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Show Your Hands- The advantages of Professional Hand Care
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Explore the benefits of Professional Hand Care. Enhance the health and appearance of your hands with expert tips and treatments.
Estheticians know that if you want to know their true age, you have to look at someone's hands. Most of us tend to take better care of the skin on our face than the skin on our hands, to the detriment of those hands.
Hands are constantly exposed to ultraviolet radiation from sunlight, cold, wind, harsh soaps and, depending on the job, many different chemicals. Not surprisingly, they are the main areas for developing skin cancer, dryness, chapped skin and possible cracks, calluses and other problems.
Aesthetically, neglected skin on the hands develops many conditions including blemishes (pigment spots), chloasma ("liver" spots that have nothing to do with the liver except that they are the same color), solar lentigines (sun spots) and lighter spots. They develop severe dryness, callus thickening (making skin feel rough and hard), and eventually collagen and elastin breakdown, resulting in wrinkles and a crepey appearance.
SPA CARE
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When examining your hands and treating, your esthetician will look for any raised or puncture wounds. These can be growths that a dermatologist should examine for diagnosis and treatment.
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Many spas can add a hand treatment to a facial for a small fee. Moisturizing treatments with electrically heated gloves or a paraffin hand bath after applying a rich hand cream will help the product penetrate and smooth more effectively. And they feel amazingly. Many spas also offer alpha hydroxy acid (AHA) hand scrubs. These gentler scrubs should be performed twice a week in a row for best results.
HOME CARE
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The real key to improving the skin on your hands is consistent use of a good hand cream. Because hands lack sebum activity on the face or other parts of the body, they are more prone to dryness. In fact, the palms have no sebaceous glands at all. Therefore, a good hand cream should be enriched with emollients like petroleum jelly or shea butter, natural oils like sunflower or grapeseed oil, and silicones like dimethicone, which help stop the moisture loss of trans epidermal water causing dehydration. The cream also requires "water magnet" humectants such as glycerin or sorbitol that help attract and retain water in the skin. Such a cream is slightly heavier than a face cream. Light hand lotions are generally not as effective or therapeutic as heavier ones.
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Ceramides are another key ingredient in restoring the barrier function of the skin on the hands. They help on many levels as repairing the barrier function allows for moisture retention in the skin and between skin cells. It also helps aesthetically with wrinkles, and roughness. Ask your esthetician about ceramides.
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The type of hand cream described above needs to be applied regularly several times a day to show results. Make sure you have a small size of your favorite hand cream that will easily fit in your purse or travel bag.
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A good hand cream and the use of soft cotton gloves will increase absorption and speed up skin's superficial recovery.
The most important thing to remember about hand care is that it needs to be consistent to get visible and lasting results.
Ask our estheticians for a good hand cream... or book with us for an appointment...
Don't worry you're in good hands with us. We'll take care of your skin.