of uneasiness, and so on.

In truth, it’s more than likely that the sensitivity people experience with changes in the weather is a function of their own physiological makeup. Generally speaking, people who are overly sensitive to the weather tend to suffer from chronic diseases, and thus, they react with pain to barometric changes.

Perhaps the most stressful weather condition is the passing of cold and warm fronts. A cold front coming through your “neck of the woods” means more than just a drop in temperature. It also means complex changes in the barometric pressure, wind direction, humidity, and even pollutants that may be carried into a forecast area. All of these changes affect our bodies, our endocrine systems, our nervous systems, and our cardiovascular systems.

Fortunately, for people in good health, fronts may only cause temporary feelings of discomfort. But for the person whose system is weakened, or who has undergone surgery, or has high blood pressure, this feeling of discomfort can become something much more critical. Heart attacks often accompany weather front passages, and in general any disease aggravated by stress increases in intensity when a front goes by.

While a healthy person does not react as severely to the passing of a front as does a "weather-sensitive" person, all people experience many physiological changes that are being constantly modified by the climate and weather. Some of the changes include:

-- Blood clotting, which occurs faster just before a front passes.

-- Fibrinolysis, or the dissolving of blood clots, which increases after the passage of cold fronts.

-- The amount of urine passed increases when cold fronts are passing and decreases when a warm front has passed.

-- The blood-sugar level is changed by the passage of a front, as are the levels of calcium, phosphates, sodium, and magnesium in the bloodstream.

-- The amount of blood in the body decreases and the blood sedimentation rate is lower after the passage of a cold front.

-- White blood cells increase in number when the barometer falls sharply.

To better understand how weather can affect your body and, consequently, your health, it’s important to look at some of the inner workings of the body as they relate to weather.

First and foremost, there's a portion of your brain called the Hypothalamus. It controls digestion, water retention in the body, how we sleep, and our body temperature. The front part of the hypothalamus tells us when to lose heat by making us sweat and opening up our blood capillaries to cool us off. The back part of the hypothalamus can make the capillaries contract which helps keep our body heat in.

In older and sick people, the hypothalamus does not always function properly. This is why these people seem to chill so easily in the winter or become overheated in the summer. The hypothalamus also controls such functions as appetite and sleeping. This might help to explain why weather, which affects the hypothalamus, can also make a person lose his appetite or have trouble getting to sleep.

Associated with the hypothalamus is the Pituitary gland, a pea-sized endocrine gland at the base of the brain which controls the body's metabolism in cold and hot weather. It, too, regulates the water level in our body for heating and cooling. The posterior part of the pituitary also regulates the temperature of the body as the temperature changes. It's responsible for blood temperature, the perspiration process, and opening and closing the pores of the skin during hot and cold weather.

So, the next time you hear a weather proverb such as the following: “when your joints all start to ache, rainy weather is at stake“, remember… the way the body responds to a change in the weather is generally dependent on one’s level of health, both physical and emotional.

Weather Tid Bit:
If a place over the Earth's surface is heated more,the air above the place becomes warm, rises and expands. So the density of the air becomes less leading to the reduction of the atmospheric pressure. This is because, pressure is nothing but the weight of the overlying air column above a place and this weight becomes less when he air is warm leading to less pressure.