Flat tan, brown or black spots. They vary in size and usually appear on the face, hands, shoulders and arms — areas most exposed to the sun. Age spots are a protective response. The skin makes an "umbrella" of melanin that covers non-healing wounds in the skin. Those wounds are from repetitive trauma to the skin that is mostly sun related but repeated chemical peels have also been associated with new spots. By healing the source of age spots, which is this wound at the dermal-epidermal junction, they will disappear and not come back in most cases.
