Paul:

I have seen Raynaud’s in many winter athletes like skiers and ice climbers who are routinely exposed to cold. It seems to develop as a response to cold and especially if you have had frostbite. I find I personally can get pretty good relief by takin time released Niacin. This is a vasodilators and if taken before you expect to expose yourself to conditions that normally cause the Raynaud’s to flair up will in my experience eliminate the problem. Niacin will cause flushing of other parts of the body and you’ll have to experiment with dosage.

Scott

Nyt had an article from 1988 about bout a US army doctor who had a treatment that works. Google it for details on number of sessions length of time. I recall they had people strip except for feet and hands and those were warmed in water, dried placed in gloves. then they went outside naked except for cozy wwarm Feet and hands. Basically tricking the body to think the extremities were. Warm so the trunk core must be fine and it would open the blood vessels to hands feet. Eventually the body would not cconstrict hand feet blood vessels at cold contact. Takes some acclimation but worth a shot.

With the caveat that it’s important to distinguish between reynaud’s on the one hand, and substandard cold hygeine on the other, I’ve found Scott’s niacin suggestion to work very well for what I understand to be reynaud’s.

My fingers I think are standard non-reynaud’s — if I don’t keep my core warm at belays, or don’t stop on lead to shake out my hands before they start to go numb, or am poorly fat-adapted and let my blood sugar crash, then I will get numb hands and screaming barfies. But if I am attentive they do ok, and more importantly they warm up quickly when I fix things proactively.

My toes, though, are different. Mostly first thing in the morning, no matter how many ducks I line up in terms of cold hygeine (boot liners in sleeping bag, hot water bladder in shells, not sleeping dehydrated…), they still get and stay cold in the morning after any winter bivvy situation, all to often forcing me to stop, take my boots off, and warm up my toes against skin. Even if the rest of my foot is warm, the tips of my toes can be icy and numb. I’ve never had even frostnip, but I did spend years cycling in winter rain letting my toes go numb, so… probably my own fault. In any case, the underlying problem does seem to be a physiological refusal to send blood to somewhere I need it, and the niacin seems to do a fantastic job of convincing the blood to go there.

I believe the method mrryanfisher mentioned is described here: https://www.raynauds.org/2019/09/26/classical-conditioning-raynauds-therapy/. Unlike the NYT, this one is not paywalled.

“The Hamlet method is simple. A person sits in a warm room with warm hands. The person then moves into a cold place (ideally 32?F) for ten minutes. They wear only light clothing so that their body definitely knows that they are in a cold place. Their hands are kept warmed to temperatures between 109- and 113-degrees Fahrenheit. The person then comes back into a warm location, and keeping their hands warm, they let their bodies return to a comfortable temperature.

In Dr. Hamlet’s experiment, this was repeated three to six times on a given day, with a day off taken in-between session days so that a person’s body could rest and internalize this reaction. The experiment called for 50 of the 10-minute sessions.

All subjects had measurable improvement in finger temperatures of at least 2 degrees Fahrenheit when exposed to cold. Dr. Hamlet reported that improved responses to cold lasted for months to years, and when a subject’s cold resistance began to fade, a reduced number of cold temperature training sessions would be enough to refresh cold resistance levels”