Hand Care

Taking very good care of your hands is important for two reasons. First, so many people spend so much money on skincare products and treatments to make their facial skin look younger and fresher. But if they haven’t paid the same attention to their hands, they always give away their real age. The other reason is to insure that in different seasons, and especially in colder and dryer weather, that your hands don’t become chapped, cracked, rashy and uncomfortable.

Effective hand care requires repairing old damage and trying to prevent new damage. For both of these, you need to use 5 or 6 items depending on your climate.

Not surprisingly, the most important product is sunscreen, which is going to not only help to protect the back of your hands from accumulating more tell-tale age spots, that always give away your real age, but will also help to prevent premature skin aging, pre-cancers and skin cancers. And vitamin c based topical antioxidants further help to protect against UV damage AND also help to reduce the brown pigment in age spots.

Next… daily use of a chemical exfoliant, will help to remove dulling dead cells, accumulated extra layers of dead cells with extra brown pigment that contribute to age spots and brown blotches, and also to remove early abnormal cells that otherwise can become pre-cancerous growths. And of course, exfoliants will make the skin of your hand feel softer for you and yours.

Then, you want to make sure that you have a good hand cream or lotion to help with moisturizing, and also to help protect against cold weather elements, particularly cold air, drying, biting winds and low humidity.

Now don’t forget about a de-pigmenter, also called a bleach, to remove the discoloration from already existing sun or age spots. Many use hydroquinone but I prefer newer hydroquinone free peptide based skin lighteners.

In colder weather, gloves are certainly going to help protect against the elements, and in warmer weather, interestingly, they certainly protect against sun damage, Now I don’t expect you to wear gloves in the summer, but when people play golf regularly they wear one glove. I can always tell who the golfers are because I can see the difference in sun damage between the hand with the glove and the hand without it.

And last but not least, make sure you have proper nail care to protect cuticles and to protect and coat the nail plate. Colored nail products are a great sunscreen to prevent ultraviolet damage to the underlying nail bed, which is also susceptible to skin cancer.

So for younger looking, softer and healthier hands, daily hand care is a must.