Cardiovascular responses to moderate facial cooling in men and women

Experiments were conducted on a group of 20 healthy men and women to determine the pattern of cardiovascular response to moderate facial cooling (4.0 degrees C at 5.0 m X s-1) for 10 min. Data were collected each minute during exposure. During the course of exposure, both heart rate and forearm blood flow decreased significantly, 4.9 beats X min-1 (-9.2%) and -1.1 ml X 100 ml-1 X min-1 (-28.9%), respectively, while mean arterial blood pressure increased significantly +3.7 mm Hg (+4.0%) from pre-exposure values (p less than 0.05). There were no significant differences found in cardiovascular responses between men and women. There was considerable within-group variation for each recorded cardiovascular variable, but their ranges of variability remained relatively constant throughout exposure. These results indicate that moderate facial cooling precipitates significant cardiovascular responses in healthy subjects and the range of response may depend, in part, on individual factors.