Do your hands give away your age? Frequently the focus of cosmetic improvement is the face. Yet, one of the most age-telling body features is our hands. As we age, our hands lose firmness and plumpness and begin to look bony and fragile due to vein and joint protrusion, and thin crepey skin texture.  They also often become flecked with brown spots from sun exposure. Fortunately cosmetic procedures can help restore your hands’ youthful appearance.

Aging and Your Skin

Collagen and hyaluronic acid both play very important roles in keeping our skin healthy. Hyaluronic acid helps to “bind water,” which is necessary to keep the skin full and to prevent dryness and wrinkling.

As you age, you lose collagen and hyaluronic acid and your skin loses the ability to hold moisture. So, skin folds, wrinkles and grooves form readily and easily. Smoking, sun exposure, and poor nutritional habits also contribute to these losses.

Hyaluronic acid is part of the skin’s support structure found in the dermis (middle layer) of the skin along with collagen, elastin and other biological substances. As you age the production of these natural substances decreases, the elastin fibers uncoil, gather into formations and appear as wrinkles, folds, lines and grooves.

Hand Rejuvenation

Combating the aging hand syndrome takes more than hand cream (though that simple step does make a difference). The latest technologies have given us a set of procedures that will have similar effects as those we have been able to accomplish for the face.

Complete hand rejuvenation is a combination process, typically involving filler and laser treatments.

Fillers

By placing filler in the area it immediately re-plumps and will replenish volume to the back of the hands to provide a supple and youthful appearance instantly. Placed beneath the skin, Restylane raises the skin level so that tendons, joints and veins lose their prominence. Restylane provides instant and durable long lasting results for a more youthful appearance to the hands.

Laser Therapy

While using filling products improves the plumpness and firmness of the skin, it does not target the skin’s surface level appearance. Often times, the brown spots also need to be treated with either a topical bleaching cream or certain laser therapy.

The newest laser available that can dramatically increase the texture and appearance of your skin is the SmartXide DOT™, affectionately known as the Smart Dot. DOT therapy is the newest breakthrough technology in laser skin resurfacing that produces dramatic results in the treatment of fine lines, wrinkles and sunspots.

While this technology can be used on virtually any part of the body, it is very effective as a skin retexturing treatment on the hands where its unique capability to deliver a customized pattern of tiny, micro-sized dots (rather than treating the entire skin surface) helps target even the smallest spots on your hands.

After hand rejuvenation treatments, your hands will no longer give away your age. Laser therapy and fillers are just a few options available to cosmetically improve your hands’ appearance.

To learn more about your options, contact a board-certified cosmetic dermatologist.