I’ve been on beta blockers since late spring and the arrival of cooler weather, normally something I’ve always looked forward to, has been driving me nuts due to this same condition. If my hands are in contact with anything ( whether air or objects ) cooler than the lower range of room temperature, my fingers get white and numb. It’s even worse if the surfaces are wet, obviously.
Even a nice brisk evening walk will do this to me unless my hands are pocketed.
A few days ago I stopped by Kroger on my way home from work. It was around 50 °F and windy. It was just a one minute walk from the parking lot to the entrance, but by the time I got there the middle and index fingers on my left hand were white and numb. And they continued to be white and numb for the next ten minutes as I was walking around the store.
The funny thing about this is how often people dismiss it as me whining about being cold, so it’s nice when I can spend about 20 minutes driving on a 40ish degree day, with the heater, seat heater AND steering wheel heater on and can still show them this:
Naturally, of course, they forget two days later when I stepped in ice cold slush and now my shoe is going to be wet and cold all day.
An article on Raynaud Syndrome was published in Nature Communications today. Here is a news from News Medical on it, and here is a DM story. They found a couple genes that (they believe) is responsible for the syndrome. Am hoping this will lead to a cure of some type.
I just had to massage my left hand under warm water because I took a frozen Italian sausage from my freezer, and wrapped it in saran wrap to thaw. One of my fingers looked just like the picture above.