Droopy, or sunken, eyelids are believed to be caused primarily by dehydration, fatigue, and aging (i.e. loss of fat and collagen in the area). People are generally advised to moisturize the eyelid areas and drink more water. Dermatologists like Dr. Dray, who has achieved celebrity status on YouTube, has a video in which she discusses different eye lotions and treatment techniques. Some dermatologists in the West recommend the injection of fillers, whereas in countries like Korea, dermatologists recommend even more extreme measures: eyelid surgeries (Doesn’t this confirm the beauty-obsessed stereotypes of Korean people? A surgeon himself underwent an eyelid surgery to fix his somewhat uneven eyelids, a very mild asymmetry which was not obvious except to himself. You need to beware: cosmetic surgeries, not lest those performed in the eye area, are generally not reversible. For me personally, some of those videos showcasing surgery procedures are scarier than horror movies.)
Are sunken eyelids necessarily bad or bad-looking? Some eyelids are slightly sunken by nature due to the deep contours of the eye sockets. Other eyelids are plump and flat. The latter are more commonly found in East Asians. Both can look attractive. Plump eyelids give a youngish look, but eyelids with slight natural creases around the socket area are highly photogenic (A very mean and unprofessional female photographer once poked fun at a young Japanese friend of mine for her rather flat, but firm, eyelids, by implying that she had “no eye sockets,” which made it hard to apply eye makeup. This cannot be further from the truth. Her mean remarks likely indicate her own insecurity.)
Sunken eyelids do make Asians look more mature. In some cases, they give a haggard appearance. From my experiences, moisturizing the eyelids and drinking more water does help, to some extent, to make the area more lifted. My eyelids suddenly seemed flappy and sunken some years ago when I was put on a certain acne medication that dehydrates the skin. The skin around the eyes are very thin and is prone to become dehydrated. The condition improved substantially after I moisturized the area. I would not go into specific brands of eye lotion: it seems that the simple application of an eye cream or even a skin moisturizer in the socket area does wonderful tricks to refresh the eyelid.
What if your eyelids remain unnaturally and unusually droopy and sunken despite all attempts to hydrate your body? I would like to go beyond skincare matters as I am no expert, and instead draw upon my and my friends’ experiences to illuminate the issue further. There is one thing that people who are seeking solutions might have overlooked: sunken eyelids due to muscle strain. In other words, the eyelids might not have sunken due to dehydration or the loss of fat or collagen — they might have sunken due to too much strain put on the eyelid muscles. Accordingly, proper care need to be taken to minimize muscle strain.
There are YouTube videos teaching people massage techniques that help relieve their eye muscles and make them more toned. I cannot attest to its effectiveness, but many have done so after following the procedures religiously. I have put together what I consider to be the most helpful tips. These are:
1. Go to the optician to check your eyesight and ensure that your glasses are of the right prescriptions. Wrong prescriptions do not cause real health hazards. They do cause headaches, of which many people are aware. Wrong prescriptions also tend to strain the eye muscles and lead to a haggard appearance.
2. Avoid playing with your mobile phones while lying in bed. Aside from hurting your eyesight, staring at a small screen while lying on your back strains your eyelid muscles and make them more prone to become sunken the next day. Indeed, this is a bad habit that tends to make you look more tired the next morning. Spend less time playing with the phone, and more time looking in the distance.
3. Place your glasses on your nose properly so that its lenses are not too close to your eyes. A while ago, a friend of mine found out that her eyelids became unusually sunken on some occasions. Most of the time, her eyelids looked normal. Sometimes, they became so sunken that there seemed hardly any space between her eyebrows and eyes. Aging could not be the main reason as her skin was otherwise very good. It took her quite a while to find out the root cause: she was undergoing a period of tremendous stress and she developed a bad new habit–whenever she became super nervous, she used to push her glasses further up her nose until the lenses were very close to her eyes. It neither helped to calm her nervousness nor enabled her to see better; it rather strained her eye muscles. One day, she found out her eyelids were all sunken despite having had 8 hours of sleep and drunk plenty of fluid. She finally realized that it had to do with the way she wore her glasses and the amount of strain it had on her eye muscles. From then on, she has worn her glasses properly and avoided this bad habit even when stressed. Her eyelids have gone back to normal.
Yes, we all grow old and our skin will get loose. Yet it is still possible look into the root causes of signs of (pre-mature) aging and alleviate those signs. Whether one should go for filler or more drastic corrective measures is up to the individual. Before our body is due for those measures, there are ways to look and feel our healthiest.