Looking For A High-Quality, Healthy Aging Hand Cream? Look For These 3 Things

When buying a beauty product—be it a face serum, hair conditioner, or hand cream—it often feels like a gamble. There's no way to truly know if a formula is going to be effective, appropriate for your unique needs, and sensorially appealing for your particular tastes. Unfortunately, the only method to rely on is to, well, test out the product for yourself. 

That being said: There are clues you can look for to ensure your selection is at the very least high quality and well crafted. This will set you up for success so you have a better chance of actually enjoying the product. (Ultimately, however, product preference is highly personal—just because something is good doesn't mean it's good for you. And that's OK!) These characteristics of quality vary depending on the type of product. For example, what's important for a retinol serum will be vastly different from what's important for a dark-circle-reducing eye cream.

The foremost priority of a hand cream is to hydrate the skin. If it can't do that well, nothing else matters. So we have to start here. The best moisturizers contain a blend of humectant, emollient, and occlusive ingredients. This ensures the formula attracts and holds water in the skin, supports the lipid layer of the skin, and seals in hydration, which will reduce transepidermal water loss. 

"No new skin care product that comes to market can claim to benefit the skin without keeping the microbiome in mind, using ingredients that support a healthy microbiome, and avoiding ingredients that disrupt or damage the microbiome," says board-certified dermatologist Whitney Bowe, M.D.

The good news is that many ingredients commonly used in moisturizers are also good for the microbiome. For example, colloidal oatmeal2 has been shown to be beneficial for the balance of the skin microbiome and can even help manage inflammatory skin conditions. Or antioxidants can also benefit the microbiome, as they ward off damaging free radicals and inflammation. 

You can also look for more targeted approaches to supporting your microbiome, through prebiotics, postbiotics, and botanical ferments. Prebiotics support the diversity and health of your existing microbiome—look for plant sugars, algae, and minerals. 

"People often ask how many antioxidants you should be using regularly; the answer is: the more the better," board-certified dermatologist Rachel Nazarian, M.D., of Schweiger Dermatology Group told me about antioxidants. "The more you can help neutralize unstable molecules caused by free radical formation, the longer you can salvage the health of your cells and skin. There's really no limit to how much you can protect and repair your body!"

She's not wrong: We should be loading up on antioxidants whenever we can, including your hand cream.