Scientists Claim Link Between Cold Weather And Back Pain Is Nonexistent

Scientists are saying the old wives' tale that back pain is affected by the weather is a bunch of hot air. The back pain levels of over 1,000 Australians were measured by researchers at the University of Sydney, who gathered their results by comparing the weather when participants first noticed pain with the weather a week and month earlier. With air pressure, wind direction, humidity and rain taken into account, scientists could find no links found between the subjects' pain and concurrent weather patterns.

This combats the widely held belief that cool weather can make a bad back worse. Researchers were pretty confident with their results, but conceded the study's location of Sydney, Australia, isn’t an area with extreme climate changes. Dailymail writes that other conditions such as fibromyalgia, rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis were not factored into the study. More research would be needed to effectively give the claim more weight.

I’m happy they’re admitting their fault in the study, but I’m still kind of mad they called my grandma a liar with this somewhat bogus information. Granny is not so innocent, however, as she also spread a story about the common cold that just isn’t true. Remember when you were a kid playing out in the snow, and she told you to come in before you catch a cold? Yeah that’s completely false.

You can’t catch a cold from the cold weather, as colds are viruses spread between people. Rest assured if you stay outside for too long, you’re definitely going to be cold and possibly hypothermic, but no sniffles will set in. So why, then, do you find yourself getting more sick in the winter? This video explains it a lot better than I can…

Perhaps before they start trying to discredit Granny, scientists should look for the common factors between back pain and cold weather. Perhaps by focusing on the common activities we partake in during cold weather, they can figure out why exactly so many people claim to experience more intense pain in the cold.