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# Eleven million visits, and the rain did not show up
- URL: https://the-health-brief.ghost.io/eleven-million-visits-and-the-rain-did-not-show-up/
- Published: 2026-09-04T14:00:36.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-04T14:00:35.000Z
- Description: My hands are certain a storm is coming. The records disagree, politely.
- Author: Walt Brennan
- Tags: Hands

| Feel-good Friday Carol has stopped asking the forecast. She asks my hands. It has become a joke in this house… and like most jokes it is half believed. My knuckles ache, I say something about weather coming, and often enough it comes. Half of Maine will tell you the same. My father said it. His mother said it. Hippocrates said it, which is a long run for any idea. So I went looking for the study that would prove us all right. And I want to walk you through what I found instead, because the honest answer here has two halves. A quick question · tap to answer Can your joints feel the weather coming? No wrong answer, and I am on your side here. Tap one and just press send. [Yes, reliably](mailto:thehealthbrief01@gmail.com?subject=Weather%3A%20yes&body=Yes%2C%20reliably.) [Sometimes](mailto:thehealthbrief01@gmail.com?subject=Weather%3A%20sometimes&body=Sometimes.) [No](mailto:thehealthbrief01@gmail.com?subject=Weather%3A%20no&body=No.) The big one In 2017 a team led by Anupam Jena at Harvard did something you can only do with a very large filing cabinet. They took Medicare records for more than eleven million older Americans and looked at over eleven million visits to primary care doctors between 2008 and 2012. Then they matched every visit to the rainfall that day. About 18% of those visits fell on rainy days. If rain sets joints aching, more people should turn up complaining of joints and backs when it rains. So here are the two numbers. Rainy days brought 6.35% of visits involving joint or back pain. Dry days brought 6.39%. That is not a small difference. That is no difference at all… and it went into the BMJ. Their line was that sore joints may be unreliable forecasters. Nor is it the only one Australian researchers followed 345 people with knee arthritis and watched for pain flares against temperature, humidity, air pressure and rainfall. No association. Another group tracked 981 people with back pain for a month. No association. A review of nine long-running studies of rheumatoid arthritis found no link with temperature, humidity or barometric pressure either. So that is four goes at it, from three directions, and the answer keeps coming back the same. Now the other half But I promised you two halves, and here is where I part company with the headlines. The Harvard authors were careful in a way the newspapers were not. Their study was observational. They had no measure of how bad anyone's arthritis was. Nor could they see who took a painkiller and stayed home instead of booking a visit. They wrote, in plain words, that a relationship may still exist. There is a second problem, and it is the one I keep coming back to. That study counted doctor visits, not aches. It compared groups, not people. It cannot tell you what your own hands do on a Tuesday. What the evidence does say Across millions of records and thousands of tracked patients, weather does not move joint pain at the level you can measure in a population. If you were told your hands are a barometer, that claim is not holding up. What it does not say It does not say you are imagining it. Averages hide individuals, clinic visits are a poor stand-in for pain, and the authors themselves left the door open. If cold and damp make your hands worse, dress for it and carry on. So I have stopped announcing the weather. I still notice my knuckles on a wet morning… and I no longer draw a line between the two. Anyway, that is the hands week, and it comes to four things. The base of the thumb is the joint that usually quits first, and two minutes of slow range twice a day buys a small, honest gain. The lumps on your finger joints are spurs of bone, they record wear rather than predict ruin, and they often do not hurt at all. A thumb splint beats nothing but did not beat good advice and exercise in the best trial we have. And the very first line of the European guideline is not a drug. It is changing the doorknob. Four days, and not one of them cost more than about fifty dollars or asked you to believe anything I could not source. One tap below decides where we go on Monday. When to stop and call your doctor Weather is not a warning sign. These are. Get a hand or any joint looked at if it turns hot, red and swollen, if morning stiffness runs past an hour in both hands, if a joint gives way or locks, or if you get numbness that wakes you at night. Sudden severe pain in one joint needs same day advice. Quick poll · tap to answer Where does it hurt most? Tap the spot that troubles you most. It sets where we start on Monday. Just press send. [Back](mailto:thehealthbrief01@gmail.com?subject=Hurts%3A%20back&body=My%20back.) [Neck](mailto:thehealthbrief01@gmail.com?subject=Hurts%3A%20neck&body=My%20neck.) [Hips](mailto:thehealthbrief01@gmail.com?subject=Hurts%3A%20hips&body=My%20hips.) [Knees](mailto:thehealthbrief01@gmail.com?subject=Hurts%3A%20knees&body=My%20knees.) [Hands](mailto:thehealthbrief01@gmail.com?subject=Hurts%3A%20hands&body=My%20hands.) I read every reply. Here is to a dry weekend, whatever my knuckles say,**Walt** |
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