When most people think of the visible signs of aging, facial lines, wrinkles, and sagging jowls come to mind. But aging affects your hands, too. Prominent, bulging hand veins can make you look older than your years, even when your face is still youthful looking.
At Laser & Varicose Vein Treatment Center, our experienced providers — Inam Haq, MD, FACS, and Sushilkumar Samant, MD, FACS — treat bulging, visible hand veins, so your hands look smoother and younger. In this post, learn why hand veins become more visible with aging and how we can get rid of them.
It might seem as though those unsightly blue hand veins mysteriously appear overnight, but they’ve been there all the time. It’s only age-related changes in your skin that make them more visible.
As you get older, your skin starts to thin out. That’s due to a variety of factors, including years of sun exposure, hormonal fluctuations, and even your genetics. Skin covers your veins, so it makes sense that as skin becomes thinner, veins become more visible, too.
At the same time, aging decreases the amount of natural fat deposits in your hands, including the fat layer that once hid your veins. As fat decreases, veins become more visible and can even appear to bulge out from the surface of your skin.
Aging and sun exposure also causes the collagen and elastin in your hands to break down. These key proteins help skin stay plump, firm, and elastic. Lower levels of collagen and elastin allow skin to sag, revealing those bluish, purplish veins.
While visible hand veins may not be a serious health problem, they’re definitely unsightly. If the valves inside those veins stop working the way they’re supposed to — leading to spider veins and varicose veins — you can develop stinging and burning sensations, too.
Fortunately, visible hand veins can be treated using a simple, time-tested treatment called sclerotherapy. Often used to treat spider veins and varicose veins in the legs, sclerotherapy just as successfully eliminates bulging, purplish, ropey hand veins.
During sclerotherapy, we inject the problematic veins with a special chemical solution that causes the veins to collapse and close, preventing blood flow. Your body then routes blood to the deeper veins of your hands without causing any circulation problems.
Once the veins collapse, your body absorbs them over a period of a few weeks, leaving your hands looking smoother and more youthful. Sclerotherapy sessions are quick — typically a half hour or less — and you can go right back to your regular routine afterward, making it an extremely effective and convenient solution for even the busiest people.
Don’t let your hands give away your age. To learn how sclerotherapy can help your hands look more youthful, request an appointment online or over the phone today at Laser & Varicose Vein Treatment Center. We’re located in Staten Island’s Midland Beach and in Borough Park, Brooklyn, New York.
