Cooking Your Way to Gorgeous (11 page)

An Eye for an Eye: Dark Circles

If you are besieged with circles under your eyes, you can take revenge against those dark shadows. For starters, you probably could steal a few more hours of sleep, but the cause actually might be something you’ve inherited. On a fundamental level, dark circles are created by a loss of volume in the area around the eye. The less fleshy the padding, the more the orbital bone becomes pronounced, creating a hollow trough that shows up as a dark circle; that’s technically called a tear trough. The eye is a very delicate organ. For its protection it is surrounded by a cushion of fat. (The right fats are good!) As we get older that fat tends to protrude, sometimes even at a young age. Add that bulge that casts a shadow to a deepened tear trough and you get dark circles. The sun and ceiling lights—light that shines from above us—cast light downward, making angles and shadows along the way. So the shadow they cast under eye-area fat pads are almost impossible to camouflage, even with concealer. You can’t remove a shadow unless you hold a light under your chin. Although there are many reasons behind dark circles, such as tiredness and heredity, one of the root causes can be poor circulation. In cases where this is a problem, increasing your intake of vitamins K and C can alleviate them by helping to boost circulation and strengthening capillary walls.

It’s very rare, but possible, that dark circles can be caused by irregular skin pigmentation. It’s easy to mistake dark circles, which come from vascular problems, with those that come from pigmentation problems. Excessively bulging eyes and/or eyelids also can be an early sign of a condition in that butterfly-shaped neck gland—the master gland of metabolism—the thyroid.

DARK CIRCLES EYE TREATMENT

Yellow cumin powder mixed with a thick moisturizer is a great natural concealer. It also fights the signs of aging and, as an added benefit, lightly pigments the skin even after you remove it.

If cumin doesn’t help, try an under-eye concealer or moisturizer that includes 2 to 5 percent vitamin K. There is anecdotal evidence that vitamin K helps remove dark circles by stabilizing the tiny blood vessels that are in the eyelids and reducing microbleeds and blood-caused pigmentation. Bilberry and vitamin B3 are also good. Google anything that may interest you in this area and have fun educating yourself.

Apply cucumber juice to eyes with cotton balls and place one cold tea bag on each eye. Use caffeinated teas bags, not herbal, as the caffeine vasoconstricts, which is what you want.

PRO TIP:
Chomping on crushed ice throughout the day can aid lymphatic drainage and help prevent dark circles around your eyes. This is a long-term fix. Or, press an ice cube up against the roof of mouth to help dissipate the liquid pools in the under-eye bags. Ice externally and internally helps aid the body to reduce inflammation. I teach my celebrity clients this trick to look well rested.

Tired of Looking So Tired?

Baggy, puffy skin under the eyes is usually caused by water buildup under the eyes. The thinnest skin on the face is around the eyes, so it’s the area that’s most influenced by the in-and-out flow of fluids. Water always travels from areas in the body where there’s low salt concentration to tissues where there’s more salt. Therefore, a meal high in sodium, or a night of crying while watching your favorite television drama or a sad movie, can cause morning-after puffiness.

TIP:
Try changing your sleep position—it may be contributing to under-eye bags. If you’re a side sleeper, you may notice a heavier bag on the side you sleep on. No thanks to gravity, sleeping on your side or stomach can direct fluids under your eyes. Try sleeping on your back, or add a thin extra pillow under your head. Some tout the benefit of a silk pillowcase, but I think they can cause acne. At a minimum, a high thread-count cotton pillowcase will work overnight toward skin clarity.
FYI:
Fabric softener can leave a waxy residue on pillowcases, which may aggravate acne. If you have acne anywhere on your body, you should be using a free-and-clear type of laundry detergent without dyes, perfumes, and abrasive chemicals.

Seasonal allergies can also cause puffy eyes. Treat hay fever, if that’s the problem. There are nonsedating, over-the-counter allergy medications that may help. Talk with your specialist about how to treat it, and start early in the season to get ahead of the allergy symptoms. You can also try irrigating the nasal cavity with a neti pot—a device that looks like a small teapot—to help relieve fluid buildup caused by allergies, sinus congestion, or a cold.

Aside from the discomfort allergies cause, it’s also important to get allergies under control so you stop rubbing your eyes. If you have itchy, watery, burning, sensitive eyes due to pet or seasonal allergies, the common way you soothe them is by rubbing, right? Sometimes we can rub our eyes so hard just to get an ounce of relief that what we are doing, in effect, is disrupting not only the natural pH in the eyes, but aggravating the delicate skin around the eyes.

Don’t Take the Red Eye

Lack of sleep, time zone changes, and environment could be causing your bloodshot eyes. If the blood vessels in your eyes are prominent (if your eyes are constantly red), this could be due to sun, wind, dust, smog, and/or pollen, or a deeper cause. If your eyes sting, itch along the lash line, or are itchy in general, you can control a lot of the redness and discomfort by using saline drops, which will moisturize. (Remember, water goes where the salt is.) But you should consult your professional about your condition. Also know that too many eye drops, or the wrong combination of them can sometimes be a culprit here, too. For optimal function and comfort, you want to maintain homeostasis in the eyes, just as you do in the rest of your body.

Get Pretty, not Puffy

If you have puffy eyes, like I do, you need to hyperhydrate. To combat those telltale puffy eyes of mine, I start by using a gel moisturizer to treat the eye area. Then I take a large spoon and run it under hot water to warm it, and gently place the convex side under eye “bags” for a few seconds. Then I alternate with super cold water. This helps depuff quickly while you target the one area. Adding old coffee grounds to the gel moisturizer helps speed up the process. A dab of Preparation H to puffiness once in a while does the trick, too.

TIP:
If you have flakiness around the eye area due to bitter cold weather, try gently dabbing Aquaphor or Vaseline at night to dry patches. Do not get too close to the lash line when applying.

TIP:
To combat puffy eyes, apply your favorite eye cream with a visible thick coat on your entire orbital eye area. Top with a thin layer of Vaseline. Throughout the night your eyes will be constantly conditioned and moisturized. Puffy eyes need hydration to help depuff.

Chapter 3

Time to Feed Your Face

On the quest for flawless, lit-from-within skin,
I have found that there are a myriad of things you need to do if you want to achieve your skin-care goals. Advertisements claim fountain of youth solutions and encourage us to buy, and doctors offer them and encourage us to spend—they don’t call it a “pretty penny” for nothing. The untarnished truth? What’s on your plate matters most of all. Eating the right kinds of high-performance foods will power your skin and your body. Here’s a quiz: which will make you feel healthier, brighter, and glowy—a croissant or a berry parfait? What you eat has
everything
to do with the condition of your complexion. People have different skin types that can be divided into five categories: oily skin, dry skin, normal skin, sensitive skin, and combination skin, which is the most common. Having combination skin means that your face most likely has an oily zone that includes your forehead, nose, and chin, while the rest of your skin has normal to dry patches. When buying a face cleanser, avoid the three S’s: soaps, scrubbers, and scents. Look for the words “gentle,” “for dry, sensitive skin,” and “glycerin,” a moisturizing ingredient often included in non-overdrying cleansers.

If you are in your twenties, you may be addressing pimples and clogged pores and will want to be thinking about your skin care in terms of proactive prevention. Regarding what’s causing pimples, it could be hormonal, or the choice of foods you are putting into your body. I recommend a good facial every six weeks. My quickie home-remedy fix for blemishes: The iodine in basic Visine helps shrink pimples and remove redness. Also, rice or almond flower are pressed- and loose-powder alternatives to standard cosmetic powders—without the clogging. For all-day oil control, blot face with rice papers, tissue paper, or sanitary toilet seat covers!

To further fight breakouts, get in touch with your inner chef. You may not be cooking for yourself yet, but that doesn’t mean you can’t start to cook your way to gorgeous. You should also be proactive about protecting your face
and
neck from too much sun. The rays you are catching now will reveal themselves as brown spots and wrinkled skin fifteen years from now. Just because a suntan fades doesn’t mean the damage it does fades with it. Repeated sun exposure depletes the body’s antioxidant content, allowing in free radicals that attack cellular lipids, proteins, and even DNA. In laywoman’s terms, those spring break days of roasting in the sun are gone, baby, gone. But if you do get burned, postsunburn, chill your aloe vera for an hour before applying. The coolness will help the sensation of burning and help calm redness and inflammation. In your day-to-day activities, you should be wearing sunscreen when the sun is out. There are plenty of nongreasy SPF formulations available today, but, if sunblock makes you feel greasy, add a pinch of cornstarch to your daily SPF to help mattify your skin while you protect it.

If you are in your thirties,
you are probably beginning to notice subtle fine lines or enlarged pores from old acne scars. You may also be noticing that scratches or tiny pimples and scabs on your face don’t disappear as quickly as they used to. You’re probably still eating everything you crave and your metabolism is working for you just fine . . . but wait . . . it does slow down, and you end up having to exercise a lot harder to burn off the same amount of calories and fat. You may also still be suntanning, that is, lying on the beach baking in the rays. By the time you’re in your thirties, chronic sun damage can start to take hold, which can lead to precancerous and cancerous lesions. You’d be dismayed to learn how common it is for folks in their thirties who discover suspect moles on their skin . . . please use caution under the sun! It will catch up with you.

If you are in your forties,
don’t worry about what you didn’t do correctly in your twenties and thirties. You can still work on anti-aging and regain some traction. Eating lots of fresh fruit and vegetables is the way to preventing signs of aging. Essential vitamins and minerals in fresh fruit and veggies work on skin health and elasticity, so make sure you get your 5 to 8 servings of fresh fruit and veggies every day. Also, the time is upon you to get corrective about décolleté brown spots and skin discoloration, wrinkles, subtle under eye circles, and/or eye-area puffiness. You may also have started to notice a loss in skin smoothness and increased freckling. This chapter will address those concerns, too.

In your fifties,
dynamic lines, skin luminance, skin brightening and clarity, evenness of skin tone, overall texture, and sagging are likely to be focal issues. Smart eating habits can help with all of these challenges, and taking care of your skin is the difference between healthy skin and less wrinkles. Sticking to a simple skin-care regime every day can make a big difference in how old you look and slow down other signs of aging. Remember, what you put into and on your body shows on the outside, and high performance foods will give your skin more of a high performance appearance.

In your golden sixties,
jowls become prominent and nagging. This is a tough area to treat as it is due to age-related loss of collagen/elastin, structural proteins that are hard to replace naturally. You can, however, stick with age-defying, lightening, brightening foods, and treatments and serums for deep repair. You need calcium, concealers, and clarifiers, too. You need great creams and treatments that slow the loss of water and keep the skin supple. Fish, prunes, guava, and blueberries can help.

TIP:
My best-kept celebrity secret is using Arnica gel 4 percent for face or body bruising. This is especially useful if you get any type of facial Botox or filler. You can also take Arnica Montana in pill form, for up to a week before injectables. No prescription required.