Help: I Need a Woman with Cold Hands

[BorealChickadee]

Regardless of temperature I find I have to keep my wrists warm. If my wrists aren't warm, I'm not warm regardless of mittens, gloves etc. So first ofall I make sure my wrists have a nice snuglgy close layer. A female runner actually invented some sort of fleece wrist cover precisely for this problem.

Now for my hands I swear by smartwool liners and ragg wool double layer mittens. I don't have the boiled wool mttens but I'd like to get a pair.

When it's really cold those poles sap the heat like mad even with a foam handle.

 

[DougPaul]

Another possibility...While I am not an expert on the nutritional factors for winter hiking, I do know that winter hiking requires a much higher caloric intake which generally is important to keep our bodies warm (core especially). Good hydration is also key.

Might your wife be getting enough fuel prior and during hiking?

This would likely show up in body temp. (Inadequate fuel or water would show up as a cold body.)

The extremeties are largely kept warm by excess body heat.

Doug

 

[DougPaul]

When it's really cold those poles sap the heat like mad even with a foam handle.

The pressure from constantly holding poles will inhibit circulation and can result in cold hands. If you use the straps properly, you don't have to hold the poles tightly (or can grip them only part of the time) and can keep better circulation.

You don't need to grip the poles at all in a normal walking stride (or diagonal stride when skiing)--it can all be done with the straps and an open hand.

Doug

 

[banjolady]

Regardless of temperature I find I have to keep my wrists warm. If my wrists aren't warm, I'm not warm regardless of mittens, gloves etc. So first ofall I make sure my wrists have a nice snuglgy close layer. A female runner actually invented some sort of fleece wrist cover precisely for this problem.

Now for my hands I swear by smartwool liners and ragg wool double layer mittens. I don't have the boiled wool mttens but I'd like to get a pair.

When it's really cold those poles sap the heat like mad even with a foam handle.

campmor www.campmor.com has these great gordini mittens which are puffy and very warm, and they carry the dachstein wool ones as well. the wrist things are called wristies and can be googled. poles never bothered me, i grip loosely with the strap on.

 

[Maddy]

Kevin mentioned Raynaud's and Giggy "constriction."
First thing I would dump the gloves unless the temps are in the high forty's and you are very active. Even then I carry, and sometimes use hand warmers. If I wear gloves in warmer temps, they have to be the windstopper variety.
Always bring hand warmers! I have some in all my jacket pockets and I carry them even in the summer when hiking in the Whites. Check your packages before you go out. If they feel firm "crumbly" they are no good. Carry some extras because sometimes they don't work. They are all dated and I have used some that are fine which are way outdated.
Don't let them freeze in your pockets. Keep them warm.
It's all trial and error for what works. There are certain temps when I can wear my Black Diamond Mercury mitts with warmers on standby. Never on bitter cold days.
http://www.backcountry.com/store/BLD0765/c11/s100000008/Black-Diamond-Mercury-Mitt-Womens.html
Nice 40% off sale now. I paid $100+ for mine several years ago.
I am going to check out the OR alti mitts. They look really nice but once again I will not put all my eggs in that basket.
For a while I went off coffee and I must say it made not one particle of difference with my cold hands. I drink coffee but not to excess.
I have a ski friend who got Raynaud's in her 20's. I didn't get it until my early 40's. My feet thus far seem OK but I do wear -40 boots all winter.
I usually carry gloves to make adjustments, etc but just in the short time that I expose my hands they start to freeze up. It's really best to have some moving room in your mittens and having your digits close to each other helps to keep them warm. If you isolate them in gloves they cool down much faster.
Very often I use only one handwarmer and move it mitten to mitten as needed but not on bitter cold days.
All I can say is that hand warmers are little miracles for anyone with cold hands. I would not be out most of the winter if I did not have my "best friends". I spent lots of money trying to find the perfect system in gloves and mittens but soon realized that without warmers there would all to soon come a time when the big hand freeze would rear it's ugly head.
I have also noticed that I get much colder now than I ever did before so dressing warmly from the get go is critical. You have to keep your core warm or the problem will exacerbate very quickly.
Lots of women have this problem. I came very close to not getting accepted on my Outward Bound course in MN but I convinced them that I new how to handle the problem and I did just that. In fact most of the time I wore the "choppers" that they gave us. I never once had any concern that my hands would freeze even when we were travelling and working in extreme cold temps. I cannot say enough about hand warmers!

 

[dreamstream]

Overshell mits work great. Then layer underneath, nothing too tight.

A good hat and neck warmer help keep the hands warm too.

 

[Maddy]

If it turns out that your wife has Raynaud's, you can email me and I will send you info from army research that is suppose to be very helpful.
I am going to try it next fall to see if it make a difference.
Someone from VFTT sent it to me.
Good luck.

 

[DougPaul]

If it turns out that your wife has Raynaud's, you can email me and I will send you info from army research that is suppose to be very helpful.

The army research was likely overseen by the afore mentioned Dr Murray Hamlet, former head of the US Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine in Natick, MA.

They developed a technique of classical conditioning (hands/feet in hot water while your body is in cold (<=20F) air) which trains your body to keep your hands/feet warm when out in the cold. It is supposed to be very effective in many cases.

(I first learned about it from a lecture by Hamlet himself. BTW, he is a fantastic lecturer--if you get a chance, go to one. He used to give lectures for the MIT and Boston AMC winter schools and other outdoor organizations, perhaps he still does.)

A search on his name will bring up a variety of interesting pages: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q="Dr+Murray+Hamlet"&btnG=Google+Search

A search on his name and Raynaud will bring up more focused info: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&q="Murray+Hamlet"+"Raynaud"&btnG=Search

You can also follow the links from my first post in this thread to find descriptions of the treatment.

Doug

 

[sleeping bear]

My hands (and feet) are perpetually cold. Everyone here has good advice, especially the bit about keeping your wrists warm.
For me, it almost doesn't matter the combination of gloves and/or mittens, my hands always get cold at some point. Hand warmers bum me out because it seems kind of wasteful, plus I don't like to have to rely on some outside source of warmth.

For almost instand hand warming: Swing your arm vigorously back and forth (extended) for a minute or two. Gravity and motion force blood into your hand, thus making it warm again. This can also be done for your feet, but it helps to balance with poles or against a tree. This is my back-up trick when I need warmth fast.

 

[Seeker]

I am probably no help here, because I hike/skin almost exclusively in liner gloves. My issue has been wetness. So I don't wear my thick glove/mittens while hiking--only when I stop. Once my think gloves get wet it's no good! I actually bring two thin gloves with me. I may start out with thicker gloves then once I warm up I switch to the thin gloves.

I hike really warm. But when I stop I freeze. For me it's all about swaping out gear depending on whether you are hiking or standing.

 

[Stan]

Some time ago I posted a thread on a scientific report that described the hands/wrists as the radiator of the body and that cooling the blood stream at that point was a very efficient way of cooling the body. This was demonstrated in enhanced athletic performance.

I hypothesize that the reverse is true and that this is an efficient location to heat the blood stream. I would like to suggest that those who use hand warmers, try to focus on hands/wrists instead of finger tips ... unless you already do. I'd be curious to know if there is a noticeable difference in overall heating of the extremities, duration as compared to direct application of heat on fingers and whether it is any quicker to heat at the hands/wrists rather than over the less exposed capillaries of the fingers.


http://www.vftt.org/forums/showthread.php?t=7803

 

[LittleBear]

I have tried warming my wrists by placing handwarmers in wristbands made especially for this purpose. Doesn't work - at least not for me - not even close. My fingers got cold, remained cold, and, in fact, my fingers ached horribly from the cold. That's my problem, I get so cold that my fingers don't just ache - they HURT!!! When they get to that point, I can hardly move them. I have tried lots of different techniques to keep my hands warm and to warm them up. I have tried to windmill my arms, but I have to do that for at least five minutes before I experience any noticeable improvement and then when I stop, unless I have handwarmers directly on my palms with my fingers wrapped around them, my fingers begin to ache again very quickly. In fact, after last winter (2006) I was beginning to think I would need to give up winter hiking.

As I said in a previous post, I have pretty much resolved many of my cold hands/fingers issues, but it's been a lot of trial and error and suffering through hikes with incredibly cold fingers. It doesn't take long for my fingers to get cold either. For example, when I stop to eat (even if I am in a sheltered place and it isn't overly cold), in just minutes after taking off my mittens to get my food out (leaving my smartwool glove liners on) my fingers become so cold, it's hard to move them and to warm them back up. Even just 5 or 10 minutes and it will take me more than 20 minutes to warm them up. Several winters ago, I was going on a trip to Chimney Pond and the forecast was for very cold temps. I purchased a pair of gloves (mittens probably would have been better, but the store didn't carry any) that were rated to -50. Even with glove liners and handwarmers and constant movement, my fingers did not stay warm and on several occasions went totally numb.

I may be on the extreme end of issues with my hands and fingers. Many folks have suggested that I place my hands under my armpits. And that works, sort of, except that it doesn't really warm them up enough so that when I remove my hands, they aren't warm enough to sustain that warmth inside gloves/mittens that would be fine for most everyone else.

I really can sympathize with anyone who has this issue. I'm just glad that I seem to have found a system that is working pretty well for me.

 

[Tom Rankin]

I have tried warming my wrists by placing handwarmers in wristbands made especially for this purpose. Doesn't work - at least not for me - not even close. ...

FWIW, it sounds like we are very much alike in this respect. I don't think it's a women's only issue.

Without hard warmers, I would not be able to winter hike either. When I get to the summit, I am always the first to want to leave, because I fear my hands will go numb if I do not keep moving. But this makes other people unhappy (and myself), because we like to hang out on summits when the weather allows. So, I usually get out at least 1 and sometimes 2 (of a pair of) warmers as soon as I notice any problem.

This past winter, I also had to use toe warmers on really cold days.

 

[DougPaul]

Some time ago I posted a thread on a scientific report that described the hands/wrists as the radiator of the body and that cooling the blood stream at that point was a very efficient way of cooling the body. This was demonstrated in enhanced athletic performance.

I hypothesize that the reverse is true and that this is an efficient location to heat the blood stream. I would like to suggest that those who use hand warmers, try to focus on hands/wrists instead of finger tips ... unless you already do. I'd be curious to know if there is a noticeable difference in overall heating of the extremities, duration as compared to direct application of heat on fingers and whether it is any quicker to heat at the hands/wrists rather than over the less exposed capillaries of the fingers.

Heating the wrists may help keep the hands warm (others have already commented on this), but it is not a good way to heat the central body. When the central body is hot, excess heat is sent out to the extremeties to be dissipated so cooling the wrists is useful. However, when the central body is cold, circulation to the extremeties is reduceced or shut down, so heating the wrists will transfer very little if any heat to the core.

Doug

 

[Maddy]

My fingers got cold, remained cold, and, in fact, my fingers ached horribly from the cold. That's my problem, I get so cold that my fingers don't just ache - they HURT!!! When they get to that point, I can hardly move them. ,
I purchased a pair of gloves (mittens probably would have been better, but the store didn't carry any) that were rated to -50. Even with glove liners and handwarmers and constant movement, my fingers did not stay warm and on several occasions went totally numb.
.

I can relate to everything you wrote!
I sure hope you don't have to give up hiking.
On cold days, I place a warmer in each mitt before exiting my truck. If I have to make adjustments I know what I am in for. It really HURTS!
I have to have the warm mitts available immediately because it is so bad I cannot even open the handwarmers.
I guess we won't be going to Everest or Denali for a winter ascent any time soon. I carry lots of gear in my truck in the winter just in case I break down and have no heat. My hands would freeze prompto.
I am hearing that the Black Diamond Alti mitts are really great. That might be an option for you to.
Anything to buy us some time!