In the last 10 years, cosmetic procedures like injectables have become much more common, with people openly sharing their experiences with Botox and dermal fillers. However, with the latter, there’s a lot to know beforehand, depending on the area you want to put on weight.
For example, if you’re interested in treating wrinkles, hollows, or dark circles around your eyes, you might be curious to know if under-eye fillers can help. Read on for everything you need to know about getting filler under your eyes – what it is, how much it costs, and downtime – below.
What are under-eye fillers?
Dermal fillers or under eye filler (ฉีดฟิลเลอร์ใต้ตา which is the term in Thai) sit under the skin’s surface and are intended to enhance, smooth, and sculpt. Fillers can be made from several different substances, the main one being hyaluronic acid, a natural substance in the skin that helps add volume and hydration (more on this later). In contrast, others can be made from collagen, calcium hydroxyapatite, or polyamide—l-lactic acid. Many of them sometimes include a little lidocaine to help numb and compensate for the pain. You can check the FDA website for a complete summary of each material.
Several HA-based fillers are used depending on the area of the face being injected and your overall facial structure. The most common come from three broad families: Juvederm, Restylane, and Belotero. The formulation of each filler differs based on where it should be injected and what result you are looking for – one is not necessarily better than the other, so your doctor should explain why they chose a specific type.
What Can (And Can’t) Under-Eye Fillers Do?
Common concerns that plague the under-eye area are fine lines, discoloration, emptiness, and puffiness – and sometimes all of them combined. Let’s start with what fillers can help: wrinkles. These come with age – as you get older, your skin starts to thin, and your bones and fat start to dissolve.
You can lift and shift the skin by putting fillers under the eyes. “We added padding, so your skin has something to glide on smoothly instead of creating a wrinkle. You are making fewer wrinkles and shifting them to radiate where they should, off the face, not the cheeks.”
Swelling, not so much. Puffiness is technically what fillers aren’t supposed to be able to correct, but we can obscure swelling by sculpting and supporting the skin. The swelling that is unaffected by fillers is what is called festooning. “Festooning means there is a distinction, as a seam, between the skin under the eyelid and the cheekbone,” she says. “Let’s say you drank too much the night before or ate salty soy sauce with your sushi, you’re going to retain water in your face, and it’s going to get stuck in your eyelids, called a garland. fix it.”
Discoloration — or dark circles — faces a similar fate in fillers. If the pigmentation is caused by thin skin over the muscle and purplish blood vessels, you can add a filler layer between the skin and muscle that dampens the color. “You’re just adding a layer that creates a nicer light reflection on the face and some lighting. Likewise, fillers can increase that back if a hollowing is causing the darkness out of your bone (which comes with age). What fillers cannot fix is the pigmented skin itself.
