Your symptoms of lupus can be overwhelming and dramatically affect your quality of life. Cold weather is one thing that can trigger and worsen your symptoms of lupus. Cooler temperatures can take a toll on most people, even if they don't have an autoimmune disease.
With lupus, cold temperatures activate painful flare-ups as blood vessels constrict to minimize heat loss. As this happens, pressure increases in different parts of the body, thereby reducing blood flow to the extremities.
Environments that may trigger lupus symptoms include those with: extreme heat. extreme cold. high wind.
Research has established links but not whether those factors cause lupus symptoms to worsen. The best places to live may be those with moderate temperature fluctuations and low levels of wind, humidity, and air pollution.
Stay Indoors When Possible
If you must go out, dress as warmly as possible and stay active while outdoors to help maintain your body temperature. Physical activity is a crucial component of your disease management. Therefore, you should look for ways to exercise indoors rather than outside when the weather turns cold.
A fever higher than 100 degrees Fahrenheit affects many people with lupus. The fever is often caused by inflammation or infection.
Cold temperatures can often have an effect on those with autoimmune diseases. Cold weather places additional stress on the body for those who suffer from rheumatoid arthritis or lupus. Those with weakened immune systems are more likely to get sick or have a flare up.
Emotional stress -- such as a divorce, death in the family, or other life complications -- and anything that causes physical stress to the body -- such as surgery, physical harm, pregnancy, or giving birth -- are examples of triggers that can set off lupus or bring about a lupus flare.
Many lupus patients aren't able to do intensive physical work, like waitressing or working in a grocery store. Jobs that involve standing for long periods, like working a cash register, greeting customers, or being a hostess at a restaurant, can be physically tiring as well as rough on the joints.
Heat: Heat helps decrease joint pain or swelling. Apply heat on the painful joint for 20 to 30 minutes every 2 hours for as many days as directed. Ice: Ice helps decrease swelling and pain. Ice may also help prevent tissue damage.
People with lupus are at increased risk of developing infections. The most common infections for people with lupus include those of the respiratory tract, skin and urinary system.> Medical treatment for infection may be longer for a person with lupus than for the general population.
Study Shows Changes in Weather, Environment May Indeed Affect Your Lupus Symptoms. Factors like temperature, ozone concentration, and wind were associated with more flare-ups of organ-specific symptoms, according to the new research.
Chilblain lupus is an uncommon type of lupus that causes red or purplish skin sores. These sores are chilblains. People develop chilblains after exposure to cold or wet environments. For most people, avoiding cold temperatures and taking medications keeps symptoms at bay.
For many people, soaring temperatures and high humidity levels can also prompt symptom flare-up, causing acute fatigue, increased joint pain, weakness, and difficulty thinking. To avoid heat-related flare-ups, stay in an air-conditioned or well-cooled environment.
Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and Sjögren's syndrome (SS) may coexist, and they are chronic complex disorders, with an autoimmune background, multifactorial etiology, multiple circulating autoantibodies, and variable prognosis.
Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is the most common and most serious type of lupus. SLE affects all parts of the body.
Kidneys About one half of people with lupus experience kidney involvement, and the kidney has become the most extensively studied organ affected by lupus.
Lupus is a chronic inflammatory autoimmune disease with a wide range of clinical presentations resulting from its effect on multiple organ systems. There are four main types of lupus: neonatal, discoid, drug-induced, and systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), the type that affects the majority of patients.
Lupus is not a hereditary condition.
Cold water therapy is effective in several autoimmune diseases which include multiple sclerosis, ankylosing spondylitis, and rheumatoid arthritis. Autoimmune diseases are examples of chronic inflammation. Research has shown that cold water therapy reduced complaints of somatic pain in patients with autoimmune disease.
Abnormally high levels of nitric oxide in those with lupus, or other autoimmune conditions, can make the skin's blood vessels dilate, bringing more body heat to the surface – causing warmth, skin reddening and sweat.
The most common response given is that people feel fatigue as a heaviness. It feels like there is a weight constantly pushing down on part of them or on their entire body. With that degree of heaviness, it is much harder to find the energy to move and get things done.