Everyone suffers from dark circles under eyes from time to time due to various environmental and physical factors. However, constant dark circles can lead to a loss of self-confidence, as even the best concealer can’t cover up chronic under-eye bruising.
Dark circles under the eyes can make you look exhausted and worn, affecting your self-confidence and self-esteem. Most people try a wide variety of home remedies to little effect, and even makeup can’t hide the appearance of dark circles.
If you’re sick of spending your time looking for remedies that will help reduce the appearance of dark circles and want to take control of your life, we have a potential solution for you.
About the Condition
Many different factors can cause dark eye circles. Some of these are avoidable, while others are due to natural causes. That’s why different treatments and lifestyle changes work for some people, but may not work all the time. To understand your options, let’s look at some of the most common causes of dark circles under the eyes.
Innate Factors
Intrinsic factors are factors unrelated to your lifestyle that may make treating dark circles significantly harder. These include:
- Genetics: some people have very thin skin, or have a blueish skin tone, which makes dark circles significantly more visible. Many people with darker skin tones also suffer from circles under the eyes.
- Ageing: as you age, your skin’s collagen production drops dramatically. Collagen is responsible for your skin’s elasticity and plumpness, and the less you have, the thinner your skin. Veins tend to show more through delicate skin, which leads to the appearance of dark circles around your eyes.
- Allergies: various allergic reactions can cause the blood vessels around your eyes to accumulate more fluid, which leads to more prominent veins and the appearance of bruising and dark shadows around the eye area.
- Loss of the fat pads under your eyes: if you lose this pad of fat, either due to diet or illness, it will create a large, hollow depression that is darker than the rest of your skin and leads to dark under-eye circles.
Environmental Factors
What we eat and what we expose our skin to has a massive impact on our skin health. Luckily, changing these environmental and lifestyle factors can also lead to a lessened appearance of dark circles and more radiant and glowing skin.
Some of the main factors that can increase the dark circles under your eyes include:
- Poor diet: excess salt and caffeine can lead to water retention, leading to puffy eyes and bagginess. A bad diet can also lead to dark circles, especially if your diet is low in vital nutrients. Vitamin deficiency can lead to increased bruising, insufficient blood flow, and brittle blood vessels, contributing to dark circles.
- Stress: constant stress produces a chemical called cortisol, which also plays an essential role in various functions in your body. An increase in cortisol can lead to easily-bruised skin, rapid weight gain, and trouble sleeping.
- Poor sleep: too little sleep can affect your body’s circulation, which leads to fluid retention. Excess fluid leads to puffy eyes and eye bags, as well as dark circles.
- Dehydration: dehydrated skin is more prone to bruising as the blood vessels become more brittle and thin. It can also lead to an accumulation of fluid under the eyes and the presence of eye bags.
- Sun exposure: the skin area around the eyes is particularly susceptible to UV damage, and increased pigment in this area will cause dark circles that will take a long time to subside.
How PRP Can Help
PRP, or platelet-rich plasma therapy, uses your body’s rejuvenation factors to help heal and restore your skin’s elasticity and natural glow. Your plasma contains compounds such as platelets, growth factors, and cytokines, all of which promote healing and rejuvenation.
PRP’s primary use was to help athletes recover from injuries faster, especially long-term injuries like torn ligaments and tendons. By injecting platelet-rich plasma into the affected area, doctors could accelerate healing of notoriously tricky tissues.
The principle of PRP treatment for under-eye bags and to get rid of dark circles is essentially the same. The PRP serum causes a cascade of healing that targets several causes of dark under-eye circles at once.
Firstly, PRP encourages collagen production, which plumps your skin and makes it more elastic. Plumper skin can fill out dark hollows and make them less noticeable while also making your skin firmer and thicker.
PRP can also encourage the growth of blood vessels which can wash away fluid that can cause eye bags, while also making existing blood vessels more elastic and less prone to breaking and bruising.
Alternative Treatments
While PRP is one of the most effective dark circles under eyes treatments for anyone, it’s not the only one available. That’s why we usually consult with our clients to find the best solution to reduce the appearance of dark circles, either with at-home remedies or in-clinic treatments.
Topical Creams
Many anti-ageing skincare products contain compounds that can help improve skin elasticity and promote healing. An eye cream like Elastiderm can reduce wrinkling and restore skin plumpness.
If you want to try skincare products to reduce the circles under your eyes, try to use those with products that increase skin elasticity and firmness, like hyaluronic acid or vitamin E. Having firmer skin around the eyes will not only reduce dark circles, but it can even help reduce the number of fine lines you can see.
Addressing Lifestyle Concerns
If the cause of poor skin around the eye area is due to poor nutrition, sun exposure, or other lifestyle factors, the best treatment is to eliminate these factors.
Your clinician may ask for health information to discover if you have any nutritional deficiencies that may cause dark circles and recommend a diet and exercise plan that will leave your skin feeling better than ever.
Dermal Fillers
Loss of the fat pad under the eye can lead to sunken, dark hollows. Luckily, dermal fillers can address this issue and restore the appearance of the fat pad. Thanks to extensive product development and research, many fillers can last for up to two years.
Cold Compress
Cold compresses can help reduce swelling and get rid of puffy eyes. The most straightforward treatment is to apply cold cucumber slices to your eyes first thing in the morning. And you can then eat the cucumber for an extra vitamin boost!
Several eye creams also help reduce swelling and fluid retention, reducing eye puffiness and bags under the eyes.
Reducing Pigmentation
Sometimes dark circles are due to an accumulation of pigment in the skin. There are several ways to reduce pigmentation, depending on the severity of the problem.
Topical eye creams and peels can remove the pigmented surface layer, revealing the clear, fresh skin underneath. Green tea is an excellent depigmenting compound, and you may want to try cold tea bags over your eyes to reduce swelling and pigmentation at the same time.
Vitamin C and kojic acid are also compounds that can reduce pigmentation under controlled circumstances.
However, it’s essential to note that depigmentation is a harsh procedure, and should only be done under the supervision of a doctor or a licensed clinician. Make sure you work with a skin care professional if you decide to take this route.
Laser Treatment
Sometimes doctors will use lasers to lessen the appearance of veins under the skin. However, we don’t recommend this for dark circles, as the laser can only treat skin that’s over bone, such as over the eye socket, and not over the eye itself.
FAQs
Who else uses PRP?
Many physiotherapists use PRP to help their athletes recover from injuries faster. Other people who use PRP are doctors rehabilitating patients with soft-tissue injuries that benefit from PRP’s healing properties.
There is plenty of data to support PRP’s effectiveness, and it’s starting to gain widespread adoption in the healthcare industry.
How does the process work?
When you come to the clinic for PRP, a Medical Doctor, Registered nurse or phlebotomist will draw your blood and use a centrifuge to extract the platelet-rich plasma. That way, we make sure that the PRP won’t cause an allergic reaction, since your body produces it.
We will then anaesthetise the area and inject the PRP serum under the skin. It will start working almost immediately, and your skin will start producing collagen, hyaluronic acid, and other healing factors. The result is fewer fine lines and more healthy, radiant skin with fewer dark circles under the eyes.
Is PRP worth it?
Whether or not PRP is the best service depends on your particular needs. Some people can reduce dark circles with eye cream or tea bags, while others need more significant intervention. That’s why we discuss various options with our patients before committing to a single procedure.
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