What’s the point of smoothing your face to perfection if you’re giving away your real age with those granny hands?

Patients have increasingly been asking for procedures that freshen up more than just their faces, said Beverly Hills dermatologist Jason Emer. He’s especially seen an uptick in requests for hand smoothing with filler Radiesse since the Food and Drug Administration approved the injectable over the summer.

“Ten years ago, most cosmetic procedures focused on what you can see with the face,” Emer said. “The past two years there’s been a huge increase in people looking more at the body as the thing they want to rejuvenate, whether they’re trying to show off or people are noticing their faces looking younger than the rest of everything else.”

Radiesse has been FDA approved for face wrinkles and folds since 2006 but hands just recently. Emer, who conducted clinical trials with the filler, said the process involves injecting the white gel into the backs of hands to fill hollows while covering veins and tendons. A round of treatment usually lasts for about a year and costs between $2,000 and $3,000.

Emer said regulatory approval can give treatments a big boost. For example, the FDA approved another filler for cheeks a couple of years ago.

“Everyone knew you could do cheek rejuvenation for years,” he said of the now FDA-approved procedure. “Now everyone’s asking for (cheek) volume.”

– Marni Usheroff