 United States, including a mid-Atlantic, desert southwest & extreme northern with barely 6 hours of daylight during winter & 200+ inches of snow; and now the midwest aka tornado alley. I wonder if such a study could be performed here in the midwest US where we have more extremes in weather.
We’re right about this now, just like we were 30 years when we were told our fibro symptoms were all in our heads or 40 years ago regarding PMS, premenstrual syndrome.
On reading the replys written to your letter, I have wondered why there were no more responses. I then realized that many of us (not simply an individual) who suffer from fibromyalgia and the severe pain at the change of the barometer didn’t not feel this even dignified a response.
As another person stated this research by your admission of it’s contents no where really represents fibromyalgia patients and the pain they suffer at the time of a weather change. I could easily present more than 300 fibro patients in England, (where the weather is becoming more changeable as the years go by), who can definitely tell you weather change has a major impact on there pain levels.
With millions suffering fibromyalgia around the round 300 people saying that weather doesn’t effect there fibro is way to small a sample to use to publish such results as you have.
England where the weather is variable almost on a daily basis. Then you can say your result are accurate.
I have arthritis and asthma and both those conditions seem to be impacted by the weather. (In fact, I was in a study when I was a child in which I was paired with another child in Michigan had sudden severe asthma as I did — and my doctor felt the need to warn my mother to observe me closely as the weather changed. My “match” had a severe attack and actually died. I was hospitalized and nearly died, apparently as the weather changed in our area. Perhaps as a result of my doctor’s careful monitoring and his expression of concern, I didn’t die).
I do wonder if secondary conditions may play a role in this “weather-sensing.”  That was his view, but I’m not sure it’s a scientifically accurate view. Just food for thought.
I also have sleep apnea, of which my fibromyalgia is apparently a secondary condition. When I had my apnea treated, I was surprised not to have the “roaming” pain that I associate with Fibromyalgia. My doctors seemed only mildly surprised as sleep seems to be a central issue in fibromyalgia. They called it “sleep-deprivation-induced fibromyalgia” although rather informally — as they quickly added that they don’t know for sure what causes fibromyalgia.
I am not worried about being ‘invalidated’ by the study results and I thank the researchers for doing the study and most especially for their reply. For me, personally, I fall back on my co-morbidities for an explanation of the weather’s effect.
I notice that “healthy” people also complain about feeling the changes in weather. Headaches are common in our office before severe weather.
Who knows? It’s good the research was done. Maybe it will be replicated. Maybe someone else will see an intricacy that was missed. I’d love someone to explain to me why I have to look up the word “intricacy” when I never used to have troubles with spelling. Heh. I’m sure there’s a lot that will remain unexplained and confusing. If there’s one thing I’m sure of, it’s that fibromyalgia is not a “straight-forward” sort of illness.
I have personally talked to 3 times as many patients and I have never met ONE who didn’t notice a substantial change in adverse weather conditions. Some felt it before the weather set in, others, after. Some felt it in a severe way, others, mild. Some, only during winter storms, others, thunderstorms, and yet others, every storm.
If you still have to stand by your findings and don’t believe them to be flawed, maybe you should research doctors who would almost always agree with you. They didn’t believe their patients either. Studies like this, which do not listen to the patient, is the exact reason fybro was just recently consider a real disease.
As a scientist, and as a person with fibromyalgia who is affected by certain weather patterns, what this result says to me is that there could be specific “subgroups” of people who are very affected by the weather. Because the inclusion criteria probably did not parse these people out according to whether they self-identified themselves as being weather-sensitive, and/or possibly had co-occurring rheumatic diseases such as osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, etc., which may have been undiagnosed although symptomatic, the weather-sensitives may have been “diluted out” by inclusion of so many others who, as the study notes, ON AVERAGE, were not weather-sensitive.
Also, I want to take a minute to point out that a single person’s symptoms are not necessarily reflective of an average composite symptom profile that is reported in a study. This is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT, as noted in the reply above. This concept is often forgotten or minimized, frankly quite often by doctors who themselves prescribe medications and then dismiss a patient’s reporting of specific side effects, because the specific side effect was not listed on the “AVERAGE” table of side effects for a clinical study of a drug.
Basically, this study and the author’s reply suggest to me that we need to do a better job of diagnosing co-morbid conditions such as arthritis, Sjogren’s, lupus, etc., AND further refining the diagnostic criteria for fibromyalgia. As I see it, from all the support groups I belong to, fibromyalgia is basically a SYNDROME, rather than a specific disease. The symptoms range so far and wide it is really hard to find commonalities among those having fibromyalgia, except that we all experience pain and fatigue in some way. More research is needed. This is a good start but please, for the sake of us patients, keep going!
I’m even more confused now then I was before. I believe it was stated in the initial article that the patients were studied for 28 days and now in your response you state that they were studied during all four seasons. I’m a little confused as to how that could be. I worked in the medical field and mental health field for many years as a Social Worker and have read numerous studies over the years, my son in fact participated in one at Vanderbilt University Medical Center when he was a child so I do have an understanding of how detailed the content is. If these patients participated for 28 days at different times during the year then in my humble opinion the study is flawed.
The study should have been conducted over a 12 month period of time, with individuals that live in different climates and altitudes. I realize this will more than likely never be done but as an individual that suffers with numerous serious medical conditions with amazingly Fibromyalgia being the least of my “worries” it does make me very angry when I see articles such as yours published because it does make those of us that do suffer with pain on a daily basis appear to be “faking” our conditions when in fact we live in hell on a daily basis.
@ Julie. “Enhanced sensitivity to everything …” To me, this phenomenon is more likely to be an “effect” rather than a “cause”. This is the very point that I was hoping Ercolie would address – how to distinguish causes from effects when researching this complex condition.
Why not spring? Since spring is the time of year that most countries experience the most amount of rainfall. And only 28 days? It doesn’t seem enough. I’ve experienced, just this year, multiple times when the weather didn’t change for a while and then bounced all over the map for a few weeks and then settled down again before bouncing all around. I know this isn’t a technical response, but I think that 300 WOMEN (why weren’t men involved with the study) of a certain age group (if I remember correctly) experiencing different weather at different times of year and coming to a conclusion based on their report of 28 days?? It doesn’t seem consistent, or broad enough or long enough to determine anything. The original article reported that the findings weren’t consistent enough and so you discarded them as coincidence. That also doesn’t seem to be a very scientific method of investigation. Where was the control group? Where were the people who had rheumatic conditions that DO experience weather related pain increases? In my opinion there should have been 3 groups; one without rheumatic conditions, one with, and one with fibromyalgia. All should have had both male and female of varying age ranges, and the study should have been done for a longer period of time and during each of the four seasons. Not just three. It seems to me that a lot of information was ignored during the study.
I agree with the study, while many of the people I know in support groups proclaim changing weather affects them they also have other conditions such as arthritis. I see people say they can “feel it in their joints” but from what I have been told and have learned FM is not in our joints its more in our muscles. I have arthritis in my lower back and that’s the only area that experiences pain during weather changes.
@John- FM is caused by enhanced sensitivity to everything including pain and fatigue. Why the trigger points are so painful: enhanced sensitivity. Also why many have heightened smell, taste, hearing, and