Broken ribs, weather vane?

August 30, 2005 5:10 PM

Why do my broken ribs tell the weather?

A few years I broke my ribs in an incident. Now they hurt awfully bad before any new front comes in, which generally results in rain. This means I can pretty much expect rain in two to six hours after it feels like I've been kicked in the chest. Can anyone tell me exactly what's happening in my body? Obviously, it's related to a drop in barometric pressure, which means a front, which implies rain. However, why does the dropping pressure make my ribs hurt viscerally?

posted by sled to health & fitness (11 comments total)

This is wild speculation, but there could be air-bubbles in the bone where the crack happened, which change size based on ambient temperature. When size changes, the pressure on a nerve could be changing, signalling pain to your brain. But simply moving would cause more pressure change than the atmosphere could muster, so who knows.

Have you ruled out confirmation bias?
posted by clord at 5:47 PM on August 30, 2005

I'm pretty sure it's not because I want it to hurt, confirmation bias. When my ribs hurt, trust me, I can't hope for it - hurts too bad. It's really painful and I wouldn't be secretely wishing it. Reason I asked this question today is because I've been on really busy and active travel all week, haven't been online or checked the weather at all (or head verbally about it), and this morning my ribs hurt really bad inside a office building about 10AM, where I hadn't seen light of day since 6AM. Went out to lunch at noon at it was raining...

Wife doesn't exactly believe me, but as anyone with broken ribs will understand, it's a very personal pain that isn't understood.
posted by sled at 6:12 PM on August 30, 2005

My scars do the same thing. I have many scars, and when it's about to rain, my body just picks one at random to itch and hurt, doesn't matter if it's last week or 50 years.

A friend who had polio years back, says his doctor told him it's like the bends. When the barometric pressure drops, there are nitrogen bubbles that come out of your blood, and it happens first in the area of a scar, and that's why scars bother you before it rains.

It fits what I feel, but I got this second hand. Feel free to jump in if you have another theory.
posted by unrepentanthippie at 6:29 PM on August 30, 2005

Confirmation bias is not willing things into happening, but rather paying more attention to those co-occurrences which confirm your hypothesis and failing to notice those that don't -- so in this case it would be that when it rains after you have the pain, you notice it, and when it rains and you haven't had the pain (or the other way around), it slips your mind. I doubt that this is the case here, but wanted to clarify.
posted by redfoxtail at 7:48 PM on August 30, 2005

There is some research into such things. Probably slight air pressure changes do incite parts of your body to swell slightly, which you - being sensitized to it - can detect.
posted by jellicle at 7:57 PM on August 30, 2005

I broke my clavicle (collar bone) and it used to hurt/ache before a rain and in damp+cold conditions. It has been about 20 years since the break and the sensation has all but gone away.

I'm wont to agree with jellicle.
posted by shoepal at 10:24 PM on August 30, 2005

I don't know much about anatomy, but I seem to recall that the ribcage is under a certain amount of compressive stress, which gives it more structural strength - kind of like an archway. If the barometric pressure dropped, it might cause that amount of "preload" to change slightly, which could tweak the injured parts. Just a wild guess though.
posted by Rhomboid at 2:10 AM on August 31, 2005

I've got a weather knee, since I've dislocated the kneecap twice. I'm willing to bet it has something to do with the elasticity of scar tissue. My knee definitely hurts in a different way for rain than it does after I've run 5 miles.
posted by sciurus at 4:57 AM on August 31, 2005

Do you feel uncomfortable in airplanes or high altitudes? That'd help figure out if it's the drop in pressure.
posted by lorrer at 6:35 AM on August 31, 2005

Strangely, I get an allergy attack 4 or 5 hours before it rains. I always assumed it was due to the front stirring up particles.

As for your ribs, I would think that if it had something to do with encapsulated air bubbles, you would feel nothing. The density of your bone does not change due to atmospheric pressure, does it (I don't know, anyone? I assumed your bone was solid)? I would think this would have to be happening somewhere that was not encapsulated, such as inside your chest wall, your blood vessels or in your lungs (or maybe in micro cracks in your ribs that are not sealed off). Maybe you have a pocket of fluid in your lung or chest that squeezes tighter and presses nerves when the air pressure goes up. Just speculation here, thoughts?
posted by Pollomacho at 7:46 AM on August 31, 2005

Well, it might not be air bubbles, rather, it might be fluid in a crack.
When water finds its way into cracks in wood or cement, it causes the crack in the solid to grow over a long period of time. As the temperature changes, the water and the solid expand and contract at different rates. When the water grows faster (or shrinks slower) than the solid, it forces the crack open. But this occurs in nearly immeasurable increments over very long periods of time.
Most anything responds to heat and atmosphere by expanding or contracting slightly. Your rings, and even some articles of clothing, might fit differently depending on the humidity or temperature of a particular day.

Perhaps, during the healing process, some of your internal fluids found their way into a crack in your ribs and became trapped, or the break caused some sort of teeny cracks in the surface of your ribs. Since the various solids and liquids in our bodies expand and contract at slightly different rates (not usually enough for us to notice), maybe when the weather changes, your ribs, being thinner and more quickly responsive than other major bones, expand and contract rapidly and violently (relatively speaking, of course) around whatever fluid or moisture is attempting to penetrate them. Of course, this is happening on a very small scale and causing more pressure and discomfort than actual damage. Unlike other organic solids that become cracked because of moisture, your ribs can heal themselves. That might explain why, for some people, the "injury tells the weather" phenomenon goes away.
On the other hand, if you had permanent metal pins holding a bone in place, the phenomenon might not ever go away.
From what I've heard, the wound-forecasting tends to occur in bones like ribs, collarbones, knees and hands. These bones are close to the surface of your skin, and less insulated by your body's internal temperature, thus expanding and contracting more quickly than say, one's femur or humorous.

The same goes for scars. Perhaps the density of scar tissue is different than that of your normal skin. When the weather changes, they expand at different rates, causing an itching sensation.

But, I just made that up. It sounds pretty plausible, doesn't it? Maybe your doctor would know the answer.
posted by Jon-o at 2:20 PM on August 31, 2005