What causes cold hands and feet in women?

What causes cold hands and feet in women? Many women experience cold hands and feet in winter, and this cannot be solved by holding a cup of milk tea. Everyone needs to know why symptoms of cold hands and feet occur. Many times on winter nights, many people cannot sleep because of cold hands and feet, which will affect their daily lives, so it is important to know the causes and solutions to cold hands and feet.

Cold hands and feet is a common phenomenon for many girls in winter. Traditional Chinese medicine and Western medicine have different understandings on this. There are several reasons why women have cold hands and feet:

1.1 Women have a larger relative surface area of ​​the body and lose more heat under the same circulation conditions. Women's hands and feet are generally smaller than men's. According to the viewpoint of biogeometry, the smaller the body size, the larger its relative surface area. That is to say, the relative surface area of ​​women's hands and feet in contact with the outside world (that is, the surface area divided by its average mass, the standard unit is square meters/kilogram) is larger than that of men. Under normal circumstances, most of the human body is covered with subcutaneous fat, which plays a role in keeping warm and storing energy. Due to the influence of estrogen, women's fat layer is much thicker than men's, which to a certain extent offsets the greater heat loss caused by women's larger relative surface area than men. However, due to frequent activities and physiological needs in the hands and feet, a large amount of fat cannot be accumulated. That is to say, even under the same circulation conditions, women lose more heat per unit mass in their hands and feet than men.

1.2 Women’s arterial perfusion is weaker than men’s, resulting in less heat supply to the extremities. Due to hormonal reasons, women's muscles are not as developed as men's, especially the upper limb muscles, which is very obvious. (There are also social factors involved. Many girls are very afraid of "growing muscles"). By randomly selecting young men and women of the same age and living conditions after puberty and measuring the inner diameter of their brachial artery in their upper arms with B-ultrasound, it can be concluded that the inner diameter of the brachial artery in men is larger than that in women, which is a statistically significant difference. Please note that arterial perfusion and blood pressure are not the same concept. In the extremities, the main source of skin temperature is blood. The greater the irrigation flow, the more heat it brings and the higher the skin temperature. vice versa. However, women who do physical labor rarely have the problem of cold hands and feet. The reason is that long-term physical labor rebuilds the arterial system, increases the blood supply to the limb muscles, and also relatively increases skin perfusion.

1.3 Different endocrine conditions lead to different microvascular bed densities. Estrogen causes the density of women's subcutaneous blood vessels to be higher than men's, which is why women's skin generally looks more moisturized than men's. The problem is that the microvascular bed is also the main area for heat dissipation. At the same temperature and humidity, we have already explained above that body shape causes different amounts of heat loss in men and women. Here we should also mention that the heat dissipation efficiency is also different. Women have a higher heat dissipation efficiency due to the higher density of their microvascular beds. Under the same temperature and humidity, the subcutaneous microvascular beds in women's hands and feet close earlier than men to reduce heat loss. But microcirculation is the main source of heat for the skin of the extremities. If the microvascular bed is closed, the heat supply to the extremities will be greatly reduced.

In summary, girls’ cold hands and feet have a physiological basis. Of course, there are many social factors. For example, women's activity levels are generally lower than men's in winter, resulting in less heat production. Women who engage in physical labor or exercise for a long time have fewer cold hands and feet. These are all influencing factors. Treatment Recommendations:

Root cause: more exercise, physical activity of upper and lower limbs

To treat the symptoms: Eat foods or take medicines that can dilate blood vessels, such as chili peppers, a small amount of alcohol, metabolic promoters, etc.

You don’t necessarily have to see a doctor or take medicine if you have cold hands and feet. Delicious food can also help improve the symptoms of cold hands and feet. “All medicines are poisonous to some extent”, so there is no need to worry about diet therapy. Many foods in our daily life are very helpful for regulating our body.

Eat more foods containing niacin. Niacinic acid is very helpful in stabilizing the nervous system and circulatory system. It can also improve nervous tension, nervous diarrhea, dermatitis, dilate peripheral blood vessels, and improve cold hands and feet. If taken in large quantities, it will cause the face to turn red and hot. Niacin is mostly found in animal liver, eggs, milk, cheese, brown rice, and whole-wheat products.

In addition, you should consume more foods rich in vitamin E, iron, and protein, as well as some warm foods on a daily basis to improve the body's resistance to cold, such as nuts such as walnut kernels and sesame seeds; vegetables such as leeks, carrots, spinach, etc.; fruits such as apricots, peaches, papayas, etc. Other foods such as beef, mutton, glutinous rice, soybeans, red dates, brown sugar, etc. are all warm foods. In addition, drinking ginseng tea, longan tea, etc. in winter not only warms up the body and achieves a nourishing effect, but also keeps your hands and feet from being cold.

For people with cold body, doctors recommend eating dog meat or mutton stewed with aconite in winter, but they should not drink too much ginger water, because ginger water is only suitable for people with cold stomach. Generally, drinking too much can easily cause getting angry. Therefore, it is not suitable for people with yin deficiency and kidney deficiency.

What causes cold hands and feet in women? Cold hands and feet in women are common, but there are many ways to solve this problem. The above introduces many methods for you to regulate your body through diet. The reasons for cold hands and feet are similar, and most of them are probably due to physical weakness.