抄録
Many Japanese women have trouble with cold hands and feet. We examined how the skin temperature of the hands and feet are related to the environmental temperature. The subjects were eight otherwise healthy women aged 20-22 years, who complained of cold hands and feet. The dorsal and ventral skin temperatures of the hands and feet of a subject were measured using a thermotracer over two menstrual cycles. As the outside temperature and temperature in the bedroom increased from spring to summer, both the basal body and skin temperature of the hands and feet increased. However, the skin temperature of the hands and feet did not change with the basal body temperature, but were influenced more by the increase in bedroom temperature. Therefore, we compared subjects who woke up in a bedroom warmed to about 22℃ with those who woke in a bedroom at a normal winter temperature of about 9.6℃. During the low phase of body temperate, the basal body temperature and skin temperature of the hands of the subjects were significantly higher in the warmed bedroom. In other words, on warming the bedroom temperature in winter, the thermoregulatory center was under the illusion that it was spring or early summer, which played a dominant role in altering the circulation to the hands and feet.
