Okay, so this really weird thing has started happening with two of the fingers on my left hand: At odd moments whose similarity I can't determine, the top half of the either my index finger or my middle finger will go all yellowish and whitish and become numb. When this happens, I of course focus on the finger and try to get more blood to circulate into it. I can't tell whether that works, or if I had just waited the five minutes that it takes to force more blood into my finger that would work just as well. It doesn't just happen out in the cold, although the first time it happened, it was when I was hanging Christmas ornaments outside in Nature's Refrigerator (a.k.a. Rochester). It also doesn't happen just when I'm typing, although it DOES happen when I'm typing sometimes.
It's quite annoying.
So if someone knows that this is a sign of...well...something, please let me know. I've never heard of it happening.
I'm going to start exercising more. At least, if I have some kind of circulation problem, that can only help, right?
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7 comments:
I'm a PhD, not an MD, but I have a similar problem. It usually happens in the cold, but not always. It might be Renaud's syndrome, although I have little sympathy for the few (men) I know who claim to have it. Your fingers turn a weird white-yellow, and you have no feeling in them, right? The good news is that it probably won't kill you, or even make you ill. The bad news is that I exercise 5 times a week vigorously, and it doesn't make a difference. My advice? Invest in an economy pack of hand-warmers, and concede defeat to the ravages of aging (argh).
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/numb-fingers/AN01323
Thanks, guys! I appreciate it. That looks like what it is, the article describes it exactly. Glad to know that no digits are in imminent danger of dropping off.
Sue, excuse the ignorance, but by hand-warmers do you mean gloves or something else?
Here's an irony: At age 40 I still blush like a teenager. The DJs at the radio station love it -- they always try to make me blush and point it out on the air when I do. Wish I had a little less vaso-dilation in the cheeks and more in the fingers.
I meant the little packet-things that stay warm for hours (chemically). But, on second thought, they might not help all that much. Sometimes the problem is cold, but sometimes apparently it can be something else like stress. For reasons I don't understand I have this problem most often when I'm at the supermarket! Never thought the produce aisle was stressful...
I have Raynaud's. It is much as you describe. It only bothers me because it makes it hard to type, and then there's the bonus of the way typing aggravates it. Drinking warm beverages helps--sometimes I'll just drink plain hot water. I also have some fingerless gloves that I wear sometimes when I'm working at the library, where it tends to be cold and I am typing a lot. Even though the gloves don't cover my fingers, they help quite a bit and leave me free to use my hands more than full gloves would.
This is fascinating. My daughter gets these very white, numb patches on her feet after walking around our cold tile floor. I thought it was a side-effect of being outside in very cold weather with inadequate shoes--like an almost frost bite.
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