While people who want to reduce the signs of aging often focus on improving the face and neck, there’s another part of you that people see all the time — your hands. Hands can show age just as clearly as the face does. Individuals can develop age spots and wrinkles, especially if regularly exposed to the sun.
They can also lose skin volume over time, so veins and tendons stand out more prominently. However, there are a variety of techniques dermatologists can use for hand rejuvenation. Talk to your doctor to find out which cosmetic procedure is best suited for your aesthetic concerns. Our patients typically opt for one of the following hand rejuvenation cosmetic treatments:
Methods of Hand Rejuvenation to Reduce Spots, Wrinkles and Other Signs of Aging
- Microdermabrasion. This involves loosening and exfoliating the upper layer of your hand’s skin to reduce the appearance of age spots.
- Chemical Peels remove dark spots on the hands with varying levels of strength. This usually requires anywhere from two to six sessions for best results. Remember that peeled skin is very sensitive to the sun and needs to be protected with sunscreen when exposed to the sun.
- Dermal fillers. If the skin of the hand loses volume, it can produce a loose, wrinkled appearance and make tendons and veins stand out unattractively. This volume loss can be replaced by injecting dermal fillers such as Radiesse or Restylane. The fillers replace the lost volume, stretching out the skin and producing an improved appearance. Fillers should produce immediate results, and can last up to a year before breaking down and being reabsorbed by the body.
- Sclerotherapy. If prominent hand veins can’t be hidden with a filler, it is possible to remove the vein using a technique developed to treat varicose veins in the leg. A solution is injected into the vein that damages it and causes the vein to shrink and eventually disappear. This should not be harmful — the body will reroute blood flow into healthier veins.
- Laser treatments. Lasers are the best method to remove dark spots, and can also be used to stimulate the production of collagen, which makes the skin look fuller and younger. There are several different types of laser cosmetic procedures for hand rejuvenation:
- Intense Pulsed Light Laser. This laser is used most often to lighten dark areas on the skin.
- Laser Skin Resurfacing. This method uses more intense energy, such as that produced by a fractional CO2 laser skin resurfacing laser, to lightly damage the skin and connective tissue beneath, encouraging the body to produce more collagen as it heals.