I sensed trouble in the air as Michelle walked hurriedly into my office without an appointment. Well, Michelle is a close friend of mine and she has a successful career and an appearance that make her peers envy. She came looking for me for an “emergency”. She is due for a photo shoot and she has dark eye circles from her previous weeks of hectic schedule working on a project. “You have got to get rid of this dark eye circles and make me look stunning,” she said with a grin.
Well, dark eye circle is not something uncommon, but it is truly embarrassing problem. It makes people appear tired and it steals the gleam in the eyes. It remains one of the problems that rattles around our brain albeit us trying hard to ignore it.
Why, oh why do we have dark eye circle? The causes are many. Some people have it because of the underlying inflammation at the nasal sinuses; while some others get it because of hereditary pigment problems. More often than not, people get it because of the loss of the tissues around the under-eye area or the so called tear trough. The skin under eye thins out in the same time. When light shines, a deficient tear trough would be cast dark hue making it darker than the surrounding tissue.
Well the loss is part of aging. We cannot stop aging, but we certainly can prevent causes that accelerate it. Unhealthy eating habits, lack of rest, smoking and drinking are some of the shenanigans that we so badly adore which may affect the tear trough. Peering on screen (computer or the television) for long hours is one of the culprits too. Logic tells us that if the cause for it is lacking in underlying tissue, a quick fix, though not permanent, will mean to replenish the under-eye tissues, giving it volume to prevent hue from building up at the eye trough. This can be done using ultrafine needles which leave mosquito sting-size marks.
Two sessions of under eye hyaluronic acid injections later, Michelle was seen beaming with big smile. “I know you can fix this,” she said while looking satisfactorily in the mirror. “Stop the fags and the effect of the injections will last even longer,” I nagged like a grandmother.
“I will try, but no promises,” as she walks out of my office feeling chirpy as usual.
by Anna Hoo
