I was hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion with a friend where she ad­mit­ted that she doesn’t know why she’s sur­prised that teenage habits don’t work any­more. This could pos­si­bly be that we’ve added on ten years to 18.. we’re ba­si­cal­ly knock­ing thir­ty, sis. She was re­fer­ring to the cou­ple times she’d fall­en asleep with make­up on and wok­en up look­ing like Wan­da Jack­son from In Liv­ing Colour—yikes! Grow­ing old­er is great and all, but with ag­ing- tis­sues and mus­cles es­pe­cial­ly around the eye tend to weak­en. The out­ward ap­pear­ance can change, of­ten lead­ing to “bags” un­der the eyes.

Age­ing—some­times brings wis­dom, but al­so, eye bags. There may be puffi­ness as eye­lid- sup­port­ing fat nat­u­ral­ly moves to the low­er lids—you know, with grav­i­ty and all. The good news is, the is­sue about these bags is we sim­ply may dis­like how they look. How­ev­er, they don’t usu­al­ly sug­gest any grave med­ical ill­ness and for that we got to be thank­ful girl! Ad­di­tion­al­ly, less sleep is nev­er ac­tu­al­ly a good thing, un­less it’s for Trinidad Car­ni­val *shame­less plug*, but se­ri­ous­ly, fa­tigue can be an­oth­er rea­son for the not so cute, or de­sign­er bags on your face. Some­times, small cap­il­lar­ies sur­round­ing the eyes can ac­tu­al­ly break as a re­sult of...you guessed it!-stress. Emo­tion­al ten­sion can be re­flect­ed phys­i­cal­ly and the eyes are no ex­cep­tion.

Last­ly, we re­al­ly were born in the per­fect place! Sun, sea and sand- what more can we ask for? How­ev­er, it is very easy to take sun ex­po­sure for grant­ed be­cause of how ac­cus­tomed we are. Un­pro­tect­ed skin un­der the eyes can lose elas­tic­i­ty and even re­sult in some sag­ging due to this over­ex­po­sure.

So what can we do?! First off, hy­drate! Hy­drate! Hy­drate! Af­ter­all, our bod­ies are made up of rough­ly 70 per cent wa­ter and our skin is our largest or­gan. In or­der to keep the skin hy­drat­ed, don’t wait un­til you are thirsty to drink wa­ter.

We want to de­lay skin ag­ing as much as pos­si­ble so there’s no time like the present to up your wa­ter in­take. Fruit- in­fused wa­ter counts too es­pe­cial­ly since you’d get the ben­e­fits of your cho­sen fruit as well.

A tell tale sign of ad­e­quate wa­ter in­take is urine that is pale in colour. An­oth­er thing to note is de­pend­ing on your lev­el of phys­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty (some­thing we should ALL have), in­di­vid­ual hy­dra­tion needs dif­fer. Vi­t­a­min C rich foods like cit­rus fruits should be in­clud­ed in the di­et as we try to work mag­ic from the in­side out. It aids with col­la­gen pro­duc­tion (one of the pro­teins that pro­vides skin with struc­ture) so the skin ap­pears firmer and with less fine lines. Si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, vi­t­a­min C can al­so help fight free rad­i­cals pro­duced from any UV dam­age en­coun­tered over the years.

Foods rich in iron like legumes and dark green leafy veg­eta­bles can al­so be help­ful as they are im­por­tant in red blood cells be­ing able to suf­fi­cient­ly trans­port oxy­gen around the body, in­clud­ing the eyes and sur­round­ing skin. Ul­ti­mate­ly, cut­ting back on salt in­take does won­ders. And if you’re pon­der­ing where you’ve heard that re­cent­ly, it’s right here in XXtheMag! In­creased salt from processed foods en­cour­ages flu­id re­ten­tion in the body which can por­tray it­self ex­ter­nal­ly.

Ex­ter­nal­ly, re­mov­ing make­up well is one way to pre­serve our skin, es­pe­cial­ly if it’s worn of­ten. Soap and wa­ter won’t do the trick this time He­len. An oil based re­mover works well, just be sure to get rid of any ex­cess oil es­pe­cial­ly de­pend­ing on your skin type. Sec­ond­ly, be­ing dis­ci­plined and con­sis­tent with a fa­cial care reg­i­men is im­por­tant. I know the strug­gle is re­al, but at least the ben­e­fits are worth it.

Par­tic­u­lar­ly im­por­tant be­fore bed be­sides cleans­ing well is to ap­ply any serum that meets your skin ob­jec­tive; whether it be soft­er skin or get­ting rid of dark marks. Third­ly, ice placed di­rect­ly un­der the eyes can lessen the ap­pear­ance of blood ves­sels as the cold tem­per­a­ture can con­strict them.

Ascor­bic acid present in cu­cum­bers tends to re­duce wa­ter re­ten­tion there­fore less­en­ing the look of puffi­ness. Tea bags can have an an­ti- in­flam­ma­to­ry re­sult due to the an­tiox­i­dants present. Of course, we must make men­tion of the holy grail- sleep! Try to get more than just a cat nap for the ma­jor­i­ty of the week. Af­ter­all, se­cur­ing the bag won’t be worth it if you aren’t at your best health to en­joy the re­wards.

Be­ing aware of the main caus­es of un­der eye bags can help in al­le­vi­at­ing the prob­lem whether in­ter­nal­ly or ex­ter­nal­ly. Of course, a com­bi­na­tion of the two is most ide­al as one is short and the oth­er, long term. Un­til next time, eat well, hy­drate and don’t lose sleep over oth­er peo­ple’s’ busi­ness.

Keep ris­ing, Queen!