How to warm up your cold toes and fingers?

Question

In winter your hand and feet (especially toes and fingers) may get painfully cold or you may even stop feeling them. How can you warm them up?

This usually happens, when it's below 0°С or when it's slightly above 0°С and your hands/feet are wet. This can happen if you are not properly dressed/booted or you are not moving enough (e.g. sitting in a camp after a day hike).

(Question inspired by a question on warming up your boots in the morning)

Answer 1

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).

Answer 2

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

Answer 3

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.

Answer 4

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.

Answer 5

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.