Submersion eh?

I did some research and discovered a 'submersion' technique (used by the Army, I might add) that might cure or at least control my Raynaud's.


With the submersion technique you wear normal light-weight clothes and sit in a standard temperature room for 8 minutes with your fingers and toes in a bucket of 100°F water . Then, gulp, wearing the same clothes you go somewhere cold (a frozen tundra or walk-in freezer type deal) and repeat witht the same 100°F water. Repeat 4 times a day everyother day. It retrains your arteries, pretty much.

This doesn't exactly sound pleastant, but if it will help I'm all about it. It's not quite could enough where I live to use the outdoors for my cold place, but I'm looking into finding an indoor alternative. Worst case scenario I'll wait a few months to begin, living perched up on the Appalachian Mountains, it won't be long untill it's snowing.

I talked to Dr. David Nieman, director of the Human Performance Lab at nearby Appalachian State University, about the best way to chart my progress, when I do get started. He suggested (thanks, Dr. Nieman!) using the ranking system below. I'll rate my symptoms daily with 5 being high symptoms and 1 being no symptoms.

Cold fingers and toes: 1 2 3 4 5
Color change: 1 2 3 4 5
Numbness: 1 2 3 4 5
Pain/ prickly feeling upon relief: 1 2 3 4 5

Help! My toes hurt!

I’m 17 and I love to ski. Only I can’t, because every time I go out in the cold my fingers and toes turn purple and hurt like crazy. I have Raynaud’s disease, a vascular disorder that makes the arteries in my extremities (all those fingers and toes) spasm when exposed to cold temperatures or extreme stress. Worst case scenario, I could lose a digit if I didn’t get warmed up in time, but that’s a very rare occurrence for the 5 percent of the population who have Raynaud’s.


I haven't had the symptoms of Raynaud’s disease my whole life. Last winter I began to experience severe pain in my toes. At first I thought it was just because I had been on my feet more. Come on now, a new job waiting tables after school is bound to make for some sore feet, right? But the pain just got worse and worse, and even nightly foot rubs couldn’t help my poor puppies. I tried swapping out my Converse Allstars for some shoes with more arch support... yuck (I'm not 80, you know). But even that provided me with zero appeasement. The pain eventually grew so bad that I could barely walk, and finally I wised up and visited a podiatrist. As you can probably guess (drumroll, please), I was diagnosed with Raynaud's.

The doctor didn’t have any cures, just last-resort blood pressure meds. Let me repeat: I’m 17. I exercise regularly and I eat well; my weight is normal; NO WAY am I going on blood pressure meds. So he told me how to just live with it…basically, by staying warm. I'm not exactly one for just living with it, so here's where the blog comes in. I want to cure, or at the very least alleviate my Raynaud's, as well as provide the community with information on the phenonmonon.