Ageing Hands

They can be broken up and faded, and IPL photofacial is the treatment that does it most directly on the backs of the hands. The light is absorbed by the brown of the pigment, which breaks it up so the skin clears it over the days that follow; the spots darken first and then flake away, and a course of sessions does more than a single appointment. A chemical peel is the alternative for surface pigment, at a strength chosen for skin this thin, and it improves the coarsened surface at the same time. Whether IPL suits you depends on your skin tone, because in darker skin the melanin spread through the surrounding skin absorbs the energy too and the risk shifts from clearing pigment to causing it. Recent sun exposure changes the answer as well, so treatment straight after a summer outdoors is not sensible. What decides whether the result holds is what happens afterwards: the pigment cells have not changed, so hands that go back into daily sun without protection will produce new spots. Sunscreen reapplied after hand washing is the whole maintenance plan, and it is cheaper than repeating the course. A practitioner looking at your hands can also tell a sun spot from a lesion that needs a different kind of attention, so have it checked rather than assumed.

Because the layer of fat that used to sit over them has thinned, not because the veins have changed. The back of the hand has a thin pad of fat between the skin and the tendons and veins underneath, and as that pad thins with age the structures below it become visible through the skin. Weight loss does the same thing faster, and people who are naturally lean see it earlier. Skin thinning adds to the effect, since finer skin is more transparent and shows what is beneath it more clearly. Nothing applied to the surface replaces lost padding, which is why creams sold on that promise do not work, and the veins are below the skin rather than in it, so pigment treatments and resurfacing do not touch them either. The treatment category that addresses this is volume replacement, which is a different conversation from anything aimed at the skin, and whether it suits your hands is something to assess in person rather than decide from a description. Prominent veins can also be entirely normal for your build at any age. If they appeared suddenly rather than gradually, or only on one side, mention it to a doctor rather than treating it as cosmetic.

It responds more slowly and it is treated more carefully, for two reasons. The skin on the back of the hand is thin, has little fat beneath it and fewer oil glands than facial skin, so it recovers more slowly from anything that disturbs it, and the strength or intensity that a face tolerates can leave hands inflamed. The second reason is that hands keep working while they heal: washing, detergent, cold air and sun all continue, which makes aftercare harder to keep to than it is on a face. Treatment is therefore planned at lower intensity across more sessions, and collagen-building treatments show their result over months rather than weeks. Pigment responds best and fastest. Texture and crinkling improve over a course. Volume loss needs a different approach altogether. The realistic target is hands that look better rather than hands that match a photograph from twenty years ago, so settle that before you start and the result gets judged against something honest. Keeping the sunscreen and the hand cream going is what holds any of it, and on hands that part takes more discipline than the treatment does. Gloves for washing up and cleaning during a course protect the skin while it is recovering, which is the other half of the aftercare.

Cost depends on which of the three problems you are treating and how many sessions it takes, so a figure quoted before an assessment would be a guess. IPL photofacial is priced by the area and the session, and the backs of both hands are a small area compared with a face, treated across a course. Chemical peels are priced by session and strength. Microneedling and Intensif are priced by session and by course, because collagen builds across a series. MesoGold is priced per treatment, and skin boosters by the product used. Someone whose complaint is a scatter of brown spots on reasonable skin is looking at the simplest and cheapest plan of the three, and it changes the most for the least. Volume replacement is priced separately and assessed separately. The complimentary consultation is where the problems get separated and the plan and cost are set out for your own hands. Products are a separate cost, and on hands they matter more than elsewhere, since sunscreen reapplied after washing is what stops new pigment arriving and undoing what you paid for. Treating the face and the hands at the same appointment is possible as well, and the hands are the smaller area of the two.

Many people ask this the other way round, having noticed that their hands tell a different story from their face. There is a straightforward reason for the mismatch: the face has had sunscreen, moisturiser, actives and sometimes treatment for years, while the hands have had none of it and the same daily sun. Treating them narrows the gap, and the part that narrows it fastest is the pigment, because that is what the eye reads first. Skin texture takes a course and improves gradually. Volume loss is a separate decision. Whether to treat them depends on what you notice and when; people who are photographed with their hands visible, or who meet clients across a desk, care more than people who do not. The protection matters regardless of treatment, because the damage is cumulative and the total stops rising the day you start covering the backs of your hands. A consultation is a reasonable way to find out what is treatable on your hands without committing to anything, and it costs nothing at either clinic. Hands are also the area where protection alone changes the next ten years, so come in even if you decide to treat nothing now. Hand skin also shows what sunscreen has and has not been doing over the years, which makes it a straightforward place to start.