Raynaud’s disease is a condition when the tips of your fingers, your ears, your nose, and toes feel numb and cold in response to stress and cold temperatures. Raynaud’s disease is a disorder of the blood vessels that limits the amount of blood to the skin. The vessels narrow during a Raynaud’s attack and this limits the circulation to the areas that have been affected. You can have Raynaud’s without having another disease which is called primary Raynaud’s. However, if you have some other disease along with the Raynaud’s, doctors would call it Raynaud’s phenomenon. There are few people actually affected by this disease, but between men and women, women are more common with the disorder compared to men. For people that live in colder climates, the disorder is more prominent than with people in warmer climates.

There are a few signs and symptoms that differentiate Raynaud’s disease from just having cold feet and from frostbite. Symptoms of Raynaud’s disease depend heavily on the frequency as to which the blood vessels spasm. One symptom of Raynaud’s disease is color changes in your skin due to the change in cold temperatures. Another symptom is the numbing feeling or pain that is caused by the warming of the skin. Stress comes into this and you get the numbing feeling when the stress is relieved.

When a Raynaud’s disease attack first occurs, the skin tends to turn white followed by blue along with a cold, numb feeling followed by your sensory perception dulling. A way to check what it looks like is that the skin might, under some circumstances, look somewhat swollen. When warming occurs, the skin turns red and there is throbbing, tingling and more possible swelling. Not everyone will experience the same, identical symptoms, and not everyone will go from white to blue to red. Each case is different; however, these are the accepted symptoms of Raynaud’s disease. An attack usually affects only one or two fingers or toes on someone, but each attack is different and its not the same two fingers or toes each time the attack comes. Some attacks can last as little as one minute. However, some attacks can go for many hours. One thing is for certain. As time goes on, the attacks become more and more severe.

The causes of Raynaud’s disease are not all completely known; however, doctors have come to the conclusion on some of the causes. Everyone knows that when the body is exposed to cold conditions, their toes and ears and fingers begin to get cold before any other part of the body. What some people might not know is why this is occurring. When your body is put into a cold environment, blood flow to the extremities slows so that the core body temperature can stay constant. The body figures that the heart, lungs, and all of those organs are more important than the fingers and toes. Your extremities still gets the required blood for survival, but you just feel a little cold. When Raynaud’s disease attacks, the amount of blood that goes to your extremities is reduced significantly. Stress triggers a similar response to the body as cold does, which is why the vessels constrict more. Some doctors have even begun doing research to see whether or not Raynaud’s disease could potentially be from inherited traits. Either way, the disease can be painful and should be checked out.