Cold Hands Cure Attempt, Day 1

For the next fortnight, I'll be attempting a cold hands cure, as detailed on the backcountry skiing blog. Winter is here and I am just royally fed up with my hands being cold while the rest of me is warm. From what I've read, the idea is to have one bowl of hot water, one bowl of ice water, and alternately submerge the hands in each long enough to shock the blood vessels in there to pump blood during the winter already!

Day 1 - A clear day, ground frost, high of 0, low of -1 degrees Celsius.

Off we go. Here's a big metal bowl of ice topped up with water, and here's a big plastic bowl of hot water with a kettle standing by to top up when it cools. The ice water is very hard going the first couple of times, but toward the end of the session (when all my ice trays were used up) I did notice I could keep my hands in the ice water comfortably for much longer before the old sharply unbearable feeling appeared. It was an interesting process and change in sensations. I'm going into this with an open mind, it is a shame I haven't some sort of heat sensing camera to record any change day by day. Hopefully, by blogging each day's effort, I'll force myself to keep at it for at least a fortnight!

A bit of background info:

Now, everyone gets colder hands when the weather turns. I'm not saying I have to bring a can of antifreeze when I walk out the front door,  I just feel mine are overreacting for the conditions compared to most people's. In normal outdoor winter conditions, wearing sensible attire, they function fine, but are cold enough to hurt my face if I touch it. Wearing a metal wristwatch bracelet soon makes the joint painful.

A further comparison: I played rugby (compulsorily) for most of my school years. Every time I stepped on the pitch, my hands would stop working within 15-20 minutes, guaranteed, every time. First they would ache, then turn white, then lose all strength and most sensation. There was some articulation in the wrists, but the fingers simply would not move. After a scrum or tackle, I noticed the skin on my hands had lost elasticity and would be quite torn up.

Even after a hot shower, there was not enough response to button a shirt or tie a shoelace. Normal function would return approximately 1 to 1.5 hours after dressing, if memory serves - I would either be on the bus home or almost at my door. The point is, the only time I ever saw anyone else with the same issue (hands cold past the point of movement or sensation) was after games in almost blizzard conditions.