Study participants who frequently complained of migraines, the study notes, lived within a 10 km radius of a local meteorological observatory. The daily average and monthly average barometric pressure data of the local Utsunomiya Meteorological Observatory were obtained through the meteorological office website. By comparing the reports of the participants in the experiment with data from a nearby weather station, Kimoto found that headaches often coincided with a drop in atmospheric pressure.
Migraine frequency increased when the difference in barometric pressure from the day the headache occurred to the next day was lower by more than 5 hPa, and decreased when the difference in barometric pressure from the day the headache occurred to two days later was greater than 5 hPa.
Of the 28 patients, changes in weather were associated with the development of migraine in 18 (64%) patients, 14 of whom reported low barometric pressure as a cause of headache.
As a result, Kimoto concluded that changes in barometric pressure may be one of the factors that aggravate migraines.
His version is confirmed by another study by Japanese scientists who studied how sales of painkillers change as atmospheric pressure drops – after analyzing the statistics, they came to the conclusion that sales of headache medications grew noticeably as soon as the weather turned bad
“We found that the share of sales increased as average barometric pressure decreased, as did precipitation, average humidity, and minimum humidity on purchase days. [лекарств] compared to the previous day. This study, using a large data set that was easy to collect and representative of the general population, found that sales, which may reflect the onset and worsening of headaches, increased significantly with worsening weather conditions,” the report said.
