This bit about how certain groups of people have somehow developed different responses to cold is fascinating:
Were you a Norwegian fisherman or Inuit hunter, both of whom frequently work gloveless in the cold, your chilled hands would open their surface capillaries periodically to allow surges of warm blood to pass into them and maintain their flexibility. This phenomenon, known as the hunter's response, can elevate a 35-degree skin temperature to 50 degrees within seven or eight minutes.
Other human adaptations to the cold are more mysterious. Tibetan Buddhist monks can raise the skin temperature of their hands and feet by 15 degrees through meditation. Australian aborigines, who once slept on the ground, unclothed, on near-freezing nights, would slip into a light hypothermic state, suppressing shivering until the rising sun rewarmed them.
You have no such defenses, having spent your days at a keyboard in a climate-controlled office. Only after about ten minutes of hard climbing, as your body temperature rises, does blood start seeping back into your fingers. Sweat trickles down your sternum and spine.
I saw a talk from a US Army-funded researchers on cold weather adaptation. He described how to reliably train oneself to induce the "hunter's response".
You just go sit outside in the cold for five or ten minutes at a time while keeping your hands and/or feet submerged in insulated warm water. The goal is to expose most of your body to the cold while keeping the capillaries open. After about fifty repetitions of this (at three to six repetitions per day), your body gets used to the idea of maintaining circulation despite an overall cold environment.
As someone who does a lot of mountaineering, I'd be inclined to use this technique for my hands. But I'm a bit scared about risking to become hypothermic earlier. And I guess I would prefer to loos my toes then becoming severely hypothermic.
Though, I have recommended this technique several times to some female with very severe "cold hand" problems.
Btw: I think I've seen the same talk at MITOC Winter School. I forgot the name of the speaker but he was a great guy. (Quote: "If you can't bend them - that's a bad sign.") I think he speaks at MITOC every year.
You can notice this effect in your life as well. I don't know where you live, but I know here in the north, 40F is "freezing" cold in November for many people. And when March rolls around, 40F is cause for breaking out the t-shirts. Your body will adapt to the cold to a certain degree. I think I saw it explained on a reddit "ask science" post some time ago, but I cannot remember the physiological details of these temporary adaptations to climate patterns.
I wonder if it's physical or at least partially psychological.
I live in Los Angeles and my brother lives in Flagstaff. Every year at the holidays, I go spend a week with him and his family. In Flagstaff there can be entire days below freezing and the nights can easily reach single digits F. When I'm there and it's 25 F, I'm fine. Toodle along like normal. Come back to LA and it's 50 and I shiver. Same outfits even. It's the strangest thing.
Maybe altitude? FLG is 7000 ft and LAX is more or less sea level. I dunno.
I had the same experience while in SF this fall. The temperature reading rarely dipped below 50, but the evenings felt brutally cold. When I returned to the east coast, temperatures 5-10 degrees below those in SF felt warm and cozy.
Extreme example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wim_Hof (climbed Kilimanjaro, completed a marathon above the Polar circle, attempted to climb Everest, all dressed in nothing but shorts; claims that Tibetan meditation helps him)
Oh, wow - I had no idea! Thanks for pointing this out.
The scientific experiments with him are published now.
Kox et al, 2011
The Influence of Concentration/Meditation on Autonomic Nervous System Activity and the Innate Immune Response: A Case Study
in Psychosomatic Medicine
Here is a trick I learned biking around in cold Las Vegas nights to warm your hands. Squeeze whatever you are holding hard, (or make a fist and squueze) in pulses about a second apart. It will force the blood through, like a miniature heart, and your hands won't feel cold at all.
Even better, keep your arms on the side of your trunk, your elbows straight and flex your hands at 90 deg so they point away sideways. Now, move your shoulders up and down. Don't use any other joints. Each down move of the shoulder will pump blood into your hands with high pressure.
there's been some research into the Buddhist monk core/skin temperature regulation. apparently, you can train yourself to do this by using biofeedback, take a digital thermometer and a few hours a day and you can figure out how to raise your body temperature (I know people that have demonstrated this ability).
This is a somewhat common phenomenon in the martial arts that practice Tai Chi/qigong/reki
I used to teach a martial art that practiced this. In our meditation, you visualize glowing energy flowing through your body into your hands. After several months, it happens fairly naturally. Among more experienced practitioners, the skin temperature difference is very noticeable.
When we practiced this, we conflated it with hitting harder, which anecdotally seems to be true, but I'm not sure why.
My teacher claimed that doing the meditation and slowly working your way up to hitting harder materials would increase bone density in your hands, though I have no proof of this.
I'd love to see more western science studying these phenomenon.
Were you a Norwegian fisherman or Inuit hunter, both of whom frequently work gloveless in the cold, your chilled hands would open their surface capillaries periodically to allow surges of warm blood to pass into them and maintain their flexibility. This phenomenon, known as the hunter's response, can elevate a 35-degree skin temperature to 50 degrees within seven or eight minutes.
Other human adaptations to the cold are more mysterious. Tibetan Buddhist monks can raise the skin temperature of their hands and feet by 15 degrees through meditation. Australian aborigines, who once slept on the ground, unclothed, on near-freezing nights, would slip into a light hypothermic state, suppressing shivering until the rising sun rewarmed them.
You have no such defenses, having spent your days at a keyboard in a climate-controlled office. Only after about ten minutes of hard climbing, as your body temperature rises, does blood start seeping back into your fingers. Sweat trickles down your sternum and spine.