Reynaud's Syndrome and Infrared Cameras
Apr. 29th, 2009 06:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
m31andyAn interesting thing happened at the weekend, which I completely forgot to mention.
I did mention that J, A,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cuvalwen and I skipped off to the Science Museum on Saturday and had fun in the Launch Pad. What I failed to mention was what happened there.
Now J, my sister, has Reynaud's Syndrome and from reading the Wikipedia article, I can pretty well confirm that it's primary and definitely genetic (Mum makes a mean pastry and I remember my sister's fingers turning dark blue when we picked sprouts one Christmas morning). And yes, it has been properly diagnosed. But, as with all 'quality of life' conditions as opposed to 'quantity of life' conditions, it remains untreated as it hasn't been researched enough yet.
It was interesting to read the article where it talked about "avoiding attacks" as if this is something that comes and goes, like migraine. It's not. And the best proof I have of this happened at the weekend.
There was one of those infra-red cameras set up so we were all poncing about rubbing each other in (mostly) publicly accessible places. J was stood there and then A noticed her hands. While we were all radiating mostly red in cooler parts (i.e. where clothing was present) our exposed skin mostly radiated white (except my cheeks which were a nice pink, thank you very much!), J's hands were purple. It was warm in the room, her hands felt fine (she was not reporting any pain) and yet, there for all to see, was absolute proof that her extremities were cold.
So no, Wikipedia, one does not suffer "attacks", it's always there. Just once your extremities get below a certain temperature it starts hurting. That's all.
Actually, I think I've got enough scientific evidence for New Scientist here. *cough*
(Disclaimer: I appreciate that Reynaud's Syndrome does encompass both extremes – sufferers can be prone to flushing as well – it's more a problem with body temperature regulation, but the article linked to doesn't mention this and it's not something my sister suffers from, so I'm not mentioning it explicitly…)
I did mention that J, A,
cuvalwen and I skipped off to the Science Museum on Saturday and had fun in the Launch Pad. What I failed to mention was what happened there.Now J, my sister, has Reynaud's Syndrome and from reading the Wikipedia article, I can pretty well confirm that it's primary and definitely genetic (Mum makes a mean pastry and I remember my sister's fingers turning dark blue when we picked sprouts one Christmas morning). And yes, it has been properly diagnosed. But, as with all 'quality of life' conditions as opposed to 'quantity of life' conditions, it remains untreated as it hasn't been researched enough yet.
It was interesting to read the article where it talked about "avoiding attacks" as if this is something that comes and goes, like migraine. It's not. And the best proof I have of this happened at the weekend.
There was one of those infra-red cameras set up so we were all poncing about rubbing each other in (mostly) publicly accessible places. J was stood there and then A noticed her hands. While we were all radiating mostly red in cooler parts (i.e. where clothing was present) our exposed skin mostly radiated white (except my cheeks which were a nice pink, thank you very much!), J's hands were purple. It was warm in the room, her hands felt fine (she was not reporting any pain) and yet, there for all to see, was absolute proof that her extremities were cold.
So no, Wikipedia, one does not suffer "attacks", it's always there. Just once your extremities get below a certain temperature it starts hurting. That's all.
Actually, I think I've got enough scientific evidence for New Scientist here. *cough*
(Disclaimer: I appreciate that Reynaud's Syndrome does encompass both extremes – sufferers can be prone to flushing as well – it's more a problem with body temperature regulation, but the article linked to doesn't mention this and it's not something my sister suffers from, so I'm not mentioning it explicitly…)
