研究指出 关节痛和是否下雨没有关系

Are you one of those people who can tell when a storm is approaching based on your achy knees? Well, you may think you are.

你是那种可以根据自己的膝盖来判断暴风雨即将来临的人吗？你认为你是这样的。

But a new study of more than 1.5 million seniors finds no relationship between rainfall and doctor visits for pain.

但一项针对超过150万老年人的新研究发现，降雨天气和医生就诊之间并没有关系。

The idea that our bodies are barometers for all sorts of weather-related phenomena -- including changes in temperature, pressure and precipitation -- is not a new one.

我们的身体是各种天气相关的现象（包括温度，压力和降水的变化）的晴雨表，这个观点并不是一个新观点。

"Hippocrates himself actually postulated this idea in nearly 400 B.C." said Anupam Jena, a physician at Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital, who led the study.

哈佛医学院和麻省总医院的医生、负责这项研究的安努帕姆·耶拿表示：“希波克拉底实际上在公元前400年就提出了这个论点。”

"If you talk to people, I'd say millions and millions of people probably believe that things like rainfall influence symptoms of joint pain and stiffness. But if you look at the studies, there's actually been surprisingly little evidence to suggest that is true. Most of the studies have been quite small. And we were interested in thinking about whether we could approach this question in a 'big data' sort of way."

“如果你和人们交谈，我想数以百万计的人可能会相信像降雨这样的事情会影响关节疼痛和僵硬的症状。但是，如果你看看这些研究，实际上并没有什么证据表明这是事实。大部分研究的规模都比较小。我们感兴趣的是，是否可以用“大数据”的方式来解决这个问题。”

He and his colleagues looked at information collected in more than 11 million visits that older Americans made to their primary care physicians.

他和他的同事们查看了超过1100万份信息，这些信心都是在美国老年人对初级护理医师的访问中收集到的。

They compared these records with data on daily rainfall. And they asked: do more people report sore backs or swollen joints when the weather is inclement?

他们将这些信息与每日的降雨量数据进行了比较分析。之后他们发问：在天气恶劣的时候，会有更多的人报告疼痛的背部或肿胀的关节吗？

"And what we found is if you look at days where it rained versus days where it didn't rain, there is no difference in the proportion of visits to a doctor that involved a complaint of joint pain or back pain."

“我们发现，下雨与没下雨相比较时，因关节痛或腰痛而就诊的比例并没什么不同。”

They saw no "rain effect" even when it poured for seven days straight. And if you're thinking, well, what if people couldn't get an appointment until the skies cleared up…

即使连续下了7天大雨，他们也没有看到“降雨效应”现象的发生。如果你在想，好吧，会不会是因为直到雨过天晴，病人们都没能成功预约就诊呢？

"And if you look the week after a period of heavy rainfall, you still see no relationship. And that doesn't mean that factors like rainfall or temperature or humidity don't affect joint pain and symptoms of joint achiness and stiffness. But in this sort of big data approach, we didn't find any evidence for it."

“那么，假如你查看在大量降雨后一个星期的数据，仍然看不出有什么关联。这并不意味着像降雨或者温度湿度这样的因素不会影响关节疼痛、关节粘连和僵硬的症状，但是在这样的大数据分析中，我们仍未能找到证据。”