Everyone gets so chilly now and then that they can’t feel their fingers. After an afternoon of snowball-throwing or ice skating, it’s totally normal for your extremities to take a little while to warm up. But around 5% of the population myself included suffer from a much more intense version of this predicament. At the slightest chill, I can lose sensation in my fingers (and sometimes toes) for hours at a time.
It hasn t always been this way. I never felt particularly resistant to cold weather until later in life years after going to college in Chicago, where frozen fingers and toes were a common occurrence during winter. Back then, I could traipse around my frigid college campus without too much discomfort. But in my 30s, even an activity as brief as walking to the car from my house could leave my fingers completely numb and stark white, as if the blood had completely drained out of them. And even after my fingers finally regained feeling, they prickled and tingled with intense