Say Good Bye To Tired Eyes & Eye Bags!

It is often said that our eyes are the windows to our souls. A quick glance can reveal our current states of emotion, with happiness, fatigue and exhaustion being most visible. The delicate eye area is also vulnerable to early signs of aging.

Many people express frustration at looking chronically tired despite getting adequate rest. Eyebags, fine lines and hollowing under the eyes (tear trough) are common signs of aging. So if getting the prescribed eight hours of sleep every night and religiously applying the latest eye creams don't solve these problems, is it time to resort to surgery?

What is perceived as eyebags can be from a variety of causes:

When seen in a young person, particularly someone that squints from myopia, this could be due to over-activity of the eye muscles (orbicularis hypertrophy). Such eye bags are usually well defined and more obvious when the person squints. The eye bag is also closest to the eyelid. Such eye bags respond well to Botox, which has an added effect of widening the eye aperture, resulting in larger eyes!

Eye bags can also be caused by excess fat tissue in the area under the eyes. There are 3 distinct fat pads, lying in a straight row below the eyes. These herniated out below the eye muscles, causing a distinctive bulge slightly lower in the tear trough area. There is a large genetic component to these fat pads, which are also diet and exercise-resistant (they don't go if you go on a diet). Traditionally, surgery was needed to remove the excess fat. With greater experience with Mesotherapy, some doctors now inject the fat-dissolving cocktail directly into the fat pads, thus reducing the need for an operation. Up to 3 sessions may be needed for optimal results.

As a person gets older, the quality of facial circulation and lymphatic drainage reduces. The stagnation of toxins and fluid produces puffy eye bags. The size changes from day to day and also varies at different times of the day. As the situation tends to worsen with time, the extra fluid collection stretches the skin in the delicate eye area. Outside of eyelid surgery to remove the excess skin, there have been few effective treatments available till now.

Advances in collagen mask technology now enable the delivery of highly active collagen molecules through the skin to produce an instant plumping effect. The combination of lymphatic drainage to remove excess fluid and an anti-aging cocktail delivered through a such a mask can produce marked reductions in eye bags in just one session! The results last for weeks and there is zero downtime involved.

This treatment is also useful in the treatment of the last type of eye bags which is caused by fat atrophy in the aging face. In Asians, the loss in fat volume is often in the inner part of the cheeks, right under the eyes. Light reflects in these hollow tear troughs as dark shadows, resulting in complaints of dark eye bag formation. The collagen in the mask and the co-administered cocktail plumps up the hollows and stimulates skin regeneration in the area, producing a more youthful fullness reducing the need for filler injections in that area.

Other signs of aging in the eye area are generally related to wrinkling: the crow's feet spreading out towards the hairline and the crinkly fine lines under the eyes. Both respond well to a combination of Botox (prevents the wrinkles from getting worse) and chemical peels that stimulate collagen production and reduce the appearance of fine lines. Further skin tightening treatments may be needed in more advanced cases. Radiofrequency skin tightening and meso-lifting can be considered under such circumstances.

So you can now say goodbye to tired eyes and unsightly eye bags with simple solutions that do not involve invasive surgery.