Dark Circles: REAL Solutions That Work! | Dr. Shereene Idriss

If you look like your under eyes have not slept since 2018, this video is for you. Because today we are covering all under eye circles. The root cause, what works, what does it, how you can actually help yourself. And without further ado, who the hell AM I? I'm Dr. Shereen Idris, a board certified dermatologist and you've landed on Pillow Talk Derm, where we do this every Saturday morning at 10am so if you have not subscribed, subscribe below. Let's start with the four main root causes of what causes dark under eye circles. Because you can actually simplify your life in if you can categorize what's causing your issues. Number one, do you have pigmentary change? Meaning is there a color change that can either appear as brown or even gray in nature? This tends to be genetics. This tends to be hereditary. Look at your mom, look at your dad, look at your siblings, look at your uncles, all biologically related ones, and take a look and see if they have that hyperpigmentation and color change underneath their eyes. This also tends to occur in people of darker skin tones. In general, anywhere from skin type 3, 4 or 5, you may notice this more in darker skin tones. People of Middle Eastern descent, et cetera, Southeast Asians, you'll see it more there. But you can actually make that pigment worse by chronic rubbing. And chronic rubbers who are more melanated tend to have even darker under eye circles. So your behavior patterns can even amplify your genetics in this situation. Number two, are your under eye circles due to vascular issues? Do they look blue, purple, slightly red in tint, and are they worse in the morning when you are tired? This happens because blood pools in this area and the skin underneath our eyes is thinner. And therefore we tend to see that color change even more apparently. And it is not just due to genetics, it is also due to your own health issues. Do you have allergies, seasonal allergies? Are you congested or do you in general have poor circulation? You will see these translucent vessels underneath the surface of your skin that can make your under eyes look darker in nature and more apparent. Number three is a structural issue. It is the structure of your face, your bone structure, and that is something that you are born with. It doesn't necessarily have to be genetics, it's just, just the way that you are made and that's what makes you special. But if you have sunken tear troughs, you're going to look like your under eyes are darker naturally because they are pitting in. Even if you have zero Pigmentation. And you are the most even human being in the world. And your skin tone has zero pigment. You can look darker because of a natural shadow that forms from that depth of your bone being very low. Additionally, as you get older or wiser, we lose volume. And when we lose volume, that that is going to hollow out and appear darker as well. So losing volume, losing fat, losing collagen can also contribute to that structural issue. And number four, lifestyle. All you ravers, I see you, I see you guys up to no good with your friends at night. You guys, your lifestyle is what is causing you to get darker under eyes. Now, you may not be partying, maybe you're partying at the library, but staying up really late, looking at blue lights, traffic, straining your eyes, drinking a lot of alcohol, smoking, all of that can actually make your under eye circles appear way worse than what they actually are. And this is one that I am guilty of. No, I'm not a drug abuser. I am a high salt abuser. I love sodium, I love salt, I love sushi, I love it all. Give me all the salt in the world in addition to the sugar. And that is the perfect recipe for puffy, dark under eyes. So high sodium, high sugar diets can cause inflammation, can cause fluid retention, can make your under eyes look worse. So I'm going to break this down. How can you differentiate this? This is known as the 10 second dark circle test that I coined myself. So we're going to press, we're going to pull, we're going to peek, but we are going to do this in different settings. Number one, looking straight ahead at natural light, like in this video, you want to take a photo for reference. You want to have zero shadowing on your face. If you do not have natural light, the best way to do it is to lay completely flat on a bed without any sort of light that is hindering your face, that is causing any sort of shadowing and taking a picture right from above so you can look at the under eyes and to make sure that there is no shadowing there so you can really truly identify if you have pigments or not. Number two, you want to press gently under your eye with your fingertip, just like that. Do the circles lighten? And if they do, that means that you have a vascular issue because you are seeing the blood vessels that are not getting filled get lighter. And therefore if it lightens, it is a vascular issue and that is due to pooling. But if there is no change and there is absolutely no lightening of your skin, that is A pigmentary issue. And that pigment is there to stay because like I said, it is genetically linked. Number three. And this one I do with my patients all the time in my practice. Especially if you are doing any sort of injectable. I make them bring their chin down and they gotta look up. And when they look up, you could see your fat pads either protrude or not. So you can see if you have any sort of sunking in this hollowing shadow forming that is structural, that is a sign of either volume loss or festooning where your fat pads are pooping out, causing a valley. And that is something that you can notice very well when you bring your head down and you look up and then you look straight ahead to notice if you can see that happening. And lastly, this is when you must ask yourself, this is one where you got to be honest, how is your lifestyle? Are we having problems? Are we staying up late? Are we crying ourselves to sleep? Are we doom scrolling or not? Do we have allergies? And that is all temporary. But I'm going to give you guys some solutions. Before though, I'm going to tell you what to avoid eye creams that promise nothing. Now I'm not talking about necessarily just expensive eye creams. There are eye creams that promise nothing that are expensive. And those are the biggest sinners in my category. I'm talking about the. And I love this brand la. I love La Prairie. It is a very aspirational brand and they actually have a beautiful moisturizer that's very expensive. But their eye cream has no active ingredient that is necessarily proprietary to anything. And therefore you're just spending $300 on a really rich moisturizer. You really want to use eye creams with a purpose. And I'll get into that in a second. Second number two, DIY hacks this. We should just avoid anybody who is using lemon juice underneath their eyes. And yes, people have done this on social. I would tell you stop doing this. If you're using baking soda to scrub the pigment off of your under eyes. Again, you're going to be causing more harm than good because this is going to be abrasive. Now there's a small group of people who use potato slices. And no, I'm not being funny. This is something that a lot of cultures do. They use potatoes underneath their eyes because of the starch. Gives an immediate super soothing hydrating effect where your eyes look smoother. But it is very temporary. It is not going to hurt you, but it is going to be a waste of your time, you're never going to get rid of your pigment there. Number three, a viral caffeine coffee ground eye mask where people take coffee grounds, break it up even more and use it as an eye mask underneath their eyes. It's not going to hurt. It's not going to win. It may help if you have a little bit of vascular things, but the reality is ground coffee beans are going to be very abrasive and most people don't just let them sit it, they kind of scrub them in under their eyes, causing micro tears and causing inflammation in the process, which can make things worse. Number four, over using or not understanding how to use a retinol for your under eyes is a big one. I think retinol can be a huge help and we are going to get into that in one minute. But overusing it and thinking that you're using the strongest percentage and you're not seeing results is going to cause more harm, especially if you have inflammation and irritation. And plus, over exfoliating the very thin skin under your eyes with strong chemical exfoliants like a 15% glycolic acid is a bad idea. But I have other options for you. 5. Massaging your eyes with ice cubes or cold spoons to hope that your eyes will stay the way they do right after you're done massaging them, is you fooling yourself? When you're using a cold spoon or you're using an ice cube, you're going to cause temporary vasoconstriction, meaning the blood vessels are going to constrict temperature temporarily. You're going to notice an effect temporarily. But the reality is that effect is not going to be long term. It's not going to last a few hours. It's not going to last you for your red carpet event. It's not going to last you until your wedding. So it might be good if you cried and you're puffy and you want to reduce that puffiness. That is not naturally there. But if you are always puffy in the sense that you have enlarged blood vessels, et cetera, under your eyes or you have fat pads under your eyes that are just naturally puffy, that cold spoon or that ice cube is not going to give you a three hour effect. Sorry to break that to you. And number six, cheap LED devices. Now I'm talking about the ones that you buy on Amazon, the ones that are for 20 bucks. First of all, LED lights are very expensive. In order to maintain the integrity of the LED and to make sure that you're getting it at the right wavelength, that is going to cost money and it's going to cost way more than 20 bucks. Number two, with regards to this, one light bulb is going to make no difference. You might as well get a disco light and just shine it at your face. So what then actually works for your under eyes? Let's start with the pigmented dark circles because like I mentioned, this is genetics, this is hereditary. I do believe that for most people you're a out of luck, but I don't want to be the messenger of doom and gloom. So you can try to brighten this area, especially if you do naturally have hyperpigmented under eyes and you're chronically rubbing. Stop rubbing. That's an easy fix. Number two, if there's really pigment there, right, you can try to brighten this. And I've had some luck with people of darker skin tones, Indian backgrounds, Pakistani backgrounds, who use hydroquinone all over their face and double swipe it underneath their eyes. The issue with hydroquinone is you cannot be on it long term. You're going to have to take a break. So you want to use its over the counter counterparts, things like Kojic acid, alpha arbutin, licorice root. Basically what I've put in my hyper serum is the counterpart over the counter of hydroquinone. Vitamin C can also help, but vitamin C alone is not going to be your holy grail. And I would not use ascorbic acid, which is the active form of vitamin C, because that can irritate it, making it worse. So use the ester forms of vitamin C for your under eyes, like tetrahexylbessyl ascorbate. Again, I use it on purpose in my active seal because I wanted something that was better for sensitive skin. But there are other products on the market that have this vitamin C. You can also incorporate niacinamide if you have pigmentary changes. Niacinamide helps with vasculature. But again, if you have pigmentary changes and you have a little bit of inflammation and some redness, it's going to make that pigment appear worse. Plus, niacinamide can also help reduce pigment transfer. All right, last is retinol. I mentioned some people go wrong and strong with retinol using a prescription underneath their eyes. The skin of your under eyes and the skin of your neck is very thin. And so you have to treat it like a baby, very delicately, like you're most in expensive silk shirt. Okay, you don't want to go and just toss it in the wash and hope for the best and it comes out looking raggedy mess. You want to make sure you're going very slow and gentle. And this is where consistency over intensity matters. Using something that is very low in percent but regularly that is very gentle to help with cellular turnover and melanin production. And retinol that is specifically designed for your eyes if you are a beginner or you're very scared is something that I would tell you to start with. Or if you're going to use an over the counter retinol for the face, which is fine, use a thick moisturizer underneath it first so that you minimize the effects of the retinol on this area on purpose, so that you can use it consistently without getting any inflammation and so that in the long term you can get results. And last, spf. This is going to sound stupid. It's not like you have the dark under eyes because of the sun. It is genetics. But any sun is going to make them worse. And so protect your face and your under eyes with sunscreen. Now if you have vascular dark circles, I mentioned niacinamide that can definitely help minimize that inflammation and that redness, it is absolutely helpful. So even though this is great for pigment, it has niacinamide in it. You can use it for the redness. Caffeinated eye creams can also help temporarily shrink blood vessels and reduce swelling, minus the risk of getting a skin burn from an ice cube. Arnica is a great one. It's an anti inflammatory that can help with bruising and help with circulation. I have it in my de puffer and a roller on purpose so you can move that lymphatic fluid temporarily like I mentioned, like a cold spoon. But the arnica will keep doing the effects for you once you're done rolling. It is important for you guys to understand that Arnica is traditionally formulated homeopathic in the deep puffer. And this is not an ad. This is for you guys to understand. We did not formulate this homeopathically and what you are smelling is that pure arnica. So when you're looking for Arnica based products, I would look for Arnica that has not been formulated homeopathically. But retinoids again at a very low dose can help to over time thicken your skin. So if you have very translucent skin and your blood vessels are very apparent, you want your skin to appear thicker slowly over time. And yeah, sure you can use a cold compress like we mentioned, a cold spoon, but that's going to be very, very, very temporary, not necessarily long term effective. So you can put eye patches in the fridge, let them be a little bit colder, longer. Dew has eye patches. Summer Fridays has eye patches. A lot of brands have eye patches that you can use to help with that. Issue number three, if your issue is structural and you have shadowing dark circles, this is where we're going to have to go into the office. No cream is ever going to build your collagen deeper below the surface of your skin. Do not waste your money in anything that's going to say, promote collagen production and will get rid of your deep valleys. It's not true. It will never cut it. Okay. Not even a retinol? No. The retinol will help with the surface of the skin. It will help me slightly thicken your skin. But if you have a deep valley because of a structural issue, retinol is not going to help you. And I'm sorry to break it to you, it is not. Hyaluronic acid is not going to thicken. Fill that up, even though it claims to plump the skin. So you're going to think if I have a valley, it's going to plump it up. It will not. Collagen is not going to fill that valley either. You need to go into office. I'm so sorry. You have to do a treatment, whether it is surgical to get rid of the festoon or the fat pad, or it is using your own blood prp, PRF to help to strengthen your tissue internally through injections, or if you are the right candidate, doing very, very, very little filler and in conjunction with the rest of your face so that you always look cohesive is key. In the Far east, they have reguran, which are their salmon DNA polynucleotides that they inject under the surface of the skin to stimulate your own skin production. It's never going to replace surgery, but it can help to strengthen your tissue and last lifestyle. The one I mentioned, you party poopers out there or library poopers. This is where using those cold tools can be helpful. Temporarily, like I mentioned, the cold spoon is not going to get rid of your pigment. But can it help minimize the blood vessels, the swelling? For now, sure. And will it help? For the short term, yes, but it's not going to help long term. You can roll with a face roller, sure. Short term, if you want longer term benefits, marry it to a serum like the de buffer where you can continuously suppress that inflammation. Once you're done rolling and obviously think of your lifestyle. Cut the salt. Sorry, I know I have to. I. I can't I can't quit salt. I can't quit sugar. But we must cut our salt and sugar intake a little bit, especially as we go over 40. It shows more on our face. Alcohol minimize the Consumption I swear when I don't drink, I look so much better. I drink now maybe once or twice a month. At most. One or two drinks. I feel much, much, much better about the alcohol consumption. So anyway, I hope this video was helpful. There's some merit to some of these things that I first said you must avoid because they're not going to cause any sort of benefit. But the reason I started with that strong statement is because people think one hack is going to treat all of your dark under eye circles. And I thought it was very important for me to differentiate the reason why you have your under eye dark circles so you can understand when a hack can potentially work temporarily, when something can work long term, and what you're using for what. So with that I'm going to sign off. Have a beautiful Saturday. If you guys have any questions, as always, leave them below. Below.