Hand Beauty 101

When you think about it, your hands are the most used part of your body. You don’t spend all day smashing your head against your computer keyboard (unless you have a particularly awful job). But you wouldn’t think twice about subjecting your fingers to the same level of abuse. Hands, therefore, take the brunt of the damage, so the rest of our bodies don’t have to. 

Keeping all your digits looking smooth and beautiful, therefore, is a massive challenge. You’d love to have beautiful hands, but the ravages of the day can deny you that opportunity. 

In this post, we’re going to take a look at some hand care essentials – things that you can do to keep your fingers looking soft and beautiful. 

Massage Your Hands

Hand massages are becoming more popular. Not only are they relaxing, but they may have aesthetic benefits too. 

After a day’s work, hands can tend to feel a little rough. The body responds to abrasion by making the skin thicker and harder. Over time, it creates calluses – benign structures that pack dead skin cells together to provide a bit of extra padding to protect the soft tissue beneath. These are helpful if you’re a builder, lifting heavy objects all day long. But they are not ideal if you want to become a hand model. 

Massaging your hands, though, helps to fight this process. It lubricates the skin and encourages the blood flow towards the surface, reducing the risk of dead skin forming. 

Wear Gloves When Doing Chores

When it comes to hand beauty, chores are your worst enemy. Things like gardening and cleaning the house expose your hands to harsh chemicals which can physically affect the structure of the skin. Your palms and fingers wind up feeling dry and parched. 

Protecting your hands, therefore, is vital. Whenever you’re in the garden or cleaning the bathroom, be sure to wear the appropriate gloves. Gardeners’ gloves are cheap and readily available at most stores.

Clean Up Infections

Because hands come into contact with so much of the world around them, they can become infected. Nail fungus, for instance, can start growing up from the nail bed. 

Cleaning up infections, therefore, should be a top priority. The longer you leave them to fester, the worse they become. Eventually, they can lead to deformation and problems elsewhere in the body. 

Once you’ve sorted the infection with an over-the-counter product, you’ll want to adjust your diet. Certain foods, like green tea and berries, can make it more difficult for fungal infections to get a foothold in the future. 

Pamper Your Hands

Your hands are made of the same material as the rest of your body. So it stands to reason that you should pamper them similarly too. 

Ideally, you should get a manicure once per month. When the lockdown ends, that should become possible once again. You also want to make sure that you regularly exfoliate and moisturise your hands, just as you do the skin on your face. Moisturising makes your hands more supple and prevents calluses or cracking to develop. It removes all of the dirt and grime from pores too, helping to make them look smooth and unblemished. 

Scrub Your Hands In Hot Water

You’re probably already washing your hands a lot because of the current public health situation. Scrubbing, however, is also essential long-term. It removes dead skin, allowing new cells to bubble up from below. 

When scrubbing, though, you need to be careful. Too much washing will cause your hands to dry out and lead to the cracking we discussed above. Where possible, choose natural cleansing products or make your own. After you’ve finished scrubbing, apply moisturising oils to return suppleness to the skin. 

Importantly, don’t scrub every day. If you do this, you’ll strip the skin of its natural oils, leaving it looking dried and damaged. 

File Your Nails In One Direction

Typically, people file their nails in a see-saw action, moving the file back and forth over the same section of the nail. 

In general, though, this is a bad idea. Nails are made of tiny layers of material stuck together by a kind of natural glue. Most of the time, they’re strong and robust, but when you file your nails, you expose all these individual layers. If you jolt them back and forth, it can cause them to split from each other, leading to splintering – not what you want. 

The good news is that filing your nails in one direction only cuts the risk of this happening. Trim your nails a couple of times a week, as required. 

*This is a collaboration post