EP 125: The Weather and Barometric Pressure Problem: Why Your Symptoms Spike When the Storm Rolls In

Sorry, guys.

Okay.

Through my research... versus like, for this thing, I'm like, guys, are you loving this? I'm like pulling out more studies, all the things for you.

Changes in atmospheric pressure trigger neurological symptoms through what we think of are three mechanisms, okay? After a concussion, the brain's ability to buffer these changes is compromised, okay? So in a healthy brain that hasn't been impacted by concussion, these things happen, but the brain has the ability to adjust and shift and buffer and just kind of absorb the change and continue forward.

But after concussion, these mechanisms are struggling, right? We don't have the same energy.

We don't have the same capacities or reserves.

And so we start to notice these things.

So one...

What is barometric pressure? We hear the term a lot.

There's apps.

This is one of your tools.

There's apps that can track barometric pressure changes.

There's an earplug that actually helps with this too.

I just got to try to remember the name before the end of this episode.

But atmospheric pressure is the weight of the air column above us.

Thank you, Google.

But it constantly fluctuates with weather systems, right? So when we get stormy, when it gets really humid, all those things.

And it will drop before storms, and then it'll rise again as we clear, right? So for most people, when they talk about, oh my gosh, I have a headache, like a storm is rolling in, it's that drop of barometric pressure that increases that headache for most people, right? So again, for people like myself, it doesn't bother me.

But for people with concussion, it can absolutely be symptom-provoking.

So the persistent concussion brain can have impaired cerebrovascular autoregulation.

What does that mean? The brain struggles with how it regulates blood flow.

That's about it.

And normally inside our brain, there's an internal system that regulates when our external blood pressure changes, the pressures in our brain change and vice versa, right? And so the system that normally buffers that intracranial pressure from external changes is impaired.

I'm not going to say it's damaged.

It's just impaired.