The Cold Shower

 Are cold showers good for you?

By all accounts they are usually very good. Online Health clinics list multiple benefit, but with one significant  caveat: the case of Raynaud's Disease. 

Cold showers are not rec.ommended for Raynaud's disease because they can trigger an attack, causing blood vessels to constrict and cut off blood flow to the hands and feet. (Google AI)..

Why then did I persist in having cold showers all these years?

Well, when my mother realised that I was subject to Raynaud's, (by having occasional frozen fingers), she advised me not to go pampering myself with warm clothes, but to challenge the blood vessels of my hands  to do their job by using cold therapy. She had see other sufferers snuggling up with warm clothes, only to find the Raynaud's getting progressively worse and worse. Indeed, my first cousin, Father Roger, forty years older than me, eventually lost his legs, and had them amputated by reason of progressive Raynaud's, 

So, when we had snowy weather, I would not put on gloves, but would make snowballs with my bare hands. The severe cold of the snow would soon challenged my capillaries to heat up and my hands would become red and hot. One snowball incident would be sufficient keep me from Reynaud's for the rest of the year.

Another trick was to use hot and cold water therapy. Sink my hands into a bowl of hot, (but not boiling) water; then plunge plunge them into a bowl of to really cold water. 

My father was fond of wise sayings. He often said, "In April and May, heep away from from the say; in June and July, swim till you die." Well, I was not averse, in my teenage years, to having a dip in the icy sea in Springtime. 

After the cold of the water, I would soon warm up again.

So, here I am having a cold shower,  and then I find that my head has gone cold and blank Could this have been the cause of me having a stroke? Well, maybe it was a trigger, but there was, no doubt, an underlying independent cause: the buildup of plaque in my arteries over the eighty years of my life, had clogged my circulation. Maybe my stroke was a stroke of luck, triggering therapy that would save me from heart-attack and death.

Indeed, my mother died suddenly, without any warning, at 74 years of age. A little warning may be a Stoke of luck.