Free Cooking Your Way to Gorgeous by Scott-Vincent Borba Page A

causes wrinkles known as crow’s feet. Many people squint without even realizing it. This “motion wrinkle” tends to be prevalent in people who are nearsighted; that is, they tend to squint to see objects or read signs in the distance. If you are squinting a lot, it may mean that you need glasses, so please have your vision checked. Or perhaps you just need to be more proactive about remembering to bring—and wear—your sunglasses whenever it’s sunny out!
    TIP: To subdue crow’s feet or a cakey look around the eyes, lightly dot eye cream on after applying concealer, and wear wraparound UVA/UVB sunglasses for total coverage of the delicate eye area, essential for staving off wrinkles.
    Another term for those motion wrinkles is laugh lines, which, as unfair as it seems, are born of—you guessed it—a lifetime of flexing the muscles in the face while laughing and smiling. Keep smiling, my friend, just do it with more SPF!
    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