The eye care - Part # 1

Eyes can be top of many a woman’s lists of beauty woes, as the years roll by. Think: puffy bags, dark circles, laugh lines.

With all these, its challenging to apply eye make-up when:

• Skin is just not as smooth as it was.
• You barely see what you are doing it anyway…

Beauty may be in the eyes of the beholder, but we all want to go beholding everything. Here is how to optimize eye health - and help prevent eye lines at the same time.

• Don’t frown - Looking after your eyes isn’t just about a smooth forehead. Taking very good care of eye health, in general, is absolutely vital as we get older.

• Wear big sunglasses - Choose the sunglasses which as UVA/B protective. Start using a broad-brimmed sunhat, not just for your skin and hair, but also for your eyes. Even in not-so-bright conditions, the wind is a damage-doer too - sunglasses provide great protection from dust, specks of dirt, and the eye-drying effect of a mistral.

• Have regular eye tests - The right specs help you read, work at a computer screen, drive safely and prevent frown lines and headaches. Testing can also pick up any other conditions such as glaucoma, which damages the optic nerve and may cause blindness if untreated. Every two years is a minimum if you are over forty and every year if you have glaucoma in the family.

• Attend to dry eyes - Like our skin, eyes get drier as we get older, especially if you work at a screen and/ or in an office with an aircon. If your eyes are itchy, sore, red, stick together on waking and, more seriously if you have any blurred vision, consult your family doctor or talk to your optician.

• Invest in good, strong reading light - According to consultant ophthalmologist Professor Charles Clark, ‘This can improve vision enormously, slow the deterioration of sight - and reduce frowning!’ This is true not just for reading, but for any close-up fine work, such as tapestry.

• Consider a supplement - The ‘Age-Related Eye Disease Study’ sponsored by the US national eye institute, reported that two nutrients - called lutein and zeaxanthin, which are both found in healthy retinas - may help your vision and protect your eyes from an age-related condition called vascular degeneration. Fish oil, which contains omega-3 essential fatty acid, may also help vision. But you should still eat lots of green, red, and orange vegetables and fruits plus at least two portions of oily fish weekly, if you are not vegetarian.

Because eyes are so expensive - conveying joy or sadness, or anger - the skin around them wrinkles faster than anywhere else on the face. The skin beneath the eyes also contains less collagen and elasticity than the rest of the face. And as a triple whammy, this fragile skin is fine as an eggshell.

But there are plenty of products out there to make difference to those expression lines.

TVAM - Under Eye Cream - Olive NEUTROGENA Rapid Wrinkle Repair® Eye Cream NEUTROGENA Ageless Intensives® Anti-Wrinkle Deep Wrinkle Serum