Under The Weather

An entertaining and fact-filled look at the links between health and climate, this book details both short-term symptoms and life-threatening conditions that can be aggravated by the weather. It explains how to be protected from the extremes of weather as well as how to ease weather-related symptoms. Startling weather-related observations include evidence that the onset of labor is more common when barometric pressure is falling; migraines can be made much worse by cold and winds; deaths from heart disease are more common on days when there are blustery winds bringing changeable temperatures; changes in humidity can cause scar tissue to ache; and patients with noninherited forms of schizophrenia are twice as likely to have been born in extreme weather conditions as those with the inherited form of the disease.