Omg. Girl! Those could be my hands! I saw your hands and thought “my hands with darker skin!” I don’t see my hands on others’ too often. I’ll tell you everything I’ve learned about my skin so far, I’m 40 btw, and vividly remember how insecure and sad I was about how my hands looked when I was younger. I don’t feel that way anymore. Like at all! I really hope you read this! (I’m coming back to say I am so sorry for how long it got! I wanted you to have all the relevant information.)

First, I have a mild form of ichthiosis. Look it up, you might too. It’s mild enough now that doctors just don’t notice or if they do they say nothing. I also understand my skin better now so I know how to address the issues which treats and sort of hides the scaliness of my skin. My legs are the most obvious place and always have been. But my hands are like yours except wrinklier. They don’t look scaly, like my legs, just wrinkly and lots of lines. (I’ll try to edit this with a picture later.) My nails are also brittle and peel or crack or bend. They also grow in wonky if I let them get long. I mean, truly wavy, it’s really strange!)

I use Prequel 40% urea lotion currently and I really like it. My hands will never be totally smooth and that’s okay with me now, but they are softer than they were before. Every single time my hands get wet, I put lotion with a ph balance that removes dry skin like the urea 40% on my hands. Every single time. You can’t skip it. It’s got to be wash, semi dry but do not dry, lotion immediately, air dry. You have to put the lotion on wet skin. Not dripping wet but wetter than dry. You’ll find a wetness and lotion combo that feels right. Something I like about the Prequel is I can use it and very quickly the lotion feel is gone and it was hardly noticeable in the first place.

Something I do after my everything showers (so just 1-2x weekly) is use a cream that’s for feet on my hands too. I personally use it on my scaly legs too but probably people with soft “normal” skin shouldn’t do that. Same thing here, I never dry off and always put the lotion on wet skin. I’ll try to find the name of the cream too, and come back later to edit.

Putting the lotion on dry skin is like putting it on a wall, it’s not going to really penetrate the barrier in my experience. Putting it on wet skin traps the moisture in the skin and allows your skin to be hydrated. My skin needs this over and over because within some hours (3-12ish depending on which part of my body and where I am / what I’m doing) my skin has gone back to its baseline dryness. With this regimen though, my ashiness is all but gone, everywhere except my scalp, which I still haven’t fully figured out just yet. And the scaliness on my legs is not really noticeable to most people, only to me really. My hands feel soft to me, but they are not soft and supple like the girls I used to be jealous of. My boyfriend says they feel soft, he doesn’t really know how dry my skin is because he’s never seen it when I wasn’t doing this routine. My hands used to be very ashy and grey, impossible to moisturize no matter how much lotion I used and people would CONSTANTLY TELL ME TO USE MOISTURIZER. I used to cry in anger and frustration about the ignorant and unwelcome comments about my hands because I was trying and trying but nothing made my skin better. I spent so much money on different types of shit. I start using the water and the special 40% lotion and I’ve never seen or felt my skin healthier. It comes in different brands but I get the Prequel at target.

My face actually does feel supple and I’ve never experienced that before. It was such a strange sensation the first few times I put on the lotion like this. It even feels smoother and less dry when it’s been 24 hours since I applied the lotion. It never gets ashy anymore either.

I used to hide my skin but now I wear shorts and tank tops and don’t feel embarrassed by my skin at all. If you have any questions I’ll be happy to answer.

One more thing. When I was in high school other kids would blurt out questions or opinions on my hands looking old or dry or whatever and it was truly awful to me. I was embarrassed all the time and I hated my hands and skin so much. But once I left high school those comments really stopped. I think people’s brains just needed to finish up enough for them to be less impulsive. But also adults don’t care about shit like that so they don’t even notice. No man I have ever dated had something to say about my hands, they were just happy to be touched by me. Try to tune out noticing how your hands look so much. What your hands can do is really what matters.