How hands give away your age

Your Hands are the biggest indicator of your age when it comes to signs of ageing such as wrinkles – Let’s learn how to treat them.

I am a firm believer that your hands are the most precious beauty tools you’ll ever have. And because they work so hard for us every day, they are very prone to lose their youthful appearance the quickest.

I will explain to you why they age the fastest & what you can do to prevent that from happening. I’ll show you some quick tips which you can implement easily to maintain or enhance your beautiful hands. 

Your hands are built out of several layers

You have to first understand the several layers of the skin to understand how you can preserve their beauty. See which factors can impact your hands and make them appear older than they actually are.

What are hands made up of?

• The bone structure has a huge impact on how your hands look and develop throughout the years
• With age, they become crooked and uneven
• Mobility and bone density build back with age

Then we have the joints that connect the bones and enable them to bend.

• These also change over time and lose their mobility and range of motion as you age

→ The reason for that is that we do not actively work out our hands. Even though while you do exercise your body, your hands themselves are not really paid a lot of attention to.

• Muscles are responsible for giving your hands plasticity, softness and dimension
• Over time we tend to not actively work on these muscles
• When it comes to your hands the most you usually do is an occasional manicure

Hand function decreases with age in both men and women, especially after you are getting older. 
With age, you lose over 50% of your muscle density in your hands. This will not come today or tomorrow. Being in your 20/30/40, you still have time but it’s still an important fact to know about.

Furthermore, hands become extremely thin, very fragile and literally almost see-through as you age. Since there is less fat tissue protecting and supporting them they can get boney with age. This is also another cause why the skin of your hands starts to create wrinkles. The collagen production reduces which is vital for the subtleness of your skin in general.

• Paradoxically, plumper juicer hands look more youthful than maybe hands of very thin people. This is because the hands just look and appear more soft and supple due to the additional volume.
• The layer of fat on your hands is extremely thin and therefore is usually the first to diminish when you experience different things such as hormonal imbalances, level and quality of blood pressure and changes in weight.
• If the fat depots in your skin are reducing then the veins in your hands are starting to show.
  This is simply due to the fact that they are usually integrated into your muscle and fat layers but if those are diminishing then the veins have nowhere to hide, literally.
  It basically is like a cushion for your skin to lay on top of and avoid wrinkles due to it’s plumpness.

• The skin colour usually oftentimes determines whether we find our hands attractive or not – meaning if they turn blue, purple or red due to lacking blood circulation or skin irritation, or age spots, scars etc.
• Another thing that determines the quality of the skin is how often you use harsh chemicals such as detergent or other household appliances without gloves.
  Those harsh chemicals destroy the lipid barrier of your skin which makes them prone to dryness and irritation – As we have learned already, constant dryness can create premature wrinkles due to the compromised skin barrier, hydration really is key to protect also the skin of your hands and avoid wrinkling.
• Then most importantly your hands are usually always in the open and under all kinds of conditions, from extreme cold, wind, sun exposure, heat and pollution.