Age… is in your hands. All the treatments to rejuvenate them, from A to Z

medicina-estetica-visoAlways on the frontline, in motion, “sociable”, delicate, nervous, your hands say a lot about you. And they pitilessly reveal your age and lifestyle. Yet we neglect them easily, forgetting that their skin ages five times faster than our facial skin. Why does this happen? Few sebaceous glands and a poor hydrolipidic film. We also have to take into consideration the fact that the skin on our hands is subject to constant environmental aggression (hard water, detergents, dust, sun, etc.). Result: a 3% loss of elasticity every 10 years. Cosmetic medicine offers a variety of methods to rejuvenate them.

Brighter skin with no pigmentation marks
Step one: to lighten them, you can try a specially created exfoliation treatment, like Amelan. Patented by the Venezuelan Edoardo Krulig, it exploits the combined properties of different specific actives: arbutine and kogic, azelaic, phytic, retinoic and ascorbic acids. The specialist applies the treatment to the hands, leaving it to work for 10 to 12 hours. The effects are usually visible about 10 days after the first session, which is usually enough. To improve its efficiency, it is advisable to continue the treatment at home, using the same cream, once a day for a year and three times a week thereafter.
Are the brown marks very evident? Caused by age and/or prolonged exposure to the sun, they can be effectively treated with pulsed light (which is softer, but less effective) or with the Ktp Q-switched 532 laser, which quickly and definitively vaporises the granules of melanin in the affected area, without burning. The treatment is painless and implicates only the formation of tiny scabs, which come off within a couple of weeks. After the treatment it is best to protect the skin with a high SPF sun cream and regularly use anti-pigmentation creams and serums. Other indications to observe include avoiding the treatment when your skin is tanned, on scars, nipples or tattoos) or on skin affected by pathologies such as psoriasis, vitiligo, acute and chronic inflammations.

The turgor of youth
Scrawny hands with visible veins and tendons: as the years go by, the thickness of the layer of fat beneath the skin, which is already quite thin to begin with, starts to diminish, while the skin becomes finer, dries up and loses its tone and substance. The solution is to plump it up with biodynamic hyaluronic acid (the product is called RHA4 Teosyal) or calcium hydroxyapatite (marketed as Radiesse) injected using special micro-cannulae which reduce the risk of bruising compared to micro-needles. Thanks to a light dose of anaesthetic, Lidocaine, the patient feels no (or only very slight) pain, which goes away in a few hours. The result – nicely smooth hands with turgid, compact skin – lasts between six months and a year. Alternatively, there is lipofilling, a technique which uses the patient’s own fat, generally taken from the abdomen. After sedimenting and centrifuging to purify it, it is injected into small tunnels on the back of the hand using micro-syringes (1 ml) joined to a very fine cannula, which allows correct control of dosage. The operation is carried out under local anaesthetic and sometimes causes small bruises and slight swelling, which both disappear quickly. To achieve long lasting effects (up to two years), it must be repeated two or three times, due to the partial absorption of the fat (from 20 to 40% every session). How can we neglect the parts of our body that help us so much in life?