One part which women often neglect is their hands. The condition of hands can strike a first impression, when you do a hand shake, and it can tell your age.
Likewise for feet, but often, hands are more visible than feet.
I used to have really soft hands which flawless skin, but unfortunately, over time I realised faint pigments developed and due to negligence, my hands developed rashes when I moved and the new place was dusty.
My hands became rather rough. And what’s worse, I didn’t have proper handwash in my new bathroom. It was just body wash that I’ve been washing my delicate hands with. I realised the condition of my hands deteriorating.
The rashes were on and off and never really healed, until I decided to stay off seafood for a while. It’s been 2 weeks and I’m glad to say that my smooth hands have been revived! The seafood has prevented the skin from healing completely, when I had rashes due to dust mites.
How to care for hands:
1. Do not touch detergent
When doing the dishes, always wear gloves. If you wish, you can apply some hand cream for a mini hand spa while doing the dishes.
If you’re mopping the floor, do not let your feet come into contact with floor cleaner. You should have some footwear on.
2. Use proper hand wash
Do not substitute body wash for hand wash. Sure, you do wash your hands with those in the shower, but you only shower once or twice a day, while you wash your hands frequently. Hand wash should be formulated milder than body wash. Now I’m using Burt’s Bees Shea Butter hand wash and it’s quite moisturising.
3. Use hand cream
Do not use body lotion as hand cream, because hand cream is richer. When I was having the rashes, I used a hypoallergenic cream to soothe it better (Physiogel). I find that Mario Badescu’s Hand Cream is pretty good. I had it complimentary with my skincare order and I find it better then Jurlique or Burt’s Bees. I have tried Crabtree & Evelyn’s Avocado & Olive Oil hand cream in their stores and the first impression was pretty good. I might go get that next time.
4. Apply SPF lotion when outdoors
Hands will develop pigmentation as well, so be careful. A hand full of freckles will resemble an old woman’s hand. UV rays will cause photoaging to hands as well and saggy, wrinkly hands are not attractive.
5. If driving, wear driving gloves/ sleeves
The glass for the windscreen is made thinner than other glass panels in a car! So do protect well, especially in sunny countries like Singapore.
6. Use a cotton swab or spatula when applying target spot treatments on your face
I habitually use the 4th (or 3rd, if the 4th has been used) finger on my left hand to apply stuff on my face, like acne treatments, whitening spot serum, eye cream, lip balm etc. And sadly, I realised that my 4th finger has visible lines on the finger tips! This is not apparent in any other fingers. The 3rd finger has a few faint lines too, but not as obvious as my 4th finger. I conclude that those stuff which was applied with that finger could be drying in nature, and over the years, it has caused wrinkles on that finger.
7. Get a touchscreen phone
For 2 years I’ve been using Blackberry and excessive typing with the QWERTY keypad has caused hardened skin around my thumb. It is often so hard, I could just cut it off. Hopefully with my new touchscreen phone, the skin will soften over time.
How to care for nails:
1. Do not bite nails
Fortunately, this has never been a habit in my lift and I am often bewildered at how some people can be addicted to chewing their nails. To reduce such tendency, why not get a manicure and when your nails are so pretty, you may not think of biting it.
2. Use a good base coat
This will prevent yellowing of the nails, but from my experience, if you use yellow, green or orange nail varnish your nails may still turn yellow. The pigment for yellow just stains like this. I use OPI’s Base Coat.
3. If you want to have square nails, make sure your nails grow beyond your fingertips and preferably, push the cuticles to a square shape.
The reason is purely aesthetic. I can’t explain more how those square short nails are ugly. It looks like your nails are being chopped off.
4. Use Seche Vite Top Coat
This top coat dries within minutes, or even seconds. However, it is not because of the speed drying that got me sold. The finish of it is just too beautiful. It gives the surface a very smooth top, without any ridges, and the gloss is beautiful.
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