These Body Parts Might Be Giving Away Your Age

When it comes to anti-aging skin care, we tend to put the most effort into fending off or fading fine lines, wrinkles, age spots, and more from our faces. Unfortunately, the time invested in that perfect facial beauty routine may not be enough to keep you looking as youthful as you feel—and it could actually be aging your appearance. While facial skin may appear healthy and youthful, other areas of the body that are just as exposed to the elements and just as susceptible to all the same common causes of premature aging as the face could be revealing your age.

Here are the three most common body parts that may be aging your appearance and what you can do to turn back the clock, to help you look as young on the outside as you feel on the inside.

Neck

Gravity and technology are two major culprits when it comes to signs of aging along the neck. With our heads tilted downward at most of our tech devices—this includes your desktop computer if you don’t have the monitor set up properly—it’s no wonder we’re starting to develop neck wrinkles at an earlier age. Add to this the fact that the chin and neck are also often fighting off the effects of all the same environmental and lifestyle elements your face is exposed to, plus gravity, and it’s no wonder this body part is a major age revealer. And of course, next to your face, an aged neck can be detrimental to all that time and effort you’ve invested in maintaining a naturally youthful-looking appearance: a neck showing all the signs of aging risks making a younger-looking face appear overdone.

But don’t just hide under a turtleneck. Instead, try some simple preventative measures to maintain a youthful-looking neck for longer. Cutting down on screen time is a start, alongside ensuring your computer workstation is properly set up to avoid unnecessary tilting of the head and neck. Extending your regular facial anti-aging beauty treatments past your jawline, particularly moisture-boosting serums and creams, is also key. Finally, because skin on the neck has fewer oil glands, it’s unable to retain moisture as well, meaning the damaging and dehydrating effects of sun exposure can take a bigger toll on the neckline. SPF is essential. Experts recommend a mineral sunscreen with a minimum SPF 30, applied every two hours.

Hands

While your face may be making a very youthful impression, your hands may be revealing your age with each handshake—even as early as your 20s! Unfortunately, according to experts, most of us don’t realize the damage being done to our hands until those signs of premature aging really set in, which is closer to our 30s or 40s. Fine lines and wrinkles are most common, considering all the hands-on tasks we complete daily, with age spots, skin laxity, and dry, brittle nails to follow.

Prevention is the key to younger-looking hands. Consider regular manicures with paraffin wax treatments to support nail and skin health, alongside a twice-per-day application of a quality moisturizer to strengthen skin’s moisture barrier for smoother, plumper skin. Exfoliate hands with a gentle sugar scrub at least twice per week and always use gloves when gardening, washing the dishes, or cleaning—those harsh chemicals and all that rubbing from weeding can do a number on your skin. Finally, with only 53% of women and 36% of men applying sunscreen sometimes, we’re willing to bet even fewer apply sunscreen to their hands. Always apply sunscreen with an SPF 30 or higher every two hours, regardless of the weather. This is particularly true if you wear those thin dollar-store gloves in the winter, as UV light can easily penetrate through such light fabric. Sun is considered one of the biggest culprits in the premature aging of the hands, so of all the anti-aging beauty tips for younger-looking hands, sunscreen application is the one you definitely don’t want to skip!

Chest

The sun, poor skin care, sugar-laden diets, chronic stress, a lack of sleep, and even the way you sleep are all factors that can affect the skin on the chest. While it might be easier to hide away signs of aging along the décolleté in the winter, lower necklines in the summer could easily reveal your age. Signs of aging on the chest may even appear more pronounced for those who’ve maintained a quality anti-aging skin care routine past the jawline but stopped at the clavicles. And regardless of size, the chest tends to be more pronounced than other body parts, making sun exposure a major concern. For this reason, age spots are common along the décolleté, as well as wrinkling and a loss of skin elasticity.

Maintaining a healthy diet (you can still treat yourself occasionally, just don’t make sugar and alcohol a habit), keeping stress to a minimum, and prioritizing proper sleep hygiene is the trifecta of aging prevention alongside extending your skin care to your chest. A cream higher in vitamin C may also be beneficial for fading new brown spots or pigmentation. Finally, for side sleepers who notice lines on the chest in the mornings, they may bounce back now but over time, skin’s elasticity will decline, meaning those lines could easily become permanent. To prevent this, try sleeping on your back instead, using body pillows to prop you up if it’s too tempting to roll over.

Take Your Anti-Aging Regimen One Step Further...

As you may have noticed, two key signs of premature aging common to the hands, neck, and chest are: loose skin and age spots or, more accurately, sun spots. To reduce the appearance of any damage that has already be done, consider a customized treatment plan that combines non-surgical aesthetic therapies to fade spots and firm up skin.

Reversing skin laxity is a difficult task for topical treatments alone, but non-surgical radio frequency anti-aging treatments for the face and body can help up the ante to firm up skin on the face or body. Safe for all skin tones, these treatments use radio frequency technology to deliver heat deep below the skin’s surface, kick starting the body’s natural collagen production cycle to firm up skin, diminish fine lines and wrinkles, and restore a more youthful-looking appearance.

For those who have skin with relatively little melanin, photofacial treatments using Intense Pulsed Light (IPL) technology may be the solution you’re looking for to erase those unwanted dark spots. Delivering targeted energy through the skin’s surface, these treatments zap those pockets of concentrated melanin, breaking them apart and kickstarting the skin’s natural healing cycle. As collagen and elastin production increases and skin heals, sun spots fade. Because these treatments target melanin, if you have a naturally higher level of melanin in the skin, speak to a treatment professional first to ensure you’re making the right choice for your skin health.

Interested in learning more about anti-aging or photofacial treatments for the hands, neck, or chest? Locate a certified treatment professional near you using the search field below.