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If you’ve found yourself in a foul mood the past few days, you can blame the wind.
And not just for the irritation of having to chase down your patio furniture, upright your garbage cans and clear the tree branches from your lawn.
The wind really can make you sick.
Tim Cahill, a best-selling writer from Livingston (third windiest city in the U.S.), wrote in an essay titled “Ill Wind at Poison Creek,†that a wind of even 21 mph can be perceived by the body as a form of attack.
“This is because we all live inside a little sac of personal air that exists just beyond the flesh, a kind of necessary insulation from the world at large,†he writes in the 1987 essay.
In a 21 mph wind, “a person retains only 1/25th of his or her usual insulation, and that person is subsequently irritable, bad-tempered and thin-skinned,†Cahill says.
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He cites a pharmacologist named Felix Sulman who examined several groups of patients when they were in the wind, and out.
He found that those in the wind showed an increase in the secretion of serotonin, a blood vessel constrictor.
“High levels of serotonin tended to cause migraines, sleeplessness, nausea, and intense but unfocused ‘irritation.'†A second group showed signs of apathy, depression and exhaustion.
A issue of Neurology echoed these findings:
"The study looked at diaries of 75 migraine patients, ages 16 to 65, from the University of Calgary Headache Research Clinic and compared them to Chinook weather patterns. The patients’ diaries record the severity and time of day of headaches. Of the 75 patients studied, 32 were more likely to have migraines during Chinook weather conditions than on days without Chinooks."
Chinooks were also more likely to trigger migraines in older patients than in younger patients, according to the study.Â
, dry air, barometric pressure changes and windy or stormy weather can trigger migraines. That in addition to other triggers, like bright sunlight, extreme heat or cold, sun glare and high humidity.
In Italy, Cahill adds, a hot dry wind is called a sirocco, and lawyers routinely “plead the sirocco†is cases of violence toward domestic partners or neighbors.
"In other words, the wind either pisses you off or beats you like a gong. Or both," he concludes.