Magical Hands

Have you ever noticed the way folk dancers keep their hands at their waists? If you look closer at them, you will see that their thumbs are put forward and their fingers are hidden behind. But it seems more convenient to put hands at the waist the other way round. Folklore dance historians have a simple explanation of this fact: village women, who had invented the polka and krakowiak, did it to hide their hands from callous’ caused by hard peasants’ work.

Meanwhile it is not very difficult to bring your hands back to life.

· You should keep jars and tubes of hand cream in your bathroom near the wash-sink rather than in your cupboard. The same set of creams should be kept near the kitchen sink. In this instance you won’t need to look for your hand cream each time you’re done washing dishes, laundering, or taking a shower. This way, the process of caring for your hands won’t seem to take as much time.

· There should be a manicure set near the sofa or the armchair you would sit in as you watch TV. A file, a bar for smoothing vertical furrows at the nails, scissors and tweezers for treating cuticles will do a good job while you watch a show on TV.

· You should put on rubber gloves before laundering, washing dishes, or working in the garden or kitchen-garden (especially if you have decided to treat your plants with chemical agents). It is better if they have a cotton wrap inside. In purely rubber gloves your hands perspire, your skin does not breathe and the moisture makes your nail plates soft. To avoid further problems, you should put some talc powder into your gloves and cover you nails with special protective varnish. If you have no gloves at hand you can apply some protective cream to your skin before you do any work. It creates a protective film that does not allow damaging your skin during 24 hours.

· After you have taken your gloves off, you should wash your hands thoroughly, dry them well, and apply some moisturizing hand cream. If your skin gets dry and chapped, you should give them a warm bath of almond oil or of linseed decoction (pour 2 glasses of hot water for a tablespoon of linseed and boil during 15-20 minutes).

TO LOOK PERFECT

The American film “Fedora” tells about a young actress who underwent several plastic operations that made her face older; and dentists purposely spoiled her teeth. All this was done to pass her off as her mother, an aged Hollywood star, who had decided to surprise the world by her creative longevity. But skillful doctors could do nothing about the hands as they betrayed the daughter’s real age. And she had to wear white gloves all the time to conceal the young resilient skin on her flexible fingers. In real life we often face quite an opposite problem: we have to keep our hands young and make their skin smooth and soft. But why do our hands betray our age? Of all parts of our body they are most often exposed to heat and frost. As we do some work about the house our hands’ skin comes in contact with various cleansers and, as a result, gets dry more quickly.

· In the morning and in the evening you should apply some special cream or gel on your hands. They contain some ingredients that nourish and cure you skin. A very beneficial product is something most of us drink as tea; chamomile. Chamomile disinfects extremely well and contributes to the healing of micro cracks. The ingredient aloe is famous for it’s moistening effects. Glycerin and lecithin soften your skin. Look for hand creams that contain any and all of these beneficial ingredients.

· An interesting fact for smokers. Yellowed nails can instantly turn pale when wiped by three-per-cent hydrogen peroxide solution or lemon juice.

· Potato decoction, sauerkraut juice and buttermilk are very helpful for softening the skin on hands. You can also use baths of kitchen or sea salt (1 tablespoon per 1 liter of water) or of herb extract (pour 2 glasses of boiling water over 1 tablespoon of mint, lime-blossoms, sage).

· To rejuvenate tired skin quickly, cut the top part of a lemon and rub your callous and darkened skin with it. Even the cuticles that have become clogged with dirt are well whitened by lemon. You can squeeze some juice from parsley that can as well be used as a whitening agent. But lemon and parsley juices make the skin dry; therefore it will do well to use any moistening mask after this procedure. You can buy a tube of ready-made preparation at the shop or do it yourself: you can grind some rolled oats in a coffee-grinder and add a spoon of olive oil to it. Before going to bed you should apply this mixture to your hands and put on cotton gloves. Or you can just apply some cream on your hands and wait 10 minutes. And after that you should wash the cream away, dry your hands and apply some softening cream.

· Alternating hot and cold baths are the simplest way of getting rid of redness of your hands’ skin. If the hot bath (35-38°С) is made of infusion of marsh flagroot and nettle (2 tablespoons of each plant per 1 liter of water) and the cold one consists of the oak bark decoction (1 tablespoon per 1 liter of water) the effect of the procedure will be intensified. Immerse your hands for 30 seconds into the hot bath and then into the cold one. You should alternate hot and cold baths 16-20 times during the procedure.

· Regular manicures will help in keeping your hands and nails in ideal order. Most nail salons now give complementary hand massages during your manicure that will contribute to better outflow of the venous blood and better inflow of the arterial one which saturates the entire system including our skin with oxygen.

· A visit to a cosmetologist will help in solving the problem of your uncared-for hands more fundamentally. Alongside with various masks, paraffin baths and packs in some modern beauty salons they offer you to conduct bio lifting for your hands. A special tool, producing micro currents of a special frequency works in combination with certain agents, which are selected depending on the problems your skin suffers from and according to its type. Under the impact of micro currents, different active substances that form part of gels and creams penetrate the skin better and deeper than during the conventional application of the agent out of the tube. Bio lifting can improve your skin’s vitality, whiten it and help those who have wrinkled, flabby hands. Cosmetologists can effectively use ultrasound as well. Depending on the kind of gel or serum used for conducting ultrasound, the procedure used by the cosmetologists produce the necessary effect. The skin is restored, the surface layer peels, the surface gets as smooth as that of an infant, the wrinkles on it are not so numerous, it is whiter than the previous one and nevus pigmentosis disappear. The procedures are rather pleasant and do not take much time: 20 – 25 minutes including the masking. But it will do better to undergo a course of treatment including at least 6 or 8 procedures. Then your hands will show your care of them for a long time to come.

· Have you ever heard about special masking make-up for hands? It cannot be removed by conventional water, with it you can bathe in the sea or in a swimming-pool. It is often used primarily by those who wish to conceal traces of a skin burn, vitiligo patches and other problem areas of their skin. You can select make-up that best matches your original skin color.

· Eating well is a great contributor to how our skin looks. To keep your skin and nails in good shape you should think about a balanced diet. The B-group vitamins and vitamins A, C, E and F are especially important for your beauty. Sulfur, iodine, selenium and zinc are considered to be beauty minerals.

Your skin will be elastic and your nails will be firm if you include these foods in your diet: bananas, apples, cranberries, cherries, grapes, peaches, apricots, onion, garlic, garden radishes, cabbage, beetroots, parsley, sweet pepper, avocado, melon, pumpkin, green leaf vegetables, wheat sprouts, various cereals (especially barley, oats and buckwheat), beans, nuts, eggs, fish and sea products, non-fat beef, pork and poultry.