Your hands tell your age

Your hands tell your age. Your hands will be the first part of your body to show your age. Caring for your hands is important if you want to maintain a youthful look. Many women take great care of their faces and ignore their hands. If you are one of them, stop, re-think and give your hands priority. Hand care is more than filing nails and applying colour. It involves professional manicure and thorough homecare, which involves, cleansing, exfoliating and moisturizing. Not caring for your hands leaves them rough and dry, and the nails brittle and weak. The journey towards achieving great looking hands is not difficult. It calls for regular visits to a beauty salon and diligent homecare, morning and evening, just like you give to your face. Because hands tend to be in constant contact with water, it is important that you moisturise them often. If you wash dishes or do laundry, it is recommended you use gloves to protect your hands. Other tasks such as gardening may also require you to use gloves.

Your hands tell a lot about you. Just looking at them is enough to reveal the kind of work you do. If you do manual work and don’t take care of your hands, the wear and tear will show. For example, a mechanic may have stained hands from regular contact with grease and other chemicals. Hairdressers may also have rough hands due to regular use of chemicals, especially if they don’t use gloves to perform procedures like hair colour and chemical re-touches. No matter what your age or gender, or the work you do, you must take good care of your hands which are one part of the body overused as there are few tasks you can perform without them.

If you wear good clothes, are well groomed, but your hands are not in good shape, you will not have the confidence you deserve. For example, if you are speaking in public, people will focus on your facial expressions and the use of your hands to express your points. If they are not well groomed people will notice. Grooming is not just for women, men should also do it. Even when they don’t groom their faces, they should consider giving their hands a professional manicure which will include cleansing, scrubbing off dead skin cells with an exfoliator, cutting the cuticles, trimming the nails and filing them, deep hand massage and moisturising.

To keep your hands soft and healthy, use a moisturiser at least four times a day as this keeps the skin at the back of the hands and the palms from drying. A hand moisturiser is a ‘must-have’ in a woman’s pulse or a man’s desk. Men are recommended to take the opportunity of doing their manicure and pedicure when they visit their barber. Most barber shops also offer manicure and pedicure.

Home care for your hands is perhaps the most important and includes weekly exfoliation with a scrub. You can buy a good hands scrub from any beauty store or ask your manicurist to recommend. You can make your own homemade exfoliator by mixing honey and sugar or salt and adding your favourite aromatherapy oil. Scrub your hands thoroughly but be careful not to break the skin with the granules. Rinse carefully under running water. Pat your hands dry and massage them with an aromatherapy oil or olive oil and then apply your daily moisturiser. Your hands will be left feeling soft and supple.

You should avoid using nail polish removers containing acetone. Acetone dries nails, making them brittle and prone to breaking. A remover containing almond oil or aloe vera is recommended. Use a cuticle treatment cream if your cuticles are dry and hard. Avoid over-cutting cuticles and ensure you use a well-sterilised cuticle cutter. Persistently splitting and chipping nails require strengthening treatments. Ask your manicurist to recommend suitable treatment and products you can use at home.