How to Eliminate Dark Circles Under Your Eyes - Just Eliminate the Cause of the Problem

If you want to eliminate dark circles under your eyes, the best way is to eliminate the cause. Most treatments are cover-ups, do nothing for skin health, and have to be repeated over and over.

This article explains the most common cause, and shows you exactly how to eliminate circles around your eyes.

The #1 cause of dark circles under the eyes is leaking tiny blood vessels, or capillaries, under the skin. The skin under the eyes is thinner and more delicate than anywhere on your face. It's easily injured, the capillaries easily broken.

For that reason, you should make it a rule never, ever to rub around your eyes. I know, that can be a difficult promise to keep to yourself, especially if you have allergies.

A possible medical cause is iron-deficiency anemia. You should discuss this with your doctor. Anemia requires medical treatment, and should not be ignored. However, there are millions of people with dark under eye circles, and anemia is probably the cause of a relatively small number of those.

For the rest of us, the problem is different.

What happens: When the capillaries under the eyes leak, the seeping fluid contains hemoglobin. This is the compound which carries oxygen through the bloodstream to every cell in the body. When hemoglobin is saturated with oxygen, it is bright red. When it leaks out of the blood vessel, it loses its oxygen and turns bluish or purple. Only a tiny amount is usually leaking, but it adds up over time and darkens, so you get dark gray or purple circles under your eyes.

The skin here is thin to start with. If you lose fat under the skin as you get older, it seems thinner still. So the damage of the leaky blood vessels is most obvious under your eyes.

Your genes play a part in this. Some populations, such as southern Italians and others, have a tendency to under-eye dark circles. If this runs in your family, you have a partial explanation. But if you don't like those dark circles, you don't have to give up and accept them.

Circles under the eyes can mean something different, too. Some people are thinking about the puffy circles under the eyes that a lot of us just call "bags under the eyes." Bags are caused by poor drainage and loss of elasticity in the skin.

These two things don't necessarily go together. Many people have dark circles, many others have bags under the eyes, and a few have to deal with both problems.

There is an effective answer to both problems.

A really good under eye cream or eye serum (two names, same kind of product) can do the job. It must contain ingredients proven to do the job. I'll name two that do.

-- Haloxyl has been shown in clinical studies to reduce dark under-eye circles by more than 60 percent. It strengthens the blood vessels, helps remove the accumulated hemoglobin and other waste products under the eyes, and rebuilds the delicate skin.

-- Eyeliss reduced capillary permeability (the leaking), improved circulation of lymph under the eyes to reduce the puffiness, and gave the skin more firmness and elasticity.