Stimulated Capillary Growth

[Colin]

It seems that every winter I'm able to get by with a glove that's a tad bit thinner, and my hands stay a tad bit warmer. For some time now, I've theorized that repeatedly exposing my hands to cold causes me to grow more/larger capillaries in my fingers, or perhaps improve their warmth capabilities some other way. During the winter, I predominantly wear sandals around town so that I might do the same for my feet.

I've also heard of people (or rather, a person), standing outside in the cold with little or no clothes on, with his hands submerged in hot water. The idea is that he was training his body to keep his extremities warm even though his core was cold.

Does anyone know the truth about this stuff, or atleast have ideas?

[Cpt.Caveman]

My arse gets cold all the time. Or at least my feet are wimpy. I have read that once exposed to an injury such as frostbite you are supposed to be more susceptible to getting it again in the same area...

As for training I say fill up a (concrete) swimming pools with ice and cold cold water then swim to the bottom (simulating high altitude). Then punch the bottom of the swimming pool as hard as you can. Then take a ball and chain and attach it to your leg. Stay there as long as possible If you got hardcore you could carry the ball and chain across the bottom of the pool several times

[philfort]

Seattle sure isn't a good training ground for that kind of conditioning. I don't know if it works at all, but I used to do that back east.

As for standing around with no clothes on and your hands in warm water, wouldn't that have the opposite effect? Your body would get trained like this: "oh, when my torso is really cold, I don't need to bother heating my extremities, because they are so warm." - so you'd end up with really cold hands on a climb (assuming this isn't just bunk)

[ 01-30-2002: Message edited by: philfort ]

[freeclimb9]

Repeated exposure to cold does enhance your ability to endure it. For example, Inuit hunters and Norwegian fisherman work without gloves in sub-freezing temperatures without getting cold hands. What happens is their bodies are trained to forego vascular constriction upon exposure to cold. You can train your whole body; one of the members of Scott's antarctic expedition took "snow baths" daily, and he fared much better than his fellow expeditioners. There's a whole set of studies to verify this anectdotal data.

[Dru]

Reinhold Messner used to walk around town holding snowballs in his hands to toughen them and desensitize them to cold. obviously it diverted blood flow away from his brain thus explaining the bizarre Messnerese the guy speaks.

[specialed]

Or his search for the ever elusive Yeti of the high Himalaya.

[freeclimb9]

colin,

A book I read awhile ago (and subsequently can't remember details from) that covers your question is "Life at the Extremes- The Science of Survival". A short interview with author is at http://www.salon.com/health/books/2000/10/13/extremes/index.html

Basically, you won't grow new capillaries, but can train your body to avoid vasoconstriction.