What’s the best treatment for dark circles?

What are the different types of dark circles?

Two different types of lesion are involved, and it is important to distinguish between them. Understanding their pathophysiology is essential to understanding their treatment.

What are hollow dark circles?

A hollow dark circle corresponds to a loss of volume in the jugo-palpebral fold, which becomes deeper. Like static wrinkles, this fold is due to the loss of the supporting tissue, the subcutaneous fat.
The skin of the eyelids is very thin, which allows extreme mobility, with almost 1000 blinks a minute. This is why it loses its thickness even faster.
As a result, the transparency of the skin, combined with the loss of the supporting tissues, reveals the dark, protruding bony reliefs underneath.
This is also referred to as skeletonisation of the eyes.

What are coloured dark circles?

Coloured dark circles are also the result of thin, transparent skin. The structures between the bone and the skin show through, producing different colours.

A bluish tint corresponds to venous reflections and to the slightly purplish orbicularis muscle: blue dark circles are the equivalent of the bluish reflections seen on ageing hands.

A red tint corresponds to the dermal arterioles and micro-capillaries, particularly at the inner corner: the red dark circle is rather like couperose on the face.

A brownish-black tint corresponds to melanin deposits in the pigment cells of the skin: brown dark circles are somewhat equivalent to sunspots or lentigines. They appear all the more readily when melanocytes are active, as is the case in darker skin tones and higher phototypes.

What is the best treatment for hollow dark circles?

Treatment of hollow dark circles involves restoring lost volume with a natural filler such as fat (lipofilling) or injectable hyaluronic acid.

The solution of choice remains microlipostructure, because it is a true causal treatment: it brings back the lost fat and corrects both the symptoms and their cause.
This volumising micro-lipofilling has several advantages: it is entirely natural, using the patient’s own fat; it is lasting; and it is intended to ensure a natural look.

Filling with hyaluronic acid injections is possible, with a moderately volumising effect.
Its great advantage is that it rejuvenates the eyes without anaesthesia, with a product of natural origin that is well tolerated by the body.
A highly experienced aesthetic eye doctor is required, however, as hyaluronic acid injections for dark circles have a number of particularities:

• Hyaluronic acid resorbs very poorly in the dark circles, so if the result is imperfect you cannot rely on time to smooth it out. One of the solutions is to dissolve it with a specific enzyme, hyaluronidase. In France, this use falls outside its marketing authorisation.
• Hyaluronic acid takes up water to a greater or lesser extent, depending on its volumising effect: it can therefore show through the skin, with the formation of bags or granulomas. In some cases, the diffraction of light gives a genuine bluish reflection known as the Tyndall effect, turning a hollow dark circle into a coloured one. The result is, unsurprisingly, disappointing, and only hyaluronidase can restore an acceptable appearance.

Barring contraindications, volumising microlipofilling remains the first-line treatment for hollow dark circles.

What is the best treatment for dark circles?

Many methods have been proposed for treating coloured dark circles, in particular to erase melanin deposits, but neither peels nor lasers give satisfactory results in this very fragile area of the face.

Worse still, some methods, such as filling with hyaluronic acid injections, can be counterproductive, adding transparency to transparency. There is a sort of magnifying-glass effect on these coloured reliefs, making the coloured dark circles even more visible.

The solution for restoring volume is to bring back dermal tissue with its natural hyaluronic acid, but also its elastin and collagen fibres, resting on the hypodermis.
This dermal remodelling is made possible by a simple and totally innovative technique, nanolipofilling.
Whereas microlipofilling brings back fat tissue to play on its volumising effect, nano lipofilling Whereas micro-lipofilling brings back fatty tissue to exploit its volumising effect,

Regenerating nano lipofilling is therefore the method of choice for treating coloured dark circles, restoring a luminous, fresh and expressive look with an entirely natural finish.