Weather website forecasts your health

TORONTO—A high-pressure system is expected to pass through the inside of your head today, with a chance of heart attacks later this afternoon.
Arthritic activity in the regions around your joints is expected to clear up this morning.

The founders of a new Canadian website are hoping millions of subscribers throughout the world will sign up to receive weather-based health alerts.
The site sends e-mails to people who suffer from a variety of conditions—asthma, arthritis, diabetes, heart disease, and migraines—24 hours before a change in the weather is expected to exacerbate their symptoms, potentially saving them from a trip to the doctor.
“To be forewarned is to be forearmed,” said John Bart, a Toronto doctor and MediClim.com co-founder.
In the case of a high-pressure system, according to Medi-Clim, that means preparing for migraines and aggravated heart disease.
While it sounds like a novel concept, the website was born more than 20 years ago when Bart asked his meteorologist patient the same question Canadians always have asked each other: How about that weather?
“He was seeing certain conditions in clusters, and the only reason he could think of was the weather,” said meteorologist Denis Bourque, MediClim’s other founder.
“He asked me to poke around and see if there was any research on the subject. It turned out there was lots—in Germany.”
German research, indeed, has shown a link between changes in the weather and a variety of health conditions.
And a four-year study conducted in Ontario by Bart and Bourque, which was published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, only strengthened that link.
“For example, one of the places where you’d have migraines or headaches is in the area approaching a warm front,” noted Bourque.
“And asthma tends to be more prevalent after a cold front has gone by. We see this with rheumatic arthritis, too.”