Eliminate Puffy Eyes

Hey every­one! I get a lot of ques­tions relat­ed to under eye issues like puffi­ness and dark cir­cles, so I thought I would address the puffy issue since I have already cov­ered dark cir­cles. Here are some of the caus­es of under eye puffi­ness and how to treat them…Epic Beau­ty style. 😉

First, know that there are two types of puffi­ness. One is essen­tial­ly water (flu­id) – they are quite squishy and tend to fade or flat­ten out on their own as the day goes on. The oth­er type are actu­al­ly fat­ty deposits – they are hard and do not fade or flat­ten, and are usu­al­ly a result of not treat­ing under eye puffi­ness ear­ly on.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the fat­ty type is hard­er to get rid of and there are only two solu­tions I know of: 1. face mas­sage such as Tanaka, done dai­ly and con­sis­tent­ly to help remove fat from the area, and 2. cos­met­ic surgery. Of course, I rec­om­mend you try mas­sage first. Wait at least 2–3 months to see any change, though the time varies from per­son to per­son.

If you have the watery type, keep read­ing.

{Common Causes of Puffy Eyes & Under Eye Bags}

• Lack of sleep or qual­i­ty sleep
• Exces­sive sodi­um intake or sug­ar intake
• Stress and result­ing adren­al fatigue
• Over con­sump­tion of alco­hol and/or caf­feine
• Hor­mon­al changes or imbal­ance
• Changes in weath­er or tem­per­a­ture
• Sinus prob­lems or allergies
• Water reten­tion
• Med­ica­tion side effects

Like all things in our lives, the above caus­es are inter­con­nect­ed. For instance, if you are stressed, your adren­a­ls become less effi­cient, which can lead to hor­mon­al imbal­ance, which can lead to water reten­tion and…dun dun dun…puffy eyes (among oth­er prob­lems). Keep this in mind as you look to solve your puffy eye prob­lem.

{Emergency Quick Fixes}

STEP 1. Upon wak­ing, take 15–30 min­utes to do some heart-pump­ing exer­cise. Try body­weight cir­cuits, yoga (go for faster paced styles like Ash­tan­ga or “flow” yogas), bicy­cling, hik­ing, sprint/walk cir­cuits, etc. Get­ting your blood mov­ing will also move lym­ph and drain any excess flu­ids from your eyes and face. Plus, your skin will look love­ly and glow­ing all over.

STEP 2. Wash your face with cold water or refrig­er­at­ed ton­er pads (such as Arcona Tri­ad Pads, my per­son­al favorite). Fol­low the lym­ph drainage as you wash your face – it might be use­ful if you watch a Tanaka mas­sage video to see what those paths are (it’s super sim­ple).

STEP 3. Keep a jar of caf­feinat­ed tea (green tea works great) in the refrig­er­a­tor – pour a lit­tle out onto thin cot­ton pads and place under your eyes for 3–5 min­utes. Alter­na­tive­ly, you can use an eye ice pack, cold met­al spoons, or two slices of refrig­er­at­ed cucum­ber, which you can keep on your puffi­ness for 2–3 min­utes. This will pro­mote flu­id drainage and also con­strict blood ves­sels, which is great if you also get under-eye cir­cles due to vis­i­ble veins.

STEP 4. Gen­tly apply a sooth­ing, all nat­u­ral eye cream (my favorite is Skin Apotheke Vit­a­m­in C cream) into the area using the Tanaka or Chizu Saeki tech­niques of eye mas­sage (just so you do not dam­age the del­i­cate tis­sue).

{Long-Term Solutions}

You can per­ma­nent­ly reduce or elim­i­nate puffy under eyes and bags by fol­low­ing a few sug­ges­tions I have laid out below.

SOLUTION 1. Get on a good diet con­sist­ing of whole, organ­ic fruits and veg­gies, wild seafood, grass-fed and/or wild meats, and occa­sion­al nuts and seeds. Avoid soy, avoid all grains (espe­cial­ly wheat and corn) as much as pos­si­ble, and if you eat rice, always go for brown. Diet alone has a pos­i­tive effect on your abil­i­ty to sleep well, han­dle stress, allow your organs to func­tion effi­cient­ly, bal­ance your hor­mones, reduce or elim­i­nate allergies, and reduce or elim­i­nate water reten­tion. As you can see, diet is 80–90% of your well-being. Puffy eyes is only one prob­lem, and you can elim­i­nate that and all the oth­er lit­tle issues you may have (poor sleep, acne, fatigue, mood­i­ness, etc.) just by eat­ing well. For more on the sub­ject, check out the oth­er arti­cles on my blog, con­sid­er read­ing my clear skin guide book, and/or read The Paleo Solu­tion by Robb Wolf.

SOLUTION 2. Fol­low a good sleep rou­tine. Stay­ing up til 3 am is not cool or nec­es­sary – it doesn’t fol­low your body’s nat­u­ral rhythms and does not allow for the prop­er reju­ve­na­tion and hor­mone reg­u­la­tion that nor­mal­ly occurs dur­ing sleep. The result is lack of qual­i­ty sleep, puffy eyes, under eye cir­cles, greater calo­rie require­ment, whacky moods, and more. Act like a grand­par­ent if you have to, and go to sleep as ear­ly as you can stom­ach it (try for 9 or 10 pm). If you need a lot of sleep, you may find that by imple­ment­ing a great diet and going to sleep ear­lier that you will need less of it.

SOLUTION 3. Lim­it your sodi­um and sug­ar intake. This is right on par with Solu­tion 1. If you fol­low the diet pre­scribed above (and in my arti­cles and book) your salt and sug­ar intake is going to be “nor­mal.” You will get all the salt and sug­ar you need from your whole foods, since sodi­um and sim­ple car­bo­hy­drates exist nat­u­ral­ly in all fruits, veg­gies, seafood, and meats. Adding iodized salt, Kosher salt, sea salt, rock salt, etc. is usu­al­ly unnec­es­sary and throws off your body’s nat­u­ral sodium/potassium bal­ance. Sug­ar in par­tic­u­lar rais­es insulin lev­els unnat­u­ral­ly high, and pro­longed expo­sure leads to insulin resis­tance, which is a pre­cur­sor to dia­betes and meta­bol­ic syn­dromes. If you have been over­dos­ing on salt, con­sume potas­si­um-rich foods (leafy greens like spinach and swiss chard, broc­coli, cucum­bers, yams, aspara­gus, mel­on, figs, plums/prunes) to help elim­i­nate the extra flu­id and restore bal­ance.

SOLUTION 4. Work smart, not too hard, and take time to relax and chill out. Relax­ing is our nat­u­ral ten­den­cy (we often for­get how to do it though), and you deserve it. We all work real­ly hard – jobs, school, run­ning around all day doing errands, deal­ing with family/friend dra­ma, etc. Take a break. Go for a nice walk or hike in nature. Have a pic­nic. Sit out­side and eat an apple. Lounge around by the beach. Read some­thing enjoy­able. Play a board game. What­ev­er you want that is sooth­ing and recharg­ing to you. You will find that hav­ing “me time” will help you man­age your life eas­ier, result in bet­ter and eas­ier sleep, and will in turn con­tribute to the elim­i­na­tion of skin issues and puffy eyes.

SOLUTION 5. You will find that allergies will be less­ened when you adopt a good diet. To fur­ther assist, take a qual­i­ty pro­bi­otic (I take Pure­Caps PurePro­bi­otic and Pure­Caps Sac­cha­romyces boulardii) to help restore good intesti­nal flo­ra, which in turn bal­ances inflammatory/allergic respons­es. Many peo­ple with envi­ron­men­tal and food allergies find that they go away entire­ly after get­ting on a prop­er aller­gen-free diet (often this means no wheat, no corn, no dairy, no soy) and start tak­ing pro­bi­otics. Anoth­er bonus of course is that aller­gy-relat­ed skin issues like acne, der­mati­tis, eczema, puffy eyes/face, and under-eye cir­cles often com­plete­ly clear up as well.

SOLUTION 6. Avoid alco­hol and caf­feine. You don’t need it, and it often caus­es more harm than good. Using caf­feinat­ed tea top­i­cal­ly under the eyes is fine. Drink­ing a cup or two or three of cof­fee or black tea every morn­ing is not. Wean your­self off the caf­feine if you want your adren­a­ls to func­tion prop­er­ly (your adren­a­ls are impor­tant for hor­mone bal­ance and prop­er sleep, which also effects water reten­tion and puffy eyes). Alco­hol is dehy­drat­ing and dis­rup­tive to your body sys­tems. Have a glass of wine occa­sion­al­ly if you feel like it, but as a gen­er­al rule keep the alco­hol to a min­i­mum.

SOLUTION 7. Med­ica­tion can cause a whole host of issues and this is a tough one if you know this is the cause of your puffy eyes. Through my research and expe­ri­ence, I feel that most dis­eases and imbal­ances can be fixed nat­u­ral­ly with con­sis­tent diet, sup­ple­men­ta­tion, and exer­cise. My sug­ges­tion is to look for nat­u­ral meth­ods of treat­ment speci­fic to your med­ical con­di­tion, explore dietary options (one of the most bal­anced, strong, and sci­en­tific approach­es I have found is a pri­mal diet – I def­i­nite­ly rec­om­mend look­ing into it), and then stick to the plan. Tell your doc­tor what you’re up to and ask for their sup­port. If they are not will­ing to work with you and want to keep you on pre­scrip­tion drugs despite your will­ing­ness to try nat­u­ral meth­ods, then I sug­gest find­ing a more flex­i­ble and inte­gra­tive doc­tor.

I hope you guys find this help­ful, and def­i­nite­ly leave a com­ment if you have any favorite tips or tricks for elim­i­nat­ing puffy eyes or puffy face.
~Steph  x