Hands | Aging | Rejuvenation

THIS POST WAS WRITTEN BY ETOIMS ON SEPTEMBER 23, 2012
POSTED UNDER: UNCATEGORIZED

When we see a person and try to guess their age, we look at the face first. Therefore, individuals concerned with the effects of aging are always interested in improving their youthful appearance since it is the face that others first notice. Therefore, much of the efforts have been toward facial rejuvenation beginning with external application of creams and lotions to control the aging of the skin. Once the wrinkles are set, we will use much more dramatic efforts and will consider exposing the skin to more invasive methods such as peeling of the skin, laser therapy, botox injections and eventually to plastic surgery of the face and neck.

However, even if the face looks youthful, if the individual has an obvious head forward position and stooped posture or rounded shoulders and trunk with unsteady gait, stiffness during standing or sitting,then observers will notice these much more than the face. Posture and ambulation abnormalities are much more glaring signs of aging compared to the face. The biggest giveaway of aging of course is the hands. You can barely hide the hands! Esp when you are sitting when gait and ambulation is not in evidence.

Due to a constant use and exposure to weather, the hand ages very quickly. The presence of skin wrinkling, taut tendons and tortuous veins on the dorsal and ventral aspects of the hand is common. The finger joints also enlarge due to the presence of degenerative arthritis. The joints also more conspicuous because of laxity of the skin from atrophy of the subcutaneous tissues as well as the muscles. I’m amazed to find out that there are hand rejuvenation surgeries that will restore the skin surface, resection of redundant skin and tissue augmentation.

If one considers that the taut and thickened tendons are secondary to presence of tight and shortened muscles from spondylotic radiculopathy due to aging, how does one prevent them from making the hand look senile even after hand rejuvenation surgeries? Between the tight tendons and the tortouse veins, the age give away will still be there.

Will the veins be as tortuose if they were able to empty well into the deeper veins? So should we not consider means of relieving the tightness of the muscles so that the veins can empty well? Apart from loss of subcutaneous tissue where not much can be done and since not everyone is a candidate for tissue augmentation surgeries to hide the veins, other means of providing less resistance to venous return should be considered. This can be as simple as manually massaging the muscles to keep them soft and limber or using electrical stimulation at the trigger points to actively contract and stretch the intramuscular tightness of the muscles.

Compare your own hands as it looks through the ages. How come that your hands still ages even though you may not be actively over using your muscles after you have retired and not using the hands as much?

The hands, the spine, the limb joints are sure tell tale signs of aging. You got to start now to know what muscles can do to make you age. After all 40% of the body mass is muscle, so when they do not function well, you will not age well. Neuromuscular health is the key to control aging.