How To Get Rid of Under Eye Bags

Why Does This Happen?

Because I'm a huge nerd, I'd like to give a little explanation some of the eye anatomy in order to help understand why bags under the eyes occur. Your eye ball is placed into what we call the eye socket or formally speaking the orbit. Within the orbit, there are a bunch of nerves, vessels, and important structures, but it also contains a decent amount of fat in order to surround and protect your eye from being damaged. There are ligaments and skin that surround the orbit of your eye to help keep everything in place. As we "mature" the skin and those ligaments become thinner and looser, which results in that fat surrounding the eye being displaced and protruding outwards—> forming the bags

Now unfortunately, this phenomenon happens to everyone as we age, but the amount and degree that it becomes noticeable varies from individual to individual. It depends on several factors:

1. Genetics - if your parents or other immediate family members have bags, you are at greater risk of forming them

2. Allergies - your eyes will swell and give the appearance of worsening of the bags

3. Medical conditions - cardiovascular, kidney, and thyroid dysfunction by not allowing the fluid to be properly circulated throughout your body

4. Lifestyle factors

5. Lack of adequate sleep

   • Yawning—> Increases tear formation in the lacrimal glands—> fluid retention around your eyes—> puffiness

6. Dehydration

   • Increased water retention—> fluid retention around your eyes—> puffiness

7. High salt foods

8. Smoking + Sun exposure - carcinogens and UV rays damage skin which further increases the thinning of the skin leading to bags

How To Fix It?

So now that we know a little bit about some of the reasons why bags may form under the eyes, it's easy to correlate what we can do to fix them

1. Allergy control and fixing underlying medical conditions. If you believe you may suffer from either of these, please visit your local health care provider so they may help you get them under control

2. Manage lifestyle factors (for the same reasoning we mentioned above)

   • Sleep

     • Sleep on your back—> increase drainage of fluid away from your eyes back to your heart

     • Sleep with slight head elevation for the same reason

   • Increase water intake (>64 oz per day) - flush out system

   • Limit sodium intake (<2,000 mg per day) - decrease swelling

   • Stop smoking + wear sunscreen - decrease damage to skin and ligaments

Those are the two major categories of what you want to do first. There are other alternative measures you can take as well

1. Cold spoons

   • Constricts blood vessels to push the fluid away from your eyes

2. Brew green tea and cool it in the fridge. Apply with a cotton ball for about 5 minutes

   • Works similarly as the cold spoons, but the addition of caffeine helps to augment additional blood vessel constriction

3. Eye cream/skin care routine

   • Ladies, taking off makeup before bed every night

   • If you're interested in other products that may be helpful, I can do more reviews about anything specific to an eye cream/skin care routine in the future