It’s Fall here in the NW and the temperature is dropping fast as we near Halloween. Especially after such a hot summer that we’ve all had to adapt to, normal cold and rainy weather can feel like a big change.
One question I get in the fall as the weather starts to cool off is, “Is it normal to feel this much sorer in the cold?” or people tell me about how their ‘bad hip’ or ‘trick knee’ is starting to really ache all the time. Happens every fall and I find myself feeling the same things.
First off, you aren’t alone in this and it is very normal to experience this type of soreness in the cold. Our bodies are very sensitive to temperature and are constantly making changes to function in the most ideal way. When it’s hot, we sweat to cool down and our bodies actually push more blood to the surface so that we can radiate off heat(you can see your skin being redder around heat0), and make sure the temperature of our internal organs isn’t too high.
When it’s cold, the opposite happens, we pull blood into the core of the body to keep our organs warm and there is less near the surface(pale in the cold). We also shiver when especially cold to generate heat, and our muscle tension tends to be higher in general since muscle function is a quick way to warm up.
So imagine, you have some old injury in the knee that has left some scar tissue or mild arthritis in the joint. It doesn’t bother you all the time, just when you ‘overdo it’, or when it’s cold, and maybe you can even feel the weather change coming on by the pain increasing. Well, that just makes sense because our body is combatting the cold by generating heat with muscle function and that tension from the muscles is applying pressure to the joint which may already get irritated more easily.
The best way to combat this sort of ache is to increase your body temperature and stretch the affected muscles. Something as simple as Low impact workouts like walking and yoga are plenty to increase body temperature and get some dynamic stretch in the muscles. I am a big fan of this yoga routine and it only takes 10 minutes at the end of your day to unwind that tension you’ve built up in the cold.
Maybe you feel more pain than you feel just the cold weather should cause or stretch and heat isn’t cutting it. If that is the case, get in touch with us, and let’s create a plan to increase your mobility and decrease pain. Remember, a chiropractor can work on almost every joint in your body, have a great Fall!