From: sbharris@ix.netcom.com (Steve Harris  sbharris@ROMAN9.netcom.com)
Newsgroups: sci.med
Subject: Re: Cold Feet -- Literally!
Date: 29 Aug 2004 19:02:31 -0700
Message-ID: <79cf0a8.0408291802.27a54a0c@posting.google.com>

Carey Gregory <tiredofspam123@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:<dd8si0l25pd1inopd1s60kcq9502hb0e9i@4ax.com>...

> benn686@hotmail.com (Ben Nguyen) wrote:
>
> >Ive never been tested but my dad is diabetic and has to take insulin
> >shots.  I notice also that I bruise easily.  My dad has a gizmo that
> >he checks his blood sugar with, but this wont tell me if Im diabetic,
> >will it?
>
> No.  It would tell you if your blood sugar levels are normal, but it won't
> diagnose you, and it won't tell you a damn thing about why your feet are
> cold.  Nobody on the internet can tell you either, so if you want the
> answers you need to see a doctor.



COMMENT:

And here's more bad news: your doctor won't be able to help you
either, more likely than not.

Most cases of cold feet are not due to poor arterial circulation.
Pulses can be felt. And people with cold feet don't complain of calf
pain on walking (claudication) which is what happens when circulation
gets poor enough that it's not enough for exercising muscle. Which is
*way* before it gets bad enough to be too little for a resting hunk of
gristle (which is mostly what your foot is).

A lot of cases of cold feet are related to peripheral neuropathy. And
some of this is due to diabetes. But the bad news is that most of it
*isn't.* Or to lack of B12, thyroid, etc.  Most of peripheral
neuropathy is "idiopathic" and age-related. Which means we haven't a
clue about that, either.

So you're likely gunna end up wearing socks to bed.

Now it's time for my totally anecdotal story, which may or may not
mean a thing, except that I've been fooling myself.

Here it is: I personally take a low dose of a statin drug for my
cholesterol. I've done this for about 4 years, and my feet have been
really and newly cold at night, for all that time. Stopping the drug
does seem to help, but it takes weeks, and the several statins I've
tried all seem to produce the effect.

Recently I've started taking Coenzyme Q10 as part of a private
scientific study. And about a week into the study, my cold feet
disappeared. I quit wearing socks to bed. And a week after the end of
the study, they returned again, like clockwork. So I'm beginning to
wonder if, in my case, something involving CoQ10 isn't going on.

But don't quote me, because I'm a one-rat experiment, and nobody else
I know has reported the same effects.

SBH