Raynaud's Phenomenon?

On Thursday night after work I had to squeeze in a run before Mackenzie's soccer game. It was four degrees (yes, four!), but I was time constrained and didn't have time to go to the gym. I raced home from work, threw on all my gear, got stuff ready to change into at the soccer game, and ran out the door.

I was cold for the first quarter to half mile, and then my body began to heat up, and pretty quickly I was comfortable. I ran what I now refer to as my "cracked skull route" (http://comojanine.blogspot.com/2008/12/ice-ice-baby.html), which is about 5.5 miles. By the end, my legs were moving a little slow because of the cold, but I was warm. As planned, Mackenzie had my Jeep started, and we jumped in and headed to the soccer game.

After a few minutes in the car, I got cold... shivery, "OMG I'm freezing cold" cold. As I've mentioned here before, I am a sweater. During the run, even my outer layers became damp, which did not take long to make me cold.

By the time I got to the soccer complex (20 minutes or so), my fingers were turning the anticipated white. This is what happens to me whenever I get cold after exercising. It happens even when it's not near zero outside. It's a very odd thing, my fingers turn extremely white; there is no blood flow to them whatsoever. The same thing happens to my toes. Once my body temperature recovers, normal blood flow returns, but it can take quite a while. The weird thing that happened Thursday night is, after Mackenzie's game, we went to Applebee's for dinner. It was nice and warm in there, but I hadn't completely warmed up during her game (even though I had changed into dry clothes when we got there). We were sitting at the table and I was looking at the menu, and a blood vessel in my left middle finger popped! It hurt like a son of a gun and my finger turned purple on the underside from the first knuckle to the base of my hand. Ouch!!! At the time I didn't related it to the lack of circulation.

So... I logged on to blog about my circulation issue and white fingers. I did not know there was a name for it, and it's not really normal! I thought this probably happened to everyone if their body temperature began to decline. I googled it just prior to starting this post, and up came Raynaud's Phenomenon. This is definitely what I am experiencing (I'll mention it to my doctor the next time I visit him). It sounds like it can be a minor condition in and of itself (my case), or it can be linked to something more serious. One thing is for sure, from now on I'll be keeping warm after I work out!