Banish the Bags Under Your Eyes

Banish the Bags Under Your Eyes

Banish the Bags Under Your Eyes

Bags or dark circles under your eyes can make you look exhausted after a solid eight hours of sleep; stressed while you're in the middle of a yoga class. Where once people commented that your eyes were the color of the sky, the sea, caramels, or butterscotch, now all they say is, "Tough night?"

Dermatologists and plastic surgeons say that laments about under-eye baggage are common. "I hear patients voice complaints several times a day," says Valerie Goldburt, MD, PhD, a clinical assistant professor of dermatology at NYU Langone Medical Center.

Brent Moelleken, MD, a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon, agrees. "Under-eye issues are a huge concern for patients," he says, "because they make you look older and they make you look tired."

People often don't make the distinction, Goldburt says, between pouches, puffiness, bags, and shadows. They just know they don't like what they see.�

There are new fixes for under-eye flaws -- and old ones that still work. The first step, however, is figuring out just what the problem is.

See How Life Affects Your Skin

Morning-After Puffy Eyes

Seasonal allergies, a cold, a sinus infection: These are some of the things that can lead to water building up under the eye.

"We have the thinnest skin around our eyes, so it's the area that's most influenced by the in-and-out flow of fluids," Goldburt says.

A dinner heavy with salty food or a night of crying while watching a tearjerker movie can also cause morning-after puffiness. The reason is osmosis. "Water always travels from areas in the body where there's low salt concentration to tissues where there's more salt, Goldburt explains. That principle holds true whether the salt comes from tears or from soy sauce.

Simple Fixes for Under-Eye Bags

Addressing the underlying cause will help treat these temporary eruptions of puffiness.

Here are steps to try:

• Treat hay fever, if that's the problem. There are non-sedating, over-the-counter allergy medications that may help. If you have or suspect hay fever, talk with your doctor about how to treat it (whether or not it's affecting your eyes' appearance).
• Try a neti pot. Irrigating the nasal cavity with a neti pot -- a traditional device that looks like a small teapot -- can help relieve fluid buildup caused by allergies, sinus congestion, or a cold.
• Switch your sleep position. Your sleep position may be contributing to under-eye bags. Thanks to gravity, sleeping on your side or stomach can encourage fluids to collect under your eyes. If you're a side sleeper, you may notice a heavier bag on the side you sleep on. Goldburt advises her patients who wake up with puffy eyes to sleep on their back and add an extra pillow under their head.

That switch can be hard to get used to, says Goldburt, a self-described "former eye-bag sufferer" and stomach-sleeper herself. Still, she says, "The earlier you start changing your sleep position, the better, because after a few years under-eye bags can became permanent."