chilblains

Years ago, when I read the book "Jane Eyre",  which takes place in the early 1800's , poor orphaned Jane suffered with chilblains on her fingers.  I wasn't really sure what chilblains were, but I assumed it was a condition that no one would get in modern times.

Well, take a look at The Sasquatch's fingers....CHILBLAINS  !      In  2014...in the 21st century!

He is very frugal and doesn't really heat his house in the winter.  He said he started noticing raised bumps that were painful and sore..first under a toe...then on his fingers...and he had a really painful one on the back of his heel.

Hard to see it here on his heel, because the skin is thicker and it was healing...which causes the chilblains to itch intensely.

He looked online and diagnosed the problem...then turned his furnace up to a whopping 55 degrees.

The chilblains aren't exactly caused by just the cold, but more by warming up cold extremities too quickly.

Here is the explanation from Mayo clinic website...

"Rewarming of cold skin can cause small blood vessels under the skin to expand more quickly than nearby larger blood vessels can handle, resulting in a "bottleneck" effect and the blood leaking into nearby tissues."

So, I guess jumping in to a hot shower with cold fingers is the wrong thing to do. Who would have thought it would be such a problem, though?

At least it isn't frostbite!