Sore palms are due to 2 factors:
1) Bike fit
2) Core strength

Tweak those, and you won't be resting enough weight on your hands to get sore.

My experience on road bikes is that if you land on outstretched palms, the minor cuts and abrasions are the least of your problems. Gloves do nothing to protect you from the broken bones and/or dislocations that can result. Maybe it's different on gravel, but I've never wiped out on a path or dirt road.

You can also get sore palms from gripping too hard. I'm prone to do that when I have gloves on because I am not getting the tactile feedback from my hands on the bars. I don't ever get sore palms when I'm not gloved.

I find that my hands get sore if I find myself gripping the bars too hard. I try to continually remind myself not to grip the bars in a death grip all the time. During the summer I ride with some cheap-o fingerless gloves. They have minimal padding but generally do a good job of cushioning my hands while riding. I have a pair of merino wool gloves from Isadore for winter/cooler weather riding. They have no cushioning and if I am out for a 100k ride, my hands can start to get sore around the 60~70k mark.

I think what happens for me is that when I ride without gloves, gripping too hard instantly is uncomfortable, and I can feel the bars firmly in my hands without the death grip. With the gloves on, I neither find the squeeze uncomfortable nor can I tell that my grasp is firm. By the time I realize I've been white knuckling, my palms are already sore.

I realize this isn't a universal, but I think it's what OP's doctor was suggesting was happening. I'm curious if OP has tried the no-glove thing yet.

Gloves give me sore hands too so I really only wear them in the winter.

you shouldn't squeeze handlebar hard on a bike (road or mtb), unless you have some bumps ahead, you will just get arm-pump pretty fast. you should feel relaxed and under control.

D-uh.

Relaxed and under control is how I ride with my gloves off. You're missing my point, gloves interfere with my ability to feel relaxed and under control. That can both be true for me and not true for you, we may be relying on different feedback mechanisms, and I can ride with gloves in cold weather. It's just that it doesn't come as naturally to me as bare-handed and I sometimes forget to relax my hands during a long ride. Since I routinely ride solo centuries, anything I need to focus on to that degree is an annoying distraction over time. YMMV.

I also get fewer, smaller calluses riding without gloves, so I really don't see the point in them for me. YMMV.

I may actually try riding without gloves soon. For the moment we have some warmer days that don’t require gloves but no sun intensity to worry about.

Also, I changed bar tape to Brooks microfiber tape a couple weeks ago. It has a leather like texture and bare hands grip very easily on it while my cheapo cycling gloves don’t grip well, so there is more effort needed to keep a grip.

Luckily, the Bontrager gloves I got for temps in the vicinity of 40 deg F (very common here in winter) have a rubbery palm surface that grips very nicely on the Brooks tape.

Otto

Not surprising everyone is different. For me the arthritis only in my left hand is much better with substantial gloves made to dampen vibration, they seriously help and don't bother the right hand in any way at all.

+1
Road rash on the palms of your hands is a LOT more painful than many people imagine. That's something I learnt in my youth.

For most of us, injured hands means time off work.
Most employers will just replace you if your judgment is so poor you risked your livelihood versus taking simple precautions.
Wear leather gloves if you do not need padding. Simple.

I wear gloves because I have better grip when my hands get sweaty, it helps keep my grips and bar tape from getting gross, and can save some skin in a mishap.

For both MTB and road I prefer unpadded, thin, form fitting gloves… unless it is cold out. I lean towards fingerless for road (until it gets cold) but only full fingered for MTB.

Way back when, my Schwinn Varsity and Continental came with shiny plastic bar tape. Talk about making hands sweaty. Gloves were required.

Over the years, I've wiped out a few times with no gloves, and I've never had serious abrasions on my hands, just some minor cuts that really didn't hurt much. The more painful things I've experienced were from impact on the thumbs and fingers, and gloves would not have any effect on those.

If I wore leather gloves, I'd get wicked prickly heat on my hands.

I'm a little confused at why the tactile feedback from the gloves wouldn't be sufficient, but we're all different. I have had gloves that irritated my palms, but that should be obvious fairly early in a ride.

That’s some dog-eat-dog world you’re living in, my friend….😟

A video is worth more than a thousand words:

(WARNING GROSS) Why I ALWAYS Wear Gloves on the Bike - The Crash I Didn't Tell You About Last Year

Special Bar Tape does not protect your hands when you fall, gloves do. So you need gloves just like you need a helmet. Too Bad...

So now change gloves, thier style and make and padding. Find a pair that fit ya well and allow you to ride like you like. It is easy for me to recommend this but it is not easy to find a really good set of gloves for some people...

I know for some riders gloves may not be important. As I get older my skin is thinner, bones more brittle, proprioception tedious, vision and hearing worse. I dread the time when I have to use even more protection in order to ride. But if I have to I will...

Good Grief... No...

Do they make a 2XL? ...Ha

The potential is still there though as shown in the video a few posts above. I never hurt my hands as badly as the guy in that video, but I have had some nasty road rash on my palms when falling off bikes and skateboards in my youth. Then I quickly started wearing gloves and never experienced it since.

For road riding I wear fingerless gloves mainly to protect my palms, but I actually prefer gloves to sweaty hands holding the bars. For mtb I wear full gloves and lightweight knee and elbow pads too if I'm riding anywhere rocky.

The glove/helmet comparison is just wrong for me. The reason for helmets is to prevent debilitating brain damage, so for most of us, that risk is severe enough to put up with the inconvenience of wearing a helmet. For gloves, people like me would be balancing the certitude of skin irritation vs. a small risk of hand abrasions for any given ride. Gloves aren't at all likely to make the difference between a permanent disability and a minor or no injury, while a helmet might.

TBH, I don't land on my palms as I've trained myself never to let go of the bars in a crash. The outstretched arms are incredibly dangerous, and some abrasion is just about the least of it.

You are right. Heaven forbid I should get into any Helmet type debates. I wear one now days but did not always. I am against mandatory helmets but would never ride without one by choice. I have though always worn gloves when on my bicycle. I learned to do that long ago by falling off of my Western Flyer and suffering an infected road burn to my palm. Many have worn gloves long before wearing a helmet.

Great advice. I learned this from my motorcycle days. I think its the only reason I was spared fractures to my arms, hands, and shoulders in a bad spill I took many years ago. My head, chest, and back did not fair so well... Ha

That's generally a good idea, but crashes are unpredictable things by their very nature. Coming from an aggressive mtb background I've had my fair share of crashes over the years and somehow come out largely unscathed. No broken bones amazingly, but I have suffered a few cases of road rash and I distinctly remember how painful it is if your hands do get involved. It's just one of those things. As you haven't experienced it you obviously don't worry about it and hopefully you never will.

This reminds me of another incident a couple of years ago. I try to encourage my daughters to wear gloves when we go mountain biking and our youngest often refused. Then she came off her bike after hitting a rut in the trail and ended up with.... yep you've guessed it, grazed up palms. It wasn't all that bad, but it did hurt and she did cry. Then she started wearing the gloves. That's kind of how it works with this sort of thing. It's like the helmet debate. I rode for years without bike or ski helmets and then one day I finally whacked my head hard enough to get concussion and then bought a helmet.