TIRED EYES

WHAT CAUSES MY EYES TO LOOK TIRED ALL THE TIME?

Whether you have a big event ahead or an important date, having puffiness around the eyes is disheartening. If you’re feeling a lack of confidence as a result; don’t worry. This is an area of medicine that many experts have examined, which means finding the reason behind your tired eyes shouldn’t be difficult.

Lack Of Sleep

If you’re not sleeping enough, one of the first physical signs a medic will notice is tired eyes. Evidence shows that you need at least five hours of sleep per night. Anything less than that and they won’t have a chance to rejuvenate, leaving them looking tired. In fact, this is one of the most common tired eyes causes.

Medications

Sometimes, tired looking eyes are one of the cardinal symptoms that you’re having an adverse reaction to a medication you’re taking. In some cases, this may mean you’re developing allergies. One of the easiest ways to spot this is to look out for puffiness. Otherwise, medications such as diuretics can affect your body’s water balance, leading to tired looking eyes.

Changes to your body’s chemistry

From your blood sugar levels and hormones to haemoglobin and the amount of iron you’re carrying, changes in your body’s chemistry can cause tired eyes. For example, if the mucous membranes of your lower eyelid look pale, you might be anaemic. Your body’s chemical properties work together to avoid such conditions. As such, it’s sometimes worth seeking medical advice from your GP if you’re experiencing other symptoms, especially uncontrollable fatigue.

The ageing process

The ageing process has a significant impact on your eyes for many reasons. First of all, during your younger years, the skin around your eyes looks tight and firm because you haven’t used the muscles there often, your body has lots of collagen, and you’re continuing to produce plenty of elastin.

As time goes on, various facial expressions weaken the muscles. Such expressions range from frowning to smile, and while you can try to make a conscious effort to stop them, emotions are instinctive so doing this isn’t very practical.

While your muscles weaken and stop supporting your skin, your collagen and elastin levels slowly start to deplete. Collagen is a protein that gives your skin the structural support it needs, while elastin keeps it nice and tight. Also, elastin allows it to spring back into place once you’ve moved it during the above mentioned facial expressions.

A combination of your muscle movements, collagen depletion, and less elastin production will lead to tired looking eyes. Unfortunately, all of these things are inevitable parts of the ageing process. While you can make interventions that slow them down and keep you looking younger for longer, you can’t keep wrinkles at bay forever.

PREVENTING TIRED EYES

If you want to know how to get rid of tired eyes, you need to start taking an honest look at your lifestyle factors and make some modifications. Before we move onto how to get rid of tired lines under the eyes using treatments, we need to examine how the way you live your life could be making the problem worse.

Stress

To an extent, stress is unavoidable. However, the chemicals it produces will make you look tired. Such compounds include cortisol and adrenaline, which are great for when you need to run away from danger, but unhelpful if they have nowhere to go.

Ways to reduce stress can include:

• Removing yourself from the stressful situation
• Practising breathing exercises
• Exercising to burn off your cortisol and adrenaline
• Meditating or yoga on a daily basis
• Deep breathing exercises

Smoking & Alcohol

While alcohol is okay in moderation, too much doesn’t allow you to enter a ‘natural’ deep sleep phase. When you consume alcohol and fall asleep, the drink’s contents affect the neurotransmitters your brain needs to enter the deep sleep phase that allows you to rejuvenate. When this happens, you don’t rest properly, which leaves you looking tired.

At the same time, smoking affects your body’s ability to produce collagen and elastin, causing the muscles around your eyes to weaken faster than they should. If you smoke regularly, you might find that you age more quickly than your peers.

Eating a poor diet

Sometimes, your body experiences a chemical imbalance for reasons beyond your control. For example, if you develop a disease such as Type I Diabetes. In many cases, however, your chemical imbalances arise because you’re not eating a proper healthy diet.

When you fail to eat a good diet, you experience the following side effects:

• Your blood sugar levels fluctuate, which leads to inflammatory processes that cause tired looking eyes
• You ingest fewer antioxidants, which means you don’t combat free radicals that well. As a result, you’ll encounter wrinkles across various areas of your face.
• You don’t get enough of the vitamins and minerals you need to thrive. For example, low iron intake can lead to anaemia, while not getting enough Vitamin E stops your cells from healing as quickly as they need to.

If you’re not sure whether you’re eating a good diet or not, try keeping a food diary for a week and see if you’re incorporating enough lean proteins, healthy fats, and vitamins and minerals. All are essential for cellular rejuvenation, which can prevent your eyes from looking tired all the time.

High UV Exposure

From professions that require you to spend a lot of time working outdoors to actively tanning a lot, too much UV ray exposure may make you glow on the outside, but your insides are telling a different story. When you encounter too many UV rays, you cause your collagen and elastin levels to break down. As a result, eye wrinkles start to settle in.

To prevent this, limit the amount of time you spend in the sun; wear appropriate clothing; use a decent sunscreen, and never use a tanning bed. Of course, you want to make sure you still get enough Vitamin D. Experts recommend half an hour of gentle sun time each day is enough for keeping your Vitamin D levels topped up.