Your Grandmother was right!
Yes she was…at least when she said that the weather makes a difference to her health and wellbeing. And now, we can tell you what tomorrow’s weather is going to do to you… IF you have MIGRAINE, ARTHRITIS, ASTHMA, HEART DISEASE or DIABETES. ( see www.mediclim.com)
BIOMETEOROLOGY is a branch of science that relates the weather to human health. The first North American book on the topic was published by Dr.W.F. Petersen in 1938 and was entitled “The Patient and the Weather.” It took him four volumes to say what your grandmother says in a few well chosen words.
In 1950’s interest in the subject was renewed in Germany and Holland. There is a wrinkle however to what your grandma told you…they found that comparing one parameter alone, such as temperature or humidity with changes in human health never produced reliably repeatable statistically valid results.
However when the weather is characterised as the combination of several meteorological measurements, viewed over the timespan of a week or so, comparison with health outcomes does produce statistically sound findings. This technique is known as synoptic weather analysis. From this understanding came a German weather/health forecast fore every large town or city, on a daily basis in the 1980’s. Was it valued? Sure. Their trial effort, a telephone number advertized to the public, resulted in 1.9million calls in one year.
I, a family doc, and a friend, Denis Bourque, who for his sins is a meteorologist, have taken advantage of the Internet and its popularity. We provide a free service, offering email alerts to sufferers of migraine, arthritis,asthma diabetes and heart disease, is now available for people in Eire, the U.K., Canada and the continental U.S.A. Subscribers’ anonymity is preserved since they need only provide their email address and postal code. They are warned the day before the weather will impact unfavourably on more of these health problems. Synoptic weather analysis, coupled with data showing weather pattern effects on the five conditions mentioned, underpins our small but we think valuable public health effort.
How valuable is your grandmother’s insight?
In Canadian dollars… in1996 stats.. if everyone who went to the doctor that year and then had lab work and a script had NOT gone just once the money saved would have been $1.4billion dollars…that’s the amount that was spent on medical research in Canada that year.
SO… if you want a heads up, to be forewarned and so forearmed about the weather and what it’ll do to you please go to www.mediclim.com
John Bart
Related posts:
- Canada Calling
- The uniformity of life and who really owns the planet
- The cost of transport and the cost of watching rugby in Canada
- Message from the freezer.
- Solar-powered community
- Doctors warn of ‘world catastrophe’
