What are the different types of dark circles?

Two different types of lesions are involved, and it’s important to distinguish between them. A better understanding of their pathophysiology is essential to a better understanding of their treatment.

What are hollow circles?

A hollow ring corresponds to a loss of volume in the jugo-palpebral fold, which becomes deeper: this fold, like those of static wrinkles, is due to a melting of the supporting tissue, subcutaneous fat.
The skin of the eyelids is very thin, allowing extreme mobility with almost 1000 blinks per minute. This is why it loses its thickness even faster.
As a result, this transparency of the skin, combined with the melting of the supporting tissues, reveals the underlying, dark, protruding bony reliefs.
This is still referred to as the skeletonization of the eyes.

What is dark circles?

Colored circles are also the result of thin, transparent skin. The volumes between the bone and the skin can be seen, resulting in different colors.

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

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

A brownish-black tint corresponds to melanin deposits in the skin’s pigment cells: brown circles are somewhat equivalent to sunspots or lentigos. It appears all the more easily when melanocytes are active, as is the case with ethnic skins and darker phototypes.

What is the best treatment for hollow circles?

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

The solution of choice remains microlipostructure, because this treatment is a true causal treatment: it brings back lost fat, correcting both the symptoms and their etiology.
This volumizing micro-lipofilling has several advantages: it’s 100% natural with the patient’s own fat; it’s definitive; it’s the guarantee of a natural look.

Filling with hyaluronic acid injections is possible, with a moderately volumizing effect.
Its great advantage is that it enables rejuvenation of the eyes without anesthesia, 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 suffer from a number of particularities:

• Hyaluronic acid absorbs very poorly in the dark circles, so if you have a blemish, you can’t rely on the passage of time to smooth it out. The only solution is to destroy it with a specific enzyme, hyaluronidase. In France, its use is not covered by the AMM.
• Hyaluronic acid will become more or less waterlogged, depending on its volumizing effect: it can therefore be seen through the skin, with the formation of bags or granulomas. In some cases, light diffraction gives a true bluish reflection known as the Tyndall effect, transforming a hollow ring into a colored one. Needless to say, the result is disappointing, and only the use of hyaluronidase can restore the skin to an acceptable aesthetic state.

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

What is the best treatment for dark circles?

For the treatment of dark circles, numerous methods have been proposed, 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 have a deleterious effect, adding transparency on top of transparency. There’s a sort of magnifying glass effect on these colored reliefs, making the colored circles even more visible.

The solution to restore volume is to bring back dermal tissue with its natural hyaluronic acid, but also its elastin and collagen fibers, resting on the hypodermis.
This dermal remodeling is made possible by a simple and totally innovative technique, nanolipofilling.
Whereas microlipofilling brings back fat tissue to play on its volumizing effect, nano lipofilling brings back extracts in the form of “fat juice” rich in stem cells. In other words, nano lipostructure does not act on the filling effect, but on the regenerating effect of the growth factors of the vascular stromal fraction FVS contained in fat tissue. By activating fibroblast stem cells, these cell signals renew a high-quality, complete dermis, thick and toned enough to conceal dark circles.

Regenerating nano lipofilling is therefore the method of choice for treating dark circles, restoring a luminous, fresh and sensual look with a 100% natural finish.