What causes Bags under the Eyes?
As with almost all the problems we face with almost all parts of the body the ageing process is to blame!
Our bodies hold a certain amount of fat in the under-eye area naturally. This fat is held steady by ligaments that get weaker and stretch over time. As this happens, the fat deposits start to push forward, forming that tell tale puffiness.
As the ageing process continues, skin begins to lose elasticity. The fat deposits continue to slip until the skin can no longer contain them adequately. This is how those unsightly bags form under the eyes, hanging around making us look tired and old.
“A lot of it has to do with heredity,” explains Dr. Marmur. “It can be a structural, anatomic, genetic issue that simply causes some people to develop this problem sooner than others.”
How you age is down to three main things.
1. Your genetic make-up
Genes those lovely things your mum and dad endowed to you means you will follow similar ageing paths to your parents.
In a nutshell our precious natural levels of collagen and elastin, which give the skin its bounce and freshness at birth, start to reduce making way for lines and wrinkles, sagging and generally a loss of firmness all round. Some are lucky to last until 40 without a sign some not! In this instance if your mum aged well so should you.
As we naturally age our skin thins – we still have the same number of layers but our Epidermis (the outer skin layer) starts to get thinner. So our skin looks more translucent.
Our connective tissue, that keeps it all together, gets weaker and so our skin loses its bounce and strength and of its course elasticity. Bring on the bags!
2. Your hormones
When these start to change so might your skin. Although this is also part of aging and so arguably linked to your genetic make-up too. Read our take on Hormonal Skin Changes.
3. You!
How you live, what you do to your skin, the environments you hang around and the kind of life you lead. Your stress levels your dieting habits and your sleep.