Seen At 11: Making Veins Disappear For Younger-Looking Hands

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- There are so many ways to turn back the clock on our faces these days -- from lasers and peels to face lifts and implants -- that there's no telling how old a person really is.

But as CBS2's Dr. Max Gomez reported, that all changes with a look at someone's hands. Veiny hands are a dead giveaway of a person's real age – though that may be changing too.

Some Hollywood stars are seemingly ageless except for their hands. Some even keep their hands covered to hide the veins that reveal their true age.

"The veins in the back of the hands are normal veins, but as we age, we lose water content and elasticity on the skin and on the vein wall, and we lose a little bit of fat in the bottom of the hand, so that makes it much more visible," said Dr. Luis Navarro of the Vein Treatment Center.

Sharon Marantz Walsh's hands are one of those casualties of time. She said they reminded her of her grandmother's hands.

"One day I looked down and I saw all these blue veins, and I realized that you can't cover them up like an age spot or something else, and I knew I had to do something about it," Walsh said.

As an editor of Glow beauty magazine, Marantz had even more incentive to do something about it.

That was why she came to Dr. Navarro, a renowned expert in getting rid of varicose leg veins, who has now turned his skill onto unsightly hands.

But his method does not involve injecting fillers under the skin.

"The only thing that that does is deform the hand to hide the vein so you have like a boxer's glove, and so if the vein is the problem, you tackle the vein," Navarro said.

In other words, Navarro gets rid of the veins. The technique is essentially the same as what is done in the leg – he injects a solution directly into the veins that causes them to close off and disappear.

And because the hands have a second, deep system of veins for blood drainage, the unattractive and superficial ones in the back of the hand are not missed.

"It takes from one to three treatments, usually spaced one to two weeks, and the results are outstanding -- perfection -- and the patient wears gloves overnight and that's the only thing," Navarro said. "We used to do one or two a week and now we do four to five hands a day."

Walsh has had one session, and returned for her next with CBS2.

"It's less than tweezing your eyebrows. It's absolutely painless. It's making me very happy," Navarro said. "I'm hoping my grandmothers hands fade."

The first vein treatment for the hands costs $1,000, and subsequent ones are $500.