Why Are My Hands and Feet Freezing?
Try Magnesium
You are sitting in a perfectly warm room, but your hands feel like blocks of ice. Your partner flinches when you touch them. And you keep asking yourself the same question. Why can I never get warm?
After nearly four decades in practice, I have seen this problem more times than I can count. There are a few usual suspects.
The first is something called Raynaud’s Syndrome. This is a condition where the tiny blood vessels in your fingers and toes go into spasm. They clamp down so tight that blood cannot get through. The telltale sign is your fingers actually turning white or blue in the cold. That is the classic marker.
It could also be poor circulation from something like atherosclerosis. Or it could be a sluggish thyroid. When your thyroid is slow, your metabolism slows down too. That makes it harder for your body to stay warm.
But here is the cause many people miss. Magnesium deficiency.
Think of your blood vessels like elastic pipes. Calcium causes them to tighten up. Magnesium does the opposite. It is your body’s natural muscle relaxer. It helps blood vessels open up so blood can flow freely to your hands and feet.
If you are low on magnesium, and about half the population is, your blood vessels stay tight and constricted. That means less blood flow and colder extremities.
I have had patients start taking a quality magnesium supplement and suddenly notice their hands are warm for the first time in years.
One patient stands out in my memory. She was a young woman from Colorado, still in her early twenties. She had Raynaud’s and would not go skiing because her fingers became painful, cold, and pale. After we addressed her magnesium levels, she noticed a real difference.
So here is something to think about. Do your hands and feet turn white in the cold? Do they ache? You might want to look into your magnesium levels. It could be the missing piece you have been searching for.
Authored by Gerard Guillory, MD
Gerard Guillory, MD, is a board-certified internist who practiced for nearly four decades with a focus on functional, root-cause medicine. He is the author of three books on irritable bowel syndrome and the founder of It’s My Health, where he and his team put current health news in context and help members understand the underlying causes of chronic symptoms.
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