Dr Lam Bee Lan from Ageless Medical has been helping me improve my under-eye circles since I first visited her in 2014.
Dark under-eye circles are rarely caused by a single factor. A combination of factors such as genetics, pigmentation caused by frequent rubbing or sinus issues (each feeding into the other in a vicious cycle), and the loss of fat and collagen in the under-eye area due to ageing, can cause dark under-eye circles.
The other major factor that can contribute to dark under-eye circles is the ageing of the mid-face.
As we age, our mid-face, which consists of our cheekbones, and the lower part of the orbicularis oculi muscles, gradually shrink and lose collagen respectively. We also lose fat in these areas. All these factors cause the skin on the mid-face to slack, accentuating dark under-eye circles.
“This is why in many cases, I tend to treat the mid-face and dark under eye-circles together, as replacing the volume loss in the mid-face with fillers can indirectly help improve dark under eye-circles,” said Dr Lam when I saw her in early September. She revealed that she has learned a new technique called the sandwich technique using Teosyal fillers which I was keen to try.
The sandwich technique involves injecting filler of different viscosities at different levels of the face — such as onto the bone, and into the different fat layers of the face — to replenish volume loss due to ageing.
“Augmenting the deep fat compartments found under the eyes, called the lateral and medial sub orbicularis oculi fat or SOOF for short, can help slow down the loss of fat in that area, which in turn helps to slow down the factors that contribute to dark under-eye circles,” she said.
The actual treatment took about 20 minutes in total and was mostly painless, thanks to a generous application of numbing cream in the mid-cheek area. There was a 60 percent improvement of my dark under-eye circles around a week after the treatment in which Dr Lam used the Teoxane Signature Teosyal Redensity II filler, and after a touch-up one week later, the condition improved by another 20 to 30 percent.
Photographer Jasper Yu whose work had appeared in SPH magazines, and who photographed me for this blog post, remarked that he had not expected to see such an improvement. He joked that he had wanted to charge me extra to digitally edit my dark under-eye circles had they remained as before!
For more information, visit iamageless.com.sg or call +65 67344007 or clinic mobile
+65 81810680.
Photographer: Jasper Yu
Makeup: My own, using Laurier Mercier, NARS and Bobbi Brown
Skincare: My own, using SkinBetter Science and Cyspera
Hair: D’vine Salon, Roxy Square