Why Your Hands Show Your Age

On the TV series ”Younger,” Sutton Foster’s character, Liza, poses as a millennial when she tries to reenter the publishing industry as a 40-something mom. But Liza’s secret almost gets outed in Season 1 because of her hands. “Be careful with your hands, sweetie. They’re a dead giveaway,” a tipsy author played by Jane Krakowski tells Liza.

Her drunken musings might be right.

“It’s thin skin, so it gets worked,” Seattle-based dermatologist Dr. Heather Rogers told HuffPost. “A little bit of skin elasticity is a good thing for your hands, but then that means they have a little bit of excess wrinkles. The thin skin makes it so it’s more likely to be crepey in appearance.”

And it turns out that some skin types show aging more than others.

“If you are a pale Caucasian woman, you’re going to have crepey, wrinkly hands,” Rogers said. “That’s just a group that has thinner skin. Oftentimes, Mediterranean skin, they are more apt to have brown spots. If you have pigment, you’re good at making pigment. And then darker skin ages much, much less quickly, but it can be dry, ashy [and have] dermatitis.”

Dr. Angela Lamb, a dermatologist and the director of the Westside Mount Sinai Dermatology Faculty Practice in New York, noted that anyone with collagen disorders like Ehlers-Danlos syndrome may be more prone to aging on the hands, as well as anyone taking blood thinners. “If you’re on blood thinners and your skin tends to bruise easily, and if you have more bruises, it might make your hands and arms look older,” Lamb said.

Age, of course, is an important factor. Rogers said aging hands are mostly a concern for women over 50. “In the late 50s, 60s, the loss of estrogen and thinning of our skin [cause people to] get pretty bummed about their hands,” she said.

Aging on the hands can present itself in different ways, including age spots, visible veins, crepey or loose skin, and roughness.

“Once your skin barrier is not intact in your hands, it can be really hard to get that barrier healed because your hands are into so many things,” Rogers said, referring to how frequently people use their hands. “So when your skin is raw, sensitive and itchy, all you want to put on your hands is a really thick moisturizer, possibly a prescription steroid cream from your doctor.”

She recommended applying a topical corticosteroid or petroleum jelly at night and wearing cotton gloves to bed to help moisturize the skin. So-called hand masks can help moisturize hands, too, and make skin look plumper.

Retinol creams can help lessen the appearance of brown spots, plus they can boost the production of collagen to increase elasticity, which can reduce the appearance of aging on hands. Lamb said she particularly likes tretinoin, a retinoid derivative, for this purpose.

When considering the strength of a retinol cream, “I usually actually tell people to start on the lower end,” Lamb said. “You don’t want to go in when you’re starting with retinols with full strength, because they can be very drying and irritating.”

LED products such as the Omnilux Contour Glove and the Celluma Pod can also treat damaged skin. “Low-level light therapy at home, particularly red light and infrared light, does build collagen and actually calms inflammation, so it would help with hand eczema,” Rogers explained.

But don’t keep these products on your skin for too long, and stick to using such devices no more than two or three times a week. With the Omnilux, Rogers suggested applying it for just 10 minutes, while the Celluma can be used for 30-minute sessions.

For anyone seeking medical-grade treatments, dermatologists have plenty of options.

Intense pulsed light —or IPL — therapy targets brown spots, and it can take between one and three applications, at least one month apart, to be effective, Rogers said.

Lasers like those used in Fraxel treatment can also address texture issues on hands. “The problem is, hands heal pretty slowly, and it’s hard to function with your hands being lasered. So it’s not something we do very much,” Lamb said. “IPL is the vast majority of the laser procedures that I do for people’s hands.”

Chemical peels, which can treat brown spots and stimulate collagen, tend to be less popular for the same reason. “People are not going to want your hands peeling a lot, so you would do a superficial one just to address some of the pigmentation irregularities,” Lamb said. “It wouldn’t be my first choice.”

A newer option called PRP — platelet-rich plasma — treatment has also gained popularity, Lamb added. “That’s where we take people’s blood, spin it down to get the platelet-rich plasma and inject those into the backs of the hands,” she said. “It’s going to thicken up the skin and improve its appearance by giving your body the direction to do that. That usually takes at least three treatments, at least a month apart.”

While aging on hands affects men and women equally, Rogers said she sees “95% women” for cosmetic procedures related to the issue. “I really have never had a man be like, ‘Oh, I don’t like my aging hands,’’’ she said. “People find big blood vessels on men attractive — like, ‘Oh look at these big, rough hands.’”

Rogers said that 90% of apparent aging comes from the sun. And hands end up being particularly vulnerable to sun exposure “because they are not protected by clothing most times of the year, and people don’t tend to put sunscreen on them,” Lamb added.

But one of the easiest things you can do is to apply sunscreen with a minimum SPF of 30 on your hands, and to use it multiple times daily. The brand Supergoop! even makes sunscreen just for hands.

At this point, more than four years after the World Health Organization declared the spread of COVID-19 a pandemic, everyone knows the importance of washing your hands. But not all of us have incorporated moisturizing into our hand-washing routines.

“From a cosmetic standpoint, if your hands are kind of dry and irritated, it makes them look older,” Lamb acknowledged. “So applying a moisturizer as soon as you get out of the bath or shower, as soon as you wash your hands, is really important.”

While fragrances can be irritating for skin, Rogers thinks you should pick whichever lotion or cream you like to use and will apply regularly after washing hands and bathing. Make sure to get both sides of your hands — with bonus points for using an SPF cream.

“A heavier moisturizer is going to do more for your skin, but you might be less apt to use it because it’s greasy,” Rogers said. “You might be a CeraVe girl. You might be a fancy cream girl. Fragrance doesn’t do anything good for your skin. But if it smells good and it feels luxurious to you, and that means you’re going to use it, fine.”

Add a vitamin C cream into your regular routine, too, to help with the aging process. Vitamin C, a natural antioxidant, protects the skin from ultraviolet radiation and stimulates cells around the blood vessels, which can promote healthy skin.

Ultimately, most signs of aging on hands don’t pose health risks. “You can get skin infections on your hands, so that’s something that we have to look for. And I remove skin cancer from the backs of people’s hands every week,” Rogers said. “In regards to the hand dermatitis, it’s incredibly uncomfortable because … your hands burn and itch. But a lot of it is aesthetics.”

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