Army’s Research Institute of Environmental Medicine, it’s very normal to gain several pounds of water weight during the summer months.īloating isn’t just a visual nuisance, it causes physical discomfort as well. According to John Castellani, a researcher in the Thermal & Mountain Medicine Division of the U.S. And the hotter you are, the more water you’ll retain. Instead of evaporating off the skin, the sweat pitifully drips off your nose, shamefully unable to do it’s job. Increased temperatures and water in the air have the effect of rendering the body’s cooling mechanism, sweating, useless. What I do find are a lot of people asking the same questions: Can humidity cause weight gain? Can humidity cause water retention? Does humidity increase inflammation? Does humidity increase the likelihood of asthma attacks? IBS symptoms? Fibro(myalgia) flares?įor me and my irritable bowel’s money, I’d go with yes.įirstly, it appears that the body does indeed retain quite a bit of fluid during bouts of high heat and humidity. I’ve combed for a solid answer on this phenomenon year after year and have come up basically empty handed. It seems there’s an uptick of inflammation in the whole body, as a work out that last week suited me just fine now requires three agonizing days of recovery. Along with the belly, I experience swelling in my fingers, knees and any place in my back that was giving me mild trouble prior to the change in weather suddenly becomes a debilitating injury of dramatic proportions.

Going with the flow, I guess.ĭoes this happen to any of you? Heat and humidity set in and suddenly you’re retaining so much water you look like you’re seven months pregnant? Because it happens to me. In keeping with the theme of high numbers, my weight scaled up as well. In my neck of the woods, we recently saw heat indexes in the high 100’s, accomplished in part by relative humidity hovering around 90%. Boy, things are heating up here in the northern hemisphere.

Stomach always feel like there is heat