Peripheral Response to Cold

Abstract

In this study, peripheral response to extreme cold was examined by measuring skin temperature of the finger dipped in ice-water.Experiments were carried out in almost the same conditions.Tentative conclusions are as follows:
1.Females show a little higher responses than males.
2.The finding that the annual mean temperature is the major variable affecting CIVD rerponse is supported in this study.
3.The Ainu do not show any racial specificity in CIVD response, but they showed the retarded cycle of time lasped between first spontaneous rewarming and first peak.
4.Professional female divers show particularly enhanced rewarming.An assumption is made that prolonged total body exposure to moderate cold may result in enhanced peripheral response to extreme cold.
5.Identical twins show more similar responses within each pair compared with fraternal twins. Junior high school twins show larger variance within each pair than high school twins.
6. Statistically significant differences of body characteristics are demcnstrated. B. F./w % value, however, seems to have only a little effect on CIVD response.
I want to express my thanks to Prof. H. SUZUKI, Department of Anthro-pology, the University of Tokyo, for his support and supervision, Prof. H. YOSHIMURA, Kyoto Prefectural University of Medicine, for his valuable suggestions, and Prof. S. KONDO, the University of Kyoto, for his continual support in fieldworks.