Cold Weather & Our Skin

Why do our cheeks and finger tips get pink in cold weather?

Our fingertips and cheeks often turn pink when it’s cold due to a process called reactive vasodilation, which is part of how your body tries to maintain an appropriate temperature. This cycle of constriction and dilation continues as your body tries to balance keeping warm with protecting skin tissue from cold damage.

1. Initial vasoconstriction: When you’re exposed to cold, your blood vessels constrict (narrow) to minimize heat loss. This is why your skin might look pale at first.
2. Reactive vasodilation (hunting response): After a while, especially in extremities like fingers, toes, and cheeks, your body allows some blood to return to the surface in pulses. This is a protective mechanism to prevent frostbite by bringing oxygen and nutrients back to the tissue.
3. Appearance of pink or red: The return of blood flow causes the skin to appear pink or flushed. In the cheeks, this is often more noticeable because the skin is thinner and has a rich blood supply.

Why It Itches:

1. Nerve stimulation: When blood flow returns rapidly to cold, constricted blood vessels, it can irritate the surrounding nerves. These nerves may misinterpret the signal and produce an itching sensation instead of just pain or warmth.
2. Histamine release: Cold exposure followed by rewarming can cause the body to release histamines—a chemical involved in immune responses. Histamine can cause blood vessels to dilate and trigger itching, similar to an allergic reaction.
3. Skin response to temperature change: The sudden change from cold to warm can make skin cells behave abnormally for a short time, leading to temporary inflammation or irritation.

The itching you feel in your fingers or cheeks when they warm up after being cold is a result of reperfusion ( the return of blood to areas that had reduced circulation ) . This is especially noticeable in areas with lots of nerve endings (like fingertips) or thinner skin (like cheeks).

In more intense or chronic cases, this reaction can lead to chilblains (painful, itchy swellings on the skin due to poor circulation and cold exposure).

Do you know ?

• The “Hunting Response” Also called the Lewis reaction,the cycle of vasoconstriction and vasodilation .It helps prevent frostbite by ensuring intermittent blood flow despite cold exposure.

• Cold-Induced Urticaria This is a condition where exposure to cold triggers hives (itchy red welts). People with this condition can have allergic-like reactions just from holding something cold or stepping into cold air or water.

• Chilblains (Pernio) These are painful, itchy, red or purple swellings when skin is exposed to cold and rewarms too quickly. its common on fingers, toes, nose, and ears.

• Eskimo Nose and Ear Adaptation People from cold climates, tend to have shorter noses and ears, which are less prone to heat loss and frostbite—an example of Allen’s Rule, which says animals in colder climates tend to have shorter appendages.

• Warm Sensation in Extreme Cold (Paradoxical Warmth) In extreme cold exposure, people nearing hypothermia sometimes report feeling warm before they lose consciousness. This is due to the failure of the body’s thermoregulation

• Cold Water Can Feel “Burning” At very low temperatures, the skin’s pain receptors interpret extreme cold as a burning sensation. That’s why frostbite can feel like a burn, and can resemble a thermal burn.