What dark circles really mean

The other day, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror after I came out of the shower and my first thought was “damn, I’ve forgotten to take my mascara off again”.

But it was first thing in the morning and being on maternity leave I generally don’t wear mascara nowadays.

At the clinic, I regularly look at someone’s face (as well as nails and tongue) to figure out what is going on inside their bodies.

I applied this to myself; aside from the fact that I wasn’t getting my eight hours of sleep, what else did my dark circles mean?

Well, according to Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), the area under the eyes corresponds to the kidneys and adrenal glands and dark circles indicate that they are running below par. These organs are believed to be at the very foundation of our vitality, so patients with dark circles are often run down and have poor quality hair.

The obvious solution is to get more sleep. More sleep means that the body is better able to handle the stress that is adversely affecting these organs.

Light reading or a bath before bedtime (lavender is a great relaxant) can help if getting to sleep is the problem.

On the contrary,  strenuous exercise or watching a gripping TV drama are best avoided as they can increase levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which in turn will make it harder to fall asleep later on. But all this assumes that you, like me, don’t have voracious night-nurser of an infant.

Nourishing foods

If you do, nourishing foods in the form of vegetable soups and warming casseroles with various beans, such as adzuki and kidney, are your best bet – especially in this weather. Such soups are rich in potassium and help to support the kidneys (bathing in Dead Sea salts before bed is also a superb kidney tonic.) Other beneficial foods include walnuts, beetroot, turnips and alkaline green vegetables such as sukuma wiki.

Rather than strenuous exercise that will both drain your reserves and keep you wired, focus instead on yoga or tai chi which restores the body’s vital qi, or life force.

Food intolerance

If, after making these changes, the circles simply don’t budge, there may be food intolerance at play. You see, food intolerance also affects the adrenals and it’s the reason why the dark circles under the eyes are called “allergic shiners” amongst nutritionists.

If this is you, the next step would be to identify and isolate the particular foods that you may be sensitive to. A food diary is a good way to do this. Once you’ve done that, simply substitute them with sensible, nutritious alternatives over a period of time to give your body a chance to recuperate.

And then it’s bye bye dark circles and hello to better digestion too.