On rewarming the pain does much more than tingle, and swelling and redness occur. Severe cases crack the skin and bacterial invasion is imminent. Avoid aggressive rewarming. All cases need to be kept warm and dry. Walking may become difficult.
Painkillers often help.
As the icy tendrils of winter swirled around his house in 1862, Maurice Raynaud took pen in frigid hand to first scratch out the description that would bear his name. Raynaud's syndrome results from intermittent spasms in the peripheral vessels of fingers or toes, and occasionally ears and nose. Color changes accompany this painful response to cold - usually white, often red or blue. Nobody knows what causes Raynaud's syndrome, but thousands suffer with the slightest drop in temperature. For the past decade researchers at the US Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine, Natick, Mass., have been experimenting with techniques to countercondition these syndrome-impaired nervous systems.