Baby, It’s Cold Outside
I have previously written about Uhthoff’s Phenomenon. This is where heat exposure can temporarily exacerbate MS symptoms. Now it’s time to talk about the opposite, cold intolerance in the setting of MS.
Last winter, I came to strongly suspect that cold exposure was causing me to experience an increase in MS symptoms. My neurologist confirmed that while heat intolerance is more common in the setting of MS, cold intolerance is also common (just not common enough to have its own title). In his words, MS breaks our inner thermostat. Some people are sensitive to both heat and cold, so if the temperature isn’t just right, it triggers MS symptoms, because MS is a jerk like that. This winter, I feel that I have confirmed what I suspected, my MS doesn’t like the cold… good thing I live in Canada, eh?
Forget to warm up the car and/or wear mittens to protect against the cold steering wheel during morning pre-school drop off? I will pay for the error in the form of numb hands (especially the left one) for the next few hours. Forget to wear shoes or slippers when running out to the fridge in the garage or while folding laundry in the basement? Prepare for numb feet for the rest of the day. Fail to wear appropriate clothing for the weather? Here comes headaches, buzzing sensations, numbness, weakness, and pain behind my left eye.
I’ve taken a few measures to mitigate the effects that the cold has on my body these days. I bought myself a really great pair of Manitobah Mocassins to wear around the house. This has helped to reduce the number of times that I find myself with numb feet because I was folding laundry wearing only socks on the cold concrete floor of our basement, or because I ran out into the garage to grab something without putting on shoes. My husband bought me a space heater for my office, which has helped to avoid those days where my fingers go numb as I type away at my computer. I now sleep with a heating pad most nights. The biggest thing has been adjusting my clothing to make sure that I am dressed more warmly than I think I will need for the weather. Layers are my friends. My days of polar bear plunges and winter camping are behind me. Even with knowing that cold exposure triggers my MS symptoms and having some measures in place to protect me from this trigger, I still manage to set off my symptoms because I’m not careful enough in managing my cold exposures.
So, what causes this phenomenon? Well, much like with Uhthoff’s Phenomenon, they think that getting cold may affect the speed with which messages pass along nerves, and, where a nerve has previously been damaged by MS, this slow down of message speed makes symptoms more pronounced. Nerve impulses are best transmitted at our normal body temperature. If the system is heated up or cooled down, these impulses are slowed, which causes further difficulty in the messages getting to the appropriate destination when the nerve axon has already been damaged by MS lesions.
The polar vortex is back, bringing with it temperatures as low as -23 degrees Celsius before windchill to close out this week, so I’ll be bundled up by the fire for the foreseeable future. Wiarton Willie has predicted an early spring, and I sure hope that the cute little rodent isn’t lying.
