We spend a fortune on our faces and almost nothing on our hands, yet hands are often the first thing that gives our age away. I’ve lost count of the patients who’ve had beautifully refreshed faces but hands that tell a completely different story. It’s the one area of the body I think is still hugely overlooked in aesthetic medicine.
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Hands have very little fat and few oil-producing glands to begin with, so there isn’t much reserve to lose as we get older. As we age, the fat pad on the back of the hand thins and the skin loses collagen and elastin, so it becomes looser and less resilient. This is what makes the tendons, veins and small bones on the back of the hand so much more visible than they used to be.
Add decades of sun exposure into the mix, much of it unprotected because sun cream is rarely applied to the hands, and you get pigmentation, sun spots and a rougher, crepey texture on top of the volume loss. The result is a hand that looks far older than the face it’s attached to, and no amount of high street hand cream is going to reverse that combination.
Hands are a genuine giveaway of lifestyle. Years of gardening, driving with hands in direct sunlight, or simply never wearing SPF on them will show up here long before it shows on the face. It’s one of the few areas where I can genuinely guess a patient’s hobbies before they tell me.
Our consultations are in-depth and tailored to you, creating a bespoke treatment plan catering to all of your concerns.
ConsultationThe good news is that ageing hands respond very well to treatment, provided you address the different problems separately rather than expecting one product or procedure to do everything.
Volume loss. Dermal filler injected carefully into the back of the hand restores lost volume, softening the appearance of tendons, veins and bones underneath the skin. It’s a quick treatment and the improvement is often immediate and quite striking, which is why it tends to be the one patients are most pleased with.
Skin quality. Polynucleotides works well on the hands in the same way it does on the face, improving hydration, elasticity and overall skin thickness over a course of treatments. For patients who want to improve texture rather than volume, this is usually where I start.
Pigmentation. Sun spots and uneven pigmentation respond well to laser treatment, such as the Excel V+, which targets pigment and small blood vessels without damaging the surrounding skin. A course of chemical peels can achieve something similar and is a good, simple option for those who prefer to avoid laser.
Home skincare. None of the above replaces good daily skincare. I’m a big believer in ZO Skin Health for this. The ZO Retinol Skin Brightener, used consistently on the hands, improves texture and tone over time, and the ZO Brightalive Skin Brightener is a gentler daily option for pigmentation for those who find retinol too much for the delicate skin on the back of the hands. Whichever you choose, pair it with a proper SPF such as ZO Sunscreen + Primer, applied to the hands and not just the face, as this is the single habit that will protect every other treatment you have.
In my experience, the best outcomes come from combining these approaches, restoring volume, improving skin quality and treating pigmentation together, rather than relying on any single treatment in isolation.
Hands are unforgiving. Because the skin is thin and the anatomy underneath is so close to the surface, this is not an area for a heavy hand or a bargain approach. I’d always encourage patients to have hand rejuvenation done by someone with proper injecting experience, ideally a medical professional who treats hands regularly rather than only faces.
If your hands have started to bother you more than your face does, you’re not imagining it, and you’re certainly not alone. It’s simply an area that’s been ignored for too long, and one that’s now, quite rightly, catching up.
Laser Pigmentation is a treatment specifically designed to target sun damage, brown spots, age spots, freckles, and other benign pigmentation issues. The Pigmentation treatment is a laser treatment performed with our industry-leading, FDA-approved Excel V+ Laser by Cutera.
