If you're closer to 50 than 20, you may have noticed that no matter how youthful your outlook on life is, your eyes are starting to hint at just how many candles were on your last birthday cake. From crinkling and creasing around the eyes to dark circles and bags underneath your eyes, here's what you need to know and what you need to do to look ageing eyes in the, um, eye, and give them an age-defying wink.
Carrying a Bit of Excess Baggage Under Your Eyes?
The term 'bags' describes mild swelling or puffiness under the eyes. As you age, the delicate tissue around your eyes weakens, and some of the muscles supporting your eyelids lose their youthful exuberance and stamina. The fatty tissue that used to act as scaffolding for your eyes and eyelids can shift to the lower eyelids, causing them to appear puffy. Add to this fluid build-up from lack of sleep and poor diet/hydration, and you've got a recipe for whatever the opposite of "You look so well rested" is.
Rarely a sign of a serious condition, under-eye bags can be reduced by (in addition to the right treatments and products) using a cool compress at home, which explains the slices of cucumber on the eyes, synonymous with a D.I.Y. spa day and quite possibly something your grandmother swore by. More recently, you may have seen influencers and celebs popping the back of a fresh-outta-the-fridge teaspoon on their eyes before letting their glam squad get to work. Now you know there is some method to the chilled cutlery madness!
What's the Difference Between a Bag and a Festoon?
Often confused, it's essential to know that one is an eye area issue and the other is entirely responsible for another area of your face. Both result from fat protruding through the skin, but 'bags' are caused by fat protruding through the skin in the lower eyelid area, while 'festoons' are fat protrusions primarily on the upper part of the cheek.
When you have both issues, the two combined can look like one issue, but they need to be treated separately. While 'bags' are generally associated with ageing, festoons result from damage – like sun exposure and smoking, for example. If you treat the lower eyelids and neglect the upper area of the cheeks, too, your improved 'bags' can make your festoons appear more pronounced.
Shedding Some Light on Dark Circles
There are several reasons you could be experiencing dark circles under your eyes, from vitamin deficiencies – a lack of vitamin B12, E, K and D – to a bit of a 'go slow' in the collagen and elastin production departments, making the tiny blood vessels under the surface of the under-eye area more visible. Iron deficiency is also proven to go hand in hand with dark circles, no matter how much beauty sleep you get in regularly.
Injectables & Resurfacing: Two Treatments Worth a Closer Look
If you're looking older, premature ageing of the peri-orbital region could be the cause. In this case, you want to look at industry-leading, truly innovative prejuvenation and rejuvenation treatments.
Botulinum Toxin Treatments like Botox® or Dysport injections are magic bullets for preventing wrinkles. They temporarily inhibit muscle movement, stopping the constant motions that become etched on your face as a wrinkle. The highly-trained doctors at Skin Renewal branches nationwide (all very experienced injectors) have the expertise and experience to help you defy gravity, turn back time and address your 'wrinkling and crinkling' concerns, making you look younger, fresher, and more relaxed – but never frozen!
The EndyBleph Treatment is an alternative or effective complementary treatment to injectables. Done using the FSR (Fractional Skin Resurfacing) applicator on the EndyMed Pro device, incorporating 3DEEP radiofrequency combined with controlled micro-resurfacing and dermal heating, a series of EndyBleph treatments result in flawless skin resurfacing and skin tightening – proven to make a big difference when it comes to eye-area rejuvenation (reactive) or prejuvenation (proactive); tightening and retracting eyelid hoods, tightening and lifting lax skin below the eye, smoothing crow's feet, fine lines and wrinkles and enhancing the radiance and luminosity of the peri-orbital region around the eye.
Add-To-Cart: See the Difference Between These Four Products
Lamelle Dermaheal Eye Regeneration Plus Cream is a luxurious eye cream with highly active Growth Factors. It is perfect for those who want to combat visible signs of ageing around their delicate eye area. What makes this cream unique is its ability to powerfully re-model the elasticity and collagen strength of the skin. With regular use, you'll notice fine lines and wrinkles becoming more subtle and eventually eradicated around your eyes.
NeoStrata Skin Active Intensive Eye Therapy, with its unique SynerG Formula, employs a multi-mechanistic approach to building and plumping the layers of the skin for exceptional results. Apple Stem Cell Extract protects the essential longevity of skin cells so that your skin behaves like younger skin, while Peptides target collagen and reinforce collagen's surrounding support matrix. With regular use, the eye area appears more lifted; crow's feet are smoothed from the inside out; uneven pigmentation is reduced; puffiness is deflated; hyaluronic acid acts as a natural moisture magnet; and Vitamin E provides antioxidant benefits.
NeoStrata Enlighten Brightening Eye Cream is for those increasingly self-conscious about dark circles around the eyes. The potent mixture of antioxidants, peptides and algae extracts explicitly targets the dark circles around your eyes, reducing the appearance of dark circles, making your eye area look brighter and more radiant, and cushioning fine lines around the eyes courtesy of this eye cream's anti-ageing blend of Gluconolactone and Bionic Acid which target the skin's natural hydrating matrix.
SkinCeuticals A.G.E. Eye Complex is a three-dimensional treatment with unique ingredients for dark circles, wrinkles and puffiness. Not only is it a rich hydration cream – especially great for the delicate skin around the eyes – it also contains optical diffusers which enhance radiance around your eyes; Pro-Xylane™ which gets to work on wrinkles and crow's feet; and Peptides which reduce puffiness and dark circles.