The cure for my chilblains is...

[color=darkblue:96e122bbf2][/color:96e122bbf2] How well I know your experiences with chilblains! I have suffered as long as I can remember. Some years are worse than others, but rarely a year has gone by without at least a mild attack. I live in the south of England where temperatures are not extreme. I have recently retired, so I am not as physically active as I used to be. Perhaps this is why I am already suffering a bad attack despite no frosts yet! I do suffer from poor circulation: my fingers easily go white and dead, and this is the precursor to the first chilblain. My grandfather and my father suffered from the same white fingers although I do not recall them complaining of chilblains. I was a smoker, although I stopped 20 years ago. I have had to have surgery to my carotid arteries to unblock them, and I have type 2 diabetes - two reasons for me to beware of certain 'cures'. Your suggestion is certainly worth trying, and I shall discuss it with my GP. Thank you for sharing this.

I suffered with chilblains as a child, some 55 years ago. Then they disappeared. About 8 years ago I started a dog walking business, so now I am out in all weathers, cold, wet, etc. The chilblains returned about 4 years ago, and I have suffered every winter since then. I read the experience on Calcium and Vit D and started taking it about 2 weeks ago. I have to say, the chilblains are going - no longer painful or swollen, although my affected toes are still a bit red. I cannot believe it! I'm not counting my chickens yet though, but certainly seems to work.

I have a daughter who is 6. I live in Toronto Canada. It's been a freezing winter. Still today is -19 degrees Celsius and it's March 13th.

My daughter has a huge toe. Podiatrist says it's Chilblains. Vaseline and warm socks he said . Never heard of it and I grew up in frigid weather.

What is the amount of calcium and Vitamin D that I should give a child? And who is Dr. Gould? Can I contact him?

Thanks. Please answer if you can.

Dear you all out there with chilblains.

My son was 5 when the doctor told us what was the trouble. Today he is 6 years old and during autumn and winter he struggles with his toes and fingers. Mostly it is his big toes. I sit and sing for him or play audio books for him every night so he can fall asleep. I will immediately try calcium  and vitamin D. Please post other things that also can help. Thank you from Norway.

What a wonderfully lucid and helpful entry,I knew you were not recently at school after the first two lines.

Just like you as a youth I led a very sporting and healthy lifestyle (a horrible modern expression,my apologies) and a 78 I still walk and cycle a great deal. But for the past 2 winters I have suffered from a chilblain on one toe of my left foot,and today I feel the onset of it this year.

Past requests for advice to the medicos have elicited shrugged shoulders and blank faces,so I will certainly give your suggestion a try.

Thank you from the Isle of Man.

Marmaduke1

Hello

I would like to add one more thing and it is that my 7 years old son does itch nearly all the time (if not all the time). He wakes up in the morning and can be itching and then he has been sleeping in a tempered room. He sweats on his feet and it appears like that makes him itch?? Anyone experience that?

He has started to take calcium with D vitamin. Let us hope it gets better....

Best regard Gryl

Every winter my GP tries to unravel the mystery of my chilblains.  I've had them every year but one, since the winter of 1971, when I worked for a month in Toowoomba, at the top of the Toowoomba range.  The first day on my way to work, an 80 km ride on my '58 model Matchless 650 twin, my toes and fingers lost all feeling and I stopped on the side of the road to warm them on the engine block.  That apparently is not recommended and I've had recurring chilblains ever since.

My GP believes it's some sort of autoimmune condition but my blood-tests came back negative to Reynauds.  Nevertheless he suspects my experience with a tetanus injection just before I rode up to Toowoomba may have primed my system for a reaction to my body's chemical response to the cold in my fingers and toes.

I've tried a number of different remedies aimed at promoting blood circulation in my extremities and stopping my fingers from going white/yellow and numb on cold mornings.  E.g. I took cayenne pepper capsules by mouth every day, and applied chilli ointment topically.  A number of things seemed to work for a while but just when I'd think I'd finally found the cure they'd come back stronger than ever.

Since I retired from work at 65 it hasn't been a problem for me, when they get too bad I can just go to bed and get under the doona, that gets rid of them in about 5 - 10 minutes.

My GP told me the best treatment for chilblains seems to be to have an attack of chilblains.  After a couple of hours they fade away and I get a mildly euphoric feeling.  But they return the next cold day.

This winter I'll be trialling the calcium/vit D supplements, and I've also been having several drinks every day of hot water with turmeric and cayenne pepper powder and chopped fresh garlic.  I also have at least one large cup of ginkgo tea to promote my circulation, and hawthorne berry tea which also has cardiovascular benefits.  I'll let you all know how they go.

All the best to my fellow sufferers.  Btw, one thing that helps I found is cutting a fresh onion and applying the cut surface to the chilblain.  That provides some relief.

Here's another tip I just read, for improving blood circulation (assuming chilblains can be associated with poor circulation):  Every day, have a hot shower and before finishing switch to just cold water after about 3 minutes.  Stay under the cold shower for maybe 10-20 seconds then go back to hot again.  Repeat this another 5 times - 3 minutes hot followed by 10-20 seconds cold.  After a week or two your circulation will be a lot stronger, according to the source of this tip.

If you've already got a chilblain when you start doing this I suggest you keep your hand/foot out of the water, just get your torso wet.  It's meant to work on your whole circulatory system, not directly on the blood vessels in your hands and feet.  Quickly heating your hands  and feet is what gives you chilblains in the first place, so I'm told.

I'm going to start trying the hydrotherapy tonight.  All you people in the UK and Canada will laugh when you hear I live on the NSW/Qld border in Australia, but where I live in the foothills it does get cold enough to give me chillies.  I grew up in North Queensland and I'm used to hot weather.  This time of the year is when the cold (what I call cold) weather starts, so I started taking the calcium last week.  I've run out of ginkgo tea but I think my ex-wife can get me some from her workplace so I'll be having that as well, every day now through winter.

By the way, re my previous post, I just read you're supposed to crush fresh garlic and leave it stand a few minutes, not chop it; crushing it causes it to produce more allicin which is the active ingredient.  Go figure.

Applying DIPROBASE cream (for dry itchy skin and eczema) on my chilbalins 3-4 times a day when they appeared completely healed my chilblains in 2 days. The same level of application healed severe chilblains in about 5-7 days. 

ZEROCREAM (similar to diprobase) also worked, but a little slower. This discovery was purely by chance as I do not suffer any skin conditions other than chilblains. I suffer very severe chilblains every year from October to March and I also suffer from reynauds. This treatment brought me great relief!

I am 64 years old now. For the past 10 to 15 years I have been suffering from Chilblains in my toes. They started like clockwork every year with the onset of the heating season (I live in Canada).  First one toe gets affected, later it spreads to several toes on both feet.  Over the years I have tried many home remedies to help against this very painful affliction.  Here is what I found that helped me: 

Before the onset of winter, I start taking Vitamin D supplements. I now use Vitamin D with Citrate.

Before the onset of winter, I apply a cream called Alkiwinter Cold weather protection by ASEPIA on my toes. The cream is available on Amazon, etc.  Since the creme is relatively expensive, I also use Goldbond medicated creme, but it does not seem to be quite as effective against Chilblains.  My theory is that my body needs to build up some stores of supplements before the cold weather hits. At the beginning of winter, I apply the cream once a day on my toes and massage it well into the skin (helps against cold weather cracks on the fingers, too).  Later in the winter,  I do this less frequently.

During the heating season, when I come in from the outside and my toes are cold, I give my feet a quick rinse or bath with cold water.  I do the same when I feel that my toes are heating up in the evening and possibly develop chilblains.

In the house I wear slippers - something that I never used to do.

I have a favourite pair of wool socks that seem to reduce the likelihood of chilblains when I go out on cold days.

All the best!