Those ugly brown or gray spots on your hands, arms and face can make you appear older than you actually are. Age spots, also called liver spots, develop on the skin after years of exposure to the sun. Spots usually appear in people who are 40 or older, but can also develop in younger people who have spent a significant amount of time in the sun.
Age spots develop when sun-damaged skin begins to produce extra melanin in an attempt to protect itself from further damage. Melanin is the pigment in the skin that produces skin color. Instead of producing a uniform darkening of the skin, melanin clumps together as people age, creating dark patches or spots on the skin.
A variety of methods are available to lighten age spots. Over-the-counter creams containing hydroquinone can bleach the spots if applied daily for several months. If spots are particularly dark and don’t respond to over-the-counter creams, your doctor can prescribe a prescription cream that contains double the amount of hydroquinone available in drugstore products. Some prescription creams are used with steroids and retinoids for faster fading. Using bleaching creams can make your skin more sensitive to the sun during treatment and can dry out or irritate the skin.
If you don’t have the patience to apply creams every day, chemical peels and laser treatments provide a faster way to remove age spots. Peels and laser treatments remove the top layer of skin containing the age spots, revealing smoother, unblemished skin underneath. Dermatologists can also remove age spots by freezing and destroying the excess pigment with cryotherapy or sanding off the top layer of skin with dermabrasion.
Before you spend money on creams or treatments, you may want to try a home remedy to remove age spots. Common home remedies for age spots include applying apple cider vinegar, lemon juice or castor oil to the spots two or three times every day. It may take several months before you see results using these methods, and in some cases, you may need to resort to stronger measures to fade your spots.
No matter what age spot treatment you choose, it is important to make sunscreen usage a part of your daily skin care regimen. Sunscreen blocks the ultraviolet rays that damage the skin and prevents additional age spots from developing. Use sunscreen with a sun protection factor (SPF) of 30 or higher and reapply the sunscreen several times if you will be spending the day outside.
Treating age spots as they occur is the best way to keep those embarrassing spots under control. The variety of treatment methods available makes it easy to fade your age spots even if you are on a tight budget.
