Have you managed to get out in the garden much this week? I'm making a few assumptions there; firstly that you have a garden and secondly, that, like me, you're itching to get your potter on the second early spring hits.
As a devoted member of the Monty Don mafia, I find a morning's gardening gives me the same soulful pleasure as closing my eyes in the middle of a dancefloor at 2 am. But do you know who can't stand all that mulching and weeding and weather-exposure? My poor mitts.
Of course, enthusiasm for cultivation is not the only reason to be interested in the best hand creams. All hands get dry, uncomfortable and tonally compromised, and I've been using a new treatment that'd be brilliant for outdoorsy and indoorsy hands alike.
Why this effective hand treatment is my beauty buy of the week
I find it a bit fearmongery when people refer to hands as an 'age giveaway' - as if we should all be lying about our age and terrified of being found out. But just as many conspiracy theories grow from a tiny sapling of truth, the roots of this idea stem from the fact that we do tend to take better care of our faces than our paws.
There's a huge market for hand creams out there, but most focus on basic hydration, smelling nice and not much else. Actual skincare to treat things like age spots on our hands and textural changes is quite thin on the ground, particularly from mainstream high street brands.
But would you look at this? It's new, affordable and includes the same peptide technology as those No7 Future Renew face serums everyone goes wild for. A short lesson in peptides: they help rev up your skin's own natural 'matrix proteins' - in this case, collagen and elastin, to repair damage that's already been done. For a longer lesson, I'd check out Boots' 20-year study with the University of Manchester. It's actually quite rare to see this sort of independently-backed evidence for beauty products, so bravo Boots.
This also includes plumping hyaluronic acid, niacinamide, to even out skin tone and SPF15. Sun protection is no question the best way to stop new pigmentation forming and the old stuff darkening and looking more obvious. Would I rather this were factor 30 or 50? Yes, but I imagine the formulation may have been compromised in some other way if they upped the SPF, so I'll move on.
There's so much going on with this cream, I haven't even got to the texture yet, which is perfection. Rich and quenching, but ungreasy. It hangs around in the skin, so your hands feel comfy and protected for several hours after you rub it in.
This ongoing barrier is very helpful, should you find yourself, say, scrubbing your palms with cheap kitchen soap because you couldn't wait another second to pot up your sweet peas, risk of frost be damned. Or - oh, I don't know - ripping weeds out with your bare hands because you spotted four more in the border but had already put your gloves away. Sounds good? Great! Let's chat next Sunday.
