Turn Back the Clock with Hand Rejuvenation (Fat Grafting)

If you’re like most people, you probably spend a fair amount of time caring for the skin on your face to help prevent wrinkles, lines, and sagging skin. Sunscreen, expensive moisturizers, and medical treatments with lasers or other types of energy can work wonders when it comes to restoring softer skin and a more youthful appearance. But what about your hardworking hands?

It’s true — for many people, the hands tend to succumb to the effects of aging faster than the face. If you ignore those effects, your hands can wind up giving your age away, no matter how much effort you devote to maintaining a more youthful-looking face.

At Vida Bela Plastic Surgery in Plano and Frisco, Texas, Chelsea Snider, MD, uses customized fat grafting techniques to plump up and smooth out hands, restoring a more supple, youthful look. Fat grafting offers lots of benefits for women and men who want to ensure their hands look their best. Here’s how it can help your hands stay young-looking.

Why hands age

When you were younger, you probably didn’t give a lot of thought to your hands. Smooth, plump hands are a hallmark of youth, and with so much emphasis on the face, it’s easy to overlook the age-related changes our hands experience. 

Hands age for a lot of the same reasons as skin on your face or other parts of your body. A decline in collagen production means hands look less “plump” and smooth, making wrinkles, veins, and bones more prominent.

At the same time, sun exposure and years of hand-washing take their toll, breaking down skin so it ages more quickly. On top of all that, hand skin is fairly thin to begin with, which makes aging changes even more visible, regardless of how much hand cream you slather on.

How fat grafting helps

Fat grafting uses a small amount of fat that’s harvested from another area of your body, like your thighs or hips. Then, those cells are reinjected into your hands, using tiny incisions to allow the fat to spread evenly where it’s needed most. The fat grafting technique is performed right in our office using a local anesthetic to keep you comfortable.

Yes, there are some dermal fillers that can be used to fill aging hands. But fat has a couple of big advantages. First, fat grafts tend to feel softer and more natural than many synthetic fillers, especially on the hands, where skin tends to be very thin.

Second, because the fat is harvested from your own body, you don’t have to worry about allergic reactions. Once your fat cells are transferred, they nestle in to provide natural plumpness and fullness, so your hands look smoother without the use of artificial fillers.

Even better, fat grafting and dermal fillers can be used together for additional plumpness and smooth contours on your hands, giving you a custom result that’s fine-tuned to your needs and goals.

Help your hands look their best

Hand rejuvenation using fat grafting is associated with high patient satisfaction rates, especially when paired with the advanced techniques at Vida Bela Plastic Surgery. If you’d like to learn more about fat grafting to help your hands look more youthful, call the office or use our online form and schedule an appointment today