14 DAY TRIAL // Most of us have heard others say that the weather is killing them, something scientists may have been inclined to laugh about. Now, they are dead serious. An impressive study, conducted on more than 7,000 individuals, has proven that there is, indeed, a direct connection between air pollution, bad weather, high temperatures, and the general state of health that people have. And while some may not feel these influences so bad, others, especially the elderly, are forced to remain in bed every time the atmospheric pressure drops or the weather worsens.
Researchers at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) have formed the first team to conduct a large-scale study on this issue, and they have concluded, among other things, that higher temperatures and low barometric pressures favor the onset of painful headaches in predisposed individuals. These types of pains can also be triggered by other factors, such as the wrong kind of foods, alcohol consumption, stress and high hormone levels. The goal of the team has been to learn if the weather can be included in this list of “triggers” on a scientific basis.
“Migraine headaches affect a large proportion of the population. Approximately 18 percent of women and 6 percent of men in the U.S. report having migraine headaches, particularly young and middle-aged adults,” the first author of the study, Kenneth Mukamal, MD, MPH, who is also a physician at the BIDMC's Division of General Medicine and Primary Care and an associate professor of Medicine at the Harvard Medical School, says.
“Air temperature, humidity and barometric pressure are among the most frequent reasons that people give for their headache pain. But none of these reasons have been consistently verified. We wanted to find out if we could verify this 'clinical folklore.' We also wanted to determine whether air pollutants trigger headaches, much as they have been found to trigger strokes. Certainly, our results are consistent with the idea that severe headaches can be triggered by external factors. These findings help tell us that the environment around us does affect our health and, in terms of headaches, may be impacting many, many people on a daily basis,” he shares.
“On a population basis, we need to be concerned about incremental temperature rises anyhow, and should advocate for responsible environmental management. The annual cost attributed to migraines is estimated at $17 billion, millions of people are adversely affected and the public health implications may be enormous,” Mukamal concludes by saying.