Possible Solution for Raynaud’s

[Asher Mullokandov]

Last week I saw a lecture given by Dr. Murray Hamlet, former director of the Cold Research Division of the US Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine in Natick, MA, during which he mentioned a method that he and colleagues developed to help people with Raynaud's train themselves to regain circulation in their fingers.

The method seems pretty simple:

"Three to six times a day, every other day, Raynaud's sufferers undergo a treatment in which they first sit indoors with their hands submerged in warm water and then are put in a cold environment, exposed to the cold except for their hands, which are submerged in an ice chest filled with warm water.

After 50 rounds of treatment, all of the 150 test subjects at the laboratories here were able to venture into the cold without losing circulation to their hands, he said.

''We just retrain those blood vessels to dilate rather than restrict in response to cold,'' Dr. Hamlet said. ''It works extremely well.'' He said the treatment may not work, however, for victims of Raynaud's who developed the disease as a result of other illnesses, such as high blood pressure, arterial disease, drug abuse and trauma."

(Source: http://www.nytimes.com/1988/01/19/science/simple-method-found-to-warm-cold-hands.html)

I haven't seen this mentioned on BPL, so I thought I'd share it and maybe get some reaction from people who suffer from Raynaud's.

[Keith Bassett]

This sounds like the technique that is used in "becoming the iceman" where they train to become cold resistant.

Fascinating that Natick would find that it works, and validates this idea.

[Asher Mullokandov]

Yea, it seems that the "Iceman" people adopted this method, which has been around for a few decades apparently. If I recall correctly, Dr. Hamlet also claimed that this method did nothing to help people who are not suffering from Raynaud's.

I'm a little skeptical about Wim Hof's claim's that anyone can train themselves to be anywhere near as resistant to cold weather as he is. Definitely haven't delved very deeply into his book, but on the surface the claim seems like an unsupported exaggeration.

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