When the Weather Turns

Some care recipients find changes in the weather genuinely hard, and in the group’s words, cannot seem to cope. A front moves through and the whole day tilts. Everyone in the room who has lived with this knew exactly what was meant, and it was a relief, for some, to hear that it was not only their household.

It is not imagined. It is also more than one thing, which is part of why it is so hard to manage.

Pain Really Does Follow the Weather

For a long time, “my knees can tell it’s going to rain” was treated as folklore. Then researchers at the University of Manchester asked people with chronic pain to log their symptoms daily on their phones while the app recorded the local weather. More than 13,000 people signed up, and 2,658 of them kept it going for around six months.

On damp, windy days with low air pressure, the chance of having a more painful day was about 20% higher than on an average day. Humidity mattered most. Temperature on its own, surprisingly, did not (Cloudy with a Chance of Pain, University of Manchester, 2019).

Pain that rises without an obvious cause tends to show up as irritability, restlessness, or withdrawal, especially in someone who cannot easily say what hurts.

Shorter Days and Dementia

The light matters too, and the timing is relevant: daylight saving time ends on Sunday, November 1.

The Alzheimer’s Association notes that any change to routine can bring confusion for someone living with dementia, and that shorter days can intensify sundowning, the late-day restlessness, anxiety, and disorientation many of you know well. Some people who have not had sundowning before begin to as the evenings darken (Alzheimer’s Association, via WVXU).

Their suggestions, offered as options rather than rules:

• Saving the activities that take the most out of everyone for the morning or early afternoon.
• Keeping waking, meals, and bedtime as steady as possible.
• Time outside in daylight, when it is possible.
• Brighter light in the evening, with less stimulation: less television, fewer chores, quieter music.
• Around the clock change itself, letting the person wake when they naturally wake, rather than forcing the new time on day one.

The Weather Changes Our Day Too

What the research does not cover is the caregiver’s side. A rainy week can mean cancelled outings, a house that feels smaller by the hour, and a person who is hurting and unsettled with nowhere for either of you to go. Many of us have our own aches on those days, too.

The group has talked about the disappointment of plans that collapse at the last minute in Recognizing Disappointment When Plans Change, and about how a small thing becomes the last straw when the margins are already thin in Thin Margins. A hard weather day is often exactly that kind of small thing.