This is first-hand information, from someone who has it.
As the article suggests, it's not just ambient cold, but cold plus pressure which reliably triggers the condition. Gripping cold objects firmly (e.g. a steering wheel), especially in cold weather, is how it often starts for me. When I feel the numbness in my fingertips, one immediate solution is to take the glove off of the affected hand, and place the hand against the car's hot air blower vent to warm it up. You can also put your fingers in your mouth and breathe on them. Don't forget to keep control of the car, though!
As the vessel spasm starts to recede, and color creeps back into the fingertips, the areas which were white become bluish, then red, then finally back to normal. The color progression is normal, not a sign of damage; the blue is called cyanosis, and results from those tissues having been deprived of oxygen while the blood supply was squeezed off. Bear in mind also that the vessels in spasm are located closer to the palm, not right at the fingertips, so it's more effective to warm the whole hand.
Raynaud's is associated with asthma and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS, not to be confused with IBD). Since blood vessels, smaller airways, and intestines are all composed of smooth muscle, this suggests an as yet unexplained hyperreactivity of that type of muscle to autonomic nerve stimulation. "Smooth muscle" is different from the type of muscle you exercise at the gym - that's "skeletal muscle"; and the "autonomic" nervous system is the part which is involved in emotional responses, and other body processes which function automatically, outside of voluntary control.
This is first-hand information, from someone who has it.
As the article suggests, it's not just ambient cold, but cold plus pressure which reliably triggers the condition. Gripping cold objects firmly (e.g. a steering wheel), especially in cold weather, is how it often starts for me. When I feel the numbness in my fingertips, one immediate solution is to take the glove off of the affected hand, and place the hand against the car's hot air blower vent to warm it up. You can also put your fingers in your mouth and breathe on them. Don't forget to keep control of the car, though!
As the vessel spasm starts to recede, and color creeps back into the fingertips, the areas which were white become bluish, then red, then finally back to normal. The color progression is normal, not a sign of damage; the blue is called cyanosis, and results from those tissues having been deprived of oxygen while the blood supply was squeezed off. Bear in mind also that the vessels in spasm are located closer to the palm, not right at the fingertips, so it's more effective to warm the whole hand.
Raynaud's is associated with asthma and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS, not to be confused with IBD). Since blood vessels, smaller airways, and intestines are all composed of smooth muscle, this suggests an as yet unexplained hyperreactivity of that type of muscle to autonomic nerve stimulation. "Smooth muscle" is different from the type of muscle you exercise at the gym - that's "skeletal muscle"; and the "autonomic" nervous system is the part which is involved in emotional responses, and other body processes which function automatically, outside of voluntary control.