Stress and lack of sleep often take the blame for our skin problems and it’s no different when bags under the eyes appear after a few long days of working late. Other than regular sleep and introducing more zen into our lives, how can we lighten up those dark circles and calm those puffy eyes?

Cold Compress

We recommend keeping a spoon in the freezer with cling film wrapped around it. When your eye area flares up, take it out, unwrap the cling film and place the spoon on the eye area. This is great for when you wake up with puffy eyes.

Stay hydrated

It is always important to stay hydrated for both your health and for beauty benefits. Skin cells can actually shrink if you don’t keep your fluids up, which makes dark circles much more noticeable. Make sure you drink between 8 – 10 cups of water a day to avoid the panda-eye affect.

Eat-Your-Water

Eye cream

As well as hydrating yourself inside, you should hydrate the eye area directly too. However it is important to use eye cream and not face cream around the eye area.

You should also be sparing when applying eye cream. To apply correctly use no more than a grain of rice amount per eye and gently pat around the eye socket with your ring finger. Too much cream applied closely to the eye could result in puffiness, as the skin is extremely delicate in this area.

Effective Ingredients to look for in eye cream:

Blefaroplex is made up of a combination of botanical ingredients that improve collagen and elastin synthesis, whilst preventing the effects of glycation. Being a potent anti-glycation complex, Blefaroplex eliminates toxins and prevents the appearance of dark circles and puffiness around the eye area and as a result reduces puffiness and dark circles.
Hyaluronic Acid is a deeply hydrating component. Having made it onto Elle Magazine’s “Best Eye Cream Ingredients” list and capable of holding up to 1000 times its weight in water, there’s no denying that this super-moisturising element should be in your eye cream.
Eye products with light pigments or optical diffusers are extremely effective in reducing the appearance of dark circles and bags. These ingredients reflect light away from the dark shadowy area making the skin around the eye appear brighter, healthier and more luminous. These are certainly ingredients to look out for if you are searching for a daily quick fix.

Allergies
Nutritionist Petronella Ravenshear stated that wheat is the main culprit of dark circles for many. “Very often when people stop eating wheat the black bags magically disappear.” She explained to Huffington Post.

If you suffer from prominent dark circles and skin products fail to banish them, you may want to consider looking at your diet and even trialing a new routine without wheat to see if it has an effect.

Caffeine
When applied topically caffeine can ease puffiness and encourage microcirculation. A handy home remedy to relieve tired eyes is to apply cold used tea bags directly onto the eye area for up to ten minutes. As well as the caffeine working magic, the tannin from black tea tightens your skin around the eye.

For a herbal alternative, green tea bags used in the same way can also reduce inflammation. This works wonders for sore and puffy eyes to give you some instant relief.