UKH

Hi all, 

Several years ago I conducted a study looking at hot aches.  Below is the paper that we published on the data we collected. 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27747791

We are now able to do the next phase which is to try and reproduce it in a controlled environment for which we need volunteers.  

Please see the attached picture and feel free to contact me on the email below for more information. 

andrewmelvin@nhs.net

Kind Regards

Andrew

The location of the study is Dundee, Scotland!

Best of luck with that. Not sure folk would be lining up to recreate!

Are there not unwitting students you can recruit? 

'unwitting students'... now that sounds like fun. Not sure you'd get it past the ethics committee, though.

I tell you what - YOU go first & tell us how you get on!

Not sure many would choose to do this without being paid! Good luck though.

This reminds me of the volunteers in a TV programme about midges and whether they tended to favour some people over others. Actually, any chance you could film this? 

I would be wary. Hot aches, frost nip etc..  causes some form of tissue or circulation damage. It often takes years or in some cases never quite repairs, leaving those digits vulnerable to problems forever more.

Volunteer at your own risk!! 

I thought Hot aches were just the body realising that the body was'nt at risk after all and flooding the cold extremities with blood to warm them up again. I've used it deliberately to heal tendon damage by plunging affected hand into freezing water and getting the agony of hot aches whilst the blood flow increases 5 fold (Lewis effect) . Seems to work well. When rockclimbing in winter the hot aches were welcomed as once the hands had warmed up they stayed warm.

Sorry for the delay in posting back.  Thank you everyone for your interest, however, I'm still short on volunteers which might not be a surprise to some!  

If you have any questions or would like to know more about what exactly is involved please email me and I can send out more detailed information which might answer some of your questions.  

In reply to Summo:

For the cold immersion we should avoid damage to the tissues because you will not be exposed to temperatures below freezing, the water will only go as low as 0.  This makes it somewhat different to being actually exposed on the mountain as it can be well below freezing.  The time is also substantially different lasting a maximum of 10min, whereas when climbing it is likely to be substantially longer!  

I'd put myself forward, but unfortunately Dundee's a bit too much of a trek for me...

I've been getting hot actre really badly since getting minor frost bite. I'd like to take part but dundee is a long way from Yorkshire .

I'd have thought this is the sort of thing you'd do at the drop of a hat.

I know a lot of posters here think you're mad, but some top end climbers, if they know they're going to be climbing on a bitterly cold day anyway, and knowing that such days are as much about temperature management as any other aspect of performance, they do deliberately induce (maybe some mild non excruciating form of) hotaches. 

There's a video of someone climbing with Tommy Caldwell (in Yosemite?) deliberately trying to get hot aches.  Tommy would've stopped her if it was a shit idea and noone ever does it.