How to warm up your cold toes and fingers?

No one's mentioned this yet, so I'll throw this out there: at least for my fingers/hands, I find breathing on them helpful (not blowing on them like you would soup, but the kind of breath that you'd use to fog up glasses before cleaning them). Obviously harder to do for toes/feet, but easy for the hands, espcially if you can't swing your arms for some reason.

posted over 11 years ago

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newenglander‭

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You can sit on your hands or cross your arms over your chest, clench a fist, and pump your muscles. Secondly heat up for core muscles (abdomen, chest, thighs). Increasing your core temp will promote better heat circulation. Inturn, gulp down near hot cup of water, eat soup, take a hot bath. Doing so will keep you warm for a good while.

posted almost 11 years ago

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Flexaursarusrex‭

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There's not yet a good answer that asks for the reason the fingers, toes (and nose and ears) are cold, so let me add a few points:

(I'm assuming around 0°C according to the question - of course, -40 °C is different).

Here are a couple of reasons why your fingers and toes get cold in the first place:

• Of course, you may not yet be used to the cold temperatures. Full acclimatization will take some weeks. However, you need to know that the amound and rate of acclimatization depends on the exposure. Thus if you completely wrap yourself all the time, you hinder this acclimatization. This is no short-term (minutes) solution, though. But acclimatization can mean that you'll be able to have warm fingers in air of say -15 °C at the end of the winter, even though you always got cold fingers at +5 °C in fall.

• Assuming your clothes are generally sensible for the weather, i.e. you have been fine before at this same day, but now fingers and toes get cold. This is usually a symptom of exhaustion, which is the underlying cause of the centralization (low blood flow to extremities to save energy). Which means in addition to the immediate measures to warm up the fingers as listed in the other answers you should eat (and possibly drink something containing sugar, such as (diluted) juice or sugared tea for immediately available energy).
  This type of cold fingers can be avoided by taking care that enough rests for eating and drinking occur over the day.
  And it is related to a vicious cycle: with the beginning exhaustion, you don't like the thought of having a rest to eat: you know you'll get cold. Also drinking the by now cold stuff in your bottle doesn't appeal because you know you'll be even colder. However, if you don't realize what is going on, this can prevent taking the only efficient remedy: eating (and get you into an accompanying dehydration). Otherwise you don't only risk frostbitten fingers/toes/nosetip/ears but also hypothermy.

• A related issue is that you may have wet clothes/shoes/gloves, so their insulation is impaired.
  Personally, that happens to me all the time (i.e. moist socks in mountain/ski boots) but my feet stay warm until I get hungry.

• For the extra (I assume: rock) climbing question: my guess is that only general acclimatization (i.e. higher base metabolism) really helps here. You need your fingers warm, but climbing means that you spend quite a lot of time statically (e.g. standing/sitting and securing your partner). During the climb, you cannot use bulky clothes, and the clothes cannot be very thick: otherwise you'd sweat during the climb. Climbing shoes don't help with cold, neither. Particularly as they are not meant to give your toes much freedom.

posted almost 11 years ago

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cbeleites supports Monica‭

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Swinging your arms and legs to move blood to your extremities is good advice and will overcome your body's vasoconstriction response, but keep in mind you should also layer up after doing this since you are driving heat energy away from your core. If you are in camp, drinking a hot beverage (and also holding it while you drink) will warm your core and ease your body's cold response. If that doesn't work, filling a Nalgene with boiling water and getting into your sleeping bag with it is pretty sound advice, assuming you haven't gotten yourself some frostbite (tough to accomplish at 0 deg C). Best thing is to acclimate yourself to colder temperatures by slightly under-dressing in the lead-up to cold weather adventure.

posted almost 11 years ago

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Andrew‭

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If your fingers are to the cold point where you cant feel them, then not much is going to help. You could breath on them yes, but at this point you are freezing internally. So I would suggest(even though it might be painful) swinging your arms and legs. The warm blood circulates from the centre of your body. It's there to protect your vital organs and keep your lungs from freezing. Get that blood to your fingers and you'll be all right.

posted almost 11 years ago

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LaCoy‭

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Adding to Steeds self-answer. Other ways to warm up fingers and toes:

• Wiggle your fingers and toes vigorously (while walking, while sitting) - circulation is aided by muscle movement.
• Sprint (if you have the extra energy)
• When not using them, ball your hands up inside your gloves (remove your fingers from the glove fingers and make a fist inside the glove).
• Hold your arms down by your side with your hands extended sideways at 90 degree angles to your arms. Vigorously shrug up and down rapidly. (Weird - but works wonders)
• Slap your hands together, against your thighs. Kick your feet together. The sharp smack can stimulate circulation
• Stick your bare hands in your arm-pits
• Stick your bare feet on a friends stomach (assuming they are nice and toasty)

If you are in camp, and have the time / resources:

• Fill a nalgene type (well sealing) water bottle with hot water and hold it in your hands
• Place a hot water bottle between your thighs where it can warm blood traveling down your femoral artery
• Start a fire

If you have planned ahead:

• Hand and toe warmers (single use, chemical packets that warm up when exposed to air) are a nice emergency measure

posted over 11 years ago

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Lost‭

506 reputation 30 103 64 0

Cold fingers - put them around your neck.

• The neck exhibits excellent blood flow and thus, heating power
• The neck is easily accessible area of the body, unlike armpits, thighs, stomach (with all the layers of clothing)
• At least for me, it is not very stressful to press very cold fingers against the neck, compared to against e.g. stomach.

As for cold toes - I would probably try running, if excess energy is available.

posted over 11 years ago

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Vorac‭

211 reputation 29 33 30 0

Fingers and toes cold?

Put on your hat.

Seriously: You are losing heat faster than you are generating it. Bondy compensates by reducing circulation to the extremities to keep the core warm. Head has 25% of your blood flowing through it. Reducing heat loss there, gives you more heat to send to the toes.

If this doesn't work, then add antother layer of clothing.

Watch for constrictive foot and handware. Anything that fits tighly not only reduces circulation, but you no longer have an air layer next to the skin.

posted over 11 years ago

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Sherwood Botsford‭

1032 reputation 9 247 106 0

I'm answering my own question to share some knowledge.

First, cold toes/fingers is serious. You start feeling discomfort, then a little pain, then you stop feeling them and forget about them, then you get them amputated. So you should constantly check if you can still feel toes and fingers, and if not, start to warm them up.

Second, I find most effective and easy the following method of heating:

• To warm up toes, swing your leg back-and-forward 30-50 times. The movement is done with the whole leg (including the thigh), as wide as possible, and it should be powerful.
• To warm up your fingers, make similar motion with your arms, except that you can go 360-degree.

Remember to make your full 30-50 swings before saying "blah, it's not working";)

What happens is you warm blood is driven by centripetal force to flow to the extreme parts of your legs/arms: toes and fingers. Normally they don't get much blood in cold conditions, because your body regulation mechanisms try to keep more warmth at the center of the body by thinning peripherial vessels (it's an overreaction).

If you weren't feeling your fingers/toes before starting this, warming up might be very painful. So it's better to do 20, small pause to let heat reach frozen tissues, a little screaming, another 20;)

Note: if you weren't feeling your toes or fingers for a long time, things may have gone beyond simple treatment. I'm not sure this method is advised in such situation, because it provides fast heating, and all recommendations for treating serious frostbites prescribe slow heating (also see this question about frostbites).

posted over 11 years ago

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Steed‭

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