Hypermobility and Weather Sensitivity: Why Pressure Changes Affect Your Body
- Ines Illipse
- Feb 17
- 6 min read
Does the weather seem to affect your body more than it affects other people's?
Maybe you've noticed that your joints feel looser and less reliable before a storm. Or that gusty, unpredictable wind leaves you exhausted and on edge, even when the barometer hasn't moved. Perhaps you get headaches that seem to arrive before the rain, or fatigue that settles in so deeply you can barely function, and then someone says, "It's just a bit of wind," and you're left wondering why your body reacts so differently.
You're not imagining this. And you're not alone.
For many people with hypermobility, hEDS, neurodivergence, or MCAS, weather isn't just weather. It's a physiological event. Your body is picking up on changes in pressure, wind, and air movement that others simply don't register, and responding to them in ways that can feel overwhelming, confusing, and deeply isolating.
This blog is here to explain why. Not with complicated meteorology, but with a clear understanding of what's happening in your body when the air changes, and what you can actually do about it.
What's Actually Changing in the Atmosphere
Atmospheric pressure is the weight of the air pressing down on us, measured in hectopascals (hPa) . At sea level, average pressure sits around 1013 hPa. Your body normally balances this without conscious effort.
When pressure drops, such as before rain or storms, the external "squeeze" on your body lessens. For most people, this is imperceptible. For a hypermobile body, it's the beginning of a cascade since the reduced external pressure allows tissues, fluids, and joint capsules in the body to expand slightly.
Here's what matters most: it's not the number itself, but the change.
A static pressure of 1005 hPa won't necessarily trigger symptoms if your body has had time to adjust. What demands adaptation is the shift, your body recalibrating from one pressure to another. The faster and larger the change, the more work your systems must do .
Research on hypermobile individuals shows that autonomic regulation is already working differently at baseline. Studies find that people with hypermobility syndromes often have higher baroreflex sensitivity, meaning their systems react more strongly to internal shifts in blood pressure and, by extension, to environmental changes that affect vascular regulation. One study suggested this heightened sensitivity could be a potential disease marker for the condition .
So when pressure changes, your body isn't just noticing it, it's responding more intensely than a typical nervous system would. And it's the rate of change that determines how hard your systems have to work.
This is also why travel matters. Moving from sea level to the mountains involves a rapid pressure drop. Your body will need time to adjust, and symptoms during that adjustment period are completely expected.
Not all pressure changes feel the same. Here's what different shifts typically bring:
Shift Size | What It Feels Like |
Small (2-3 hPa) | Slight joint floatiness, subtle head pressure, mild fatigue, muscular tension without clear reason |
Large (8-12 hPa in a day) | Heavier migraines, increased instability, brain fog, deep fatigue, emotional fragility |
Not because the body is weak, but because it is working hard to adjust to a changing environment.
Why Your Body Feels This
To understand why your body notices what others don't, we need to talk about proprioception; your brain's ability to sense where your body is in space without looking.
In a typical body, specialized receptors in joints, muscles, and fascia constantly send crisp signals to the brain. "Knee is bent 30 degrees. Ankle is stable." The brain processes this effortlessly.
In a hypermobile body, those signals are less clear. Your ligaments are stretchy. Your fascia is more elastic. When you bend your knee, the receptors send murkier information, "knee is somewhere between 25 and 40 degrees, hard to tell." Your brain responds by turning up the volume on those unclear signals, asking for more input. It recruits muscles to provide additional feedback. All of this happens automatically, but it costs energy. This is why hypermobile bodies often feel tense; muscles are constantly doing work that ligaments should be doing.
Now add atmospheric pressure changes.
Fascia is your body's largest sensory organ, packed with pressure-sensitive receptors. When atmospheric pressure drops, those receptors detect the change, the external "squeeze" on your body has lessened. For a typical nervous system, this is a quiet signal. For yours, it's a shift in the entire sensory landscape. The background conditions your brain uses as a reference point have changed. Every single proprioceptive signal must now be reinterpreted against this new backdrop. This is why a pressure drop feels destabilizing. Your brain's already-difficult job of mapping your body just got harder. And recalibrating costs energy.
Now add the other systems that often co-occur with hypermobility.
Each of these adds another layer of load, and together, they create the full picture:
A neurodivergent nervous system is wired differently. It often picks up more sensory information from the environment, including subtle changes that others filter out automatically. This isn't a deficit, it's a different way of processing. But it does mean that unpredictable input, like gusty shifting wind, requires more cognitive and neurological resources to handle. Your system is constantly asking: Is this signal important? Do I need to respond? This vigilance costs energy and can leave you feeling "on edge," with muscles guarded and sensory overwhelm more likely.
Dysautonomia means the automatic systems, heart rate, blood pressure, digestion, don't regulate as smoothly. Here's how pressure changes connect: When external pressure drops, blood vessels subtly expand (vasodilation). This is a normal physiological response. But in dysautonomia, the compensatory mechanisms, like adjusting heart rate and vessel constriction, can be delayed or exaggerated. Research shows hypermobile individuals systems often react more strongly to internal blood pressure shifts meaning they have higher baroreflex sensitivity. So when external pressure change causes internal vascular adjustments, the dysautonomic nervous system responds more intensely. This contributes to headaches, dizziness, and that deep, draining fatigue. One person described it as "feeling like I'm walking through deep water all the time, everything takes more effort."
MCAS means mast cells are more easily triggered. Mast cells can respond to physical triggers, including rapid pressure changes. Wind also stirs up allergens like pollen and mold, directly activating mast cells. And when your body is already working hard to adapt, mast cell activation thresholds drop. This can show up as increased allergy symptoms, skin flushing, worsened fatigue (flu-like and heavy), brain fog that feels almost allergic, and gastrointestinal upset. It's not random; it's your mast cells responding to environmental change.
This is the cascade.
Each layer:
lax connective tissue
neurodivergent sensory processing
autonomic dysfunction
mast cell sensitivity
can be managed alone but together, when the atmosphere shifts, they compound.
This is why a pressure drop can leave you debilitated while others notice nothing. Your body isn't weak. It's running complex recalibration across multiple systems simultaneously, every time the weather changes.
The floatiness you feel isn't just in your joints. It's in your brain's map of your body, your nervous system's sense of safety, your blood vessels' ability to adapt, and your mast cells' threshold for activation, all at once.
Recognising Your Body's Weather Report
You may notice these signs when pressure drops, wind turns gusty, or weather becomes unsettled:
Headaches beginning before storms arrive (sometimes 24–48 hours ahead)
Increased clumsiness; bumping into doorframes, dropping things
A sense of physical looseness or "floatiness" in joints
More joint clicking, popping, joint sublaxation, dislocation and injury
Unexplained irritability or emotional fragility
Sleep disruption, especially during windy nights and low energy levels
Brain fog that makes thinking feel effortful
Increased allergy symptoms or skin reactions (if MCAS is present)
A general sense of "off-ness" you can't quite name
These patterns are not random. Understanding this reduces self-doubt, and that alone supports nervous system regulation.
What Helps: Supporting Your System During Unstable Weather
You cannot change the wind. But you can lower internal demand.
System | What Helps |
Joints & Fascia | Compression garments, gentle isometrics exercises, soft fascial work (gentle rolling, cat-cow), avoid end-range stretching |
Autonomic | Electrolyte hydration, regular small meals, slow position changes, compression stockings if you use them |
Mast Cell flare | H1/H2 antihistamines*, low-histamine foods (short term), shower after wind exposure, Vitamin C, Quercetin |
Nervous System | Reduce sensory load (dim lighting, lower noise, earplugs), simplify schedule, calming practices (breathing) |
Migraine | Regular meals, protect sleep, gentle massage for neck/face/shoulders |
Always discuss medication changes with your healthcare provider.
Think of these as environmental adaptation strategies, not limitations. You are responding intelligently to your environment.
What This Means for You
If you've made it this far, you finally have something you may have been missing for a long time: an explanation. An explanation for why your body feels different when the wind picks up. Why storms exhaust you. Why you notice pressure changes that others don't. Why your joints feel looser, your head heavier, your thoughts foggier when the weather shifts.
This isn't random. It's not in your head. It's your body doing exactly what it's designed to do, responding to the world around you with the systems you have.
And now that you understand why, you can learn to predict, prepare, and respond with intention rather than confusion.
At ParaMotion, this is our approach: Educate. Stabilize. Regulate. Strengthen. So that whether the air is still or stormy, you have what you need to move through your world with greater ease.
Ready to take the next step? 👉 [Book your Free 15 minutes call here!!]
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