Beauty bible

Thread veins and broken capillaries may be a fact of life, but there are ways to reduce their appearance on your skin

Lisa Armstrong on vanquishing thread veins

IF ONLY WE’D ALL read beauty articles when we were three years old. We’d be neurotic nightmares, but we’d never have sunbathed, drunk too much, cracked open the Fruit & Nut, eaten a spicy curry, set foot in a sauna… Our skin would look dewy and airbrushed and we’d be smug. But would we be free of those pesky thread veins?

Probably not. Because while all of the above can be held partially culpable for breaking up our dear, delicate little veins and capillaries (the smallest of the blood transporters), one of the pre-eminent causes of all those spidery lines that run amok in the crevices of everyone-over-the-age-of-18’s nose, and sometimes across cheeks as well, damn them, is living. Pregnancy, childbirth, sneezing, exposure to extreme cold or heat can all cause veins and capillaries to dilate or become engorged and ultimately rupture. Yep. Turns out, life is really bad for you.

What we have here is the human condition, and you must either accept it, liberally smoothing on Armani Maestro and Sisley concealer (or whatever your particular favourite cover-ups may be) to hide the offending broken veins and capillaries, or fight back with weaponry.

While I normally favour a low-intervention approach to beauty, when it comes to thread veins, it’s pretty obvious natural ‘cures’ such as witch hazel, Butcher’s broom and (yes, I read this somewhere) olive oil are going to be as effective as popping a Smartie.

If thread veins really can’t be concealed and are getting you down, a more serious approach is to have saline solution injected into them, causing them to collapse, clot and ultimately fade – aka sclerotherapy.

But Dr Maryam Zamani, known for her light touch when it comes to injectables and needles, says she gets much better results from using a combinations of very fine lasers. Most broken veins and capillaries can be fixed in a maximum of three short sessions, with almost no downtime in between.

‘Blue veins around the temples are easier to deal with than tiny red capillaries around the nose, which tend to be sensitive and can easily burn,’ she says. Dr Zamani uses a much lower-energy laser on these than the one she relies on for temple veins. She has also successfully treated the ultra-fragile skin under the eyes. ‘Sometimes what patients think of as dark circles are actually microscopic broken capillaries. If they’re the finest capillaries of all – rosacea, for instance – IPL [Intense Pulsed Light] is the best strategy for getting rid of them. Then you can finish with a laser.’

Any trustworthy practitioner will do a patch test first – and be honest about the likelihood of more broken veins magically appearing in the future (about 100 per cent). ‘Of course, there are precautions you can take,’ explains Dr Zamani. ‘You can stay out of the sun, for one thing. Keep hydrated. Wear a balm when you exercise or go in the sauna. And rosacea sufferers sometimes find topical retinoids or azelaic acid can help.’ For the rest of us, maintaining a healthy circulation and blood flow is helpful, not just for thread-vein prevention, but health. Regular exercise (not extreme), sleep and massage. Doesn’t sound too onerous.