(Have I posted this article before? I don’t think I have, but if I have, apologies for posting it again.)

So there’s still a lot of debate and research going on about this, but it looks like there may be evidence to suggest that repeated cold exposure may do more harm than good – that is, it does not promote acclimation to the cold but rather damage to the extremities.

In this article, a study is discussed in which individuals who tend to have more cold exposure in their histories tend to also have colder extremities (toes, specifically) than people with less cold exposure in their histories. There are a lot of confounding variables to this, as you may suspect, but the author of the article cites several other studies that suggest repeated cold exposure may worsen blood circulation in the fingers and toes in the long run.

Such a thing would certainly explain why I seem so much more sensitive to cold now than I ever used to be. It doesn’t take long for my fingers to feel like absolute death if I’m out even in, say, 40 degree weather.

It’s an issue.
It’s a painful issue.

Anyway.

Edit from mid-2023: HAHAHA it’s so much worse now!