Yeah, what THEY said! hehehe. .... AND MORE! forgive me but I'm going off my memory so I can't provide citations, but you can search on PubMed if you don't believe me.
Okay so what's going on around your eyes that makes them darkened? Obviously deoxygenated blood. You don't want to start taking Vitamin C right away, because it's been shown to prevent capillary leakage, which is perfect, however, you want to do this AFTER cleaning out the garbage first. And especially the Vitamin K's, because they help blood clot, but you don't want it to clot just yet.
So first you need to vasodilate, reduce inflammation, and clean out cellular debris. Avoid stimulants and caffeine etc. during the day. Regimen before bed:
- 500 mg L-arginine to aid NO production
- 250 mg taurine to boost bloodflow
- 125 mg niacin
- 300 mg alpha lipoic acid (to upregulate Nrf2 and get some good antioxidation going to reduce inflammation)
- 5 or 6 mg of melatonin (shown to induce autophagy aka autophagocytosis)
In the morning take your Vitamin C and K's. You should take other factors that strengthen your vasculature and help endothelial cells do their thing. Vitamin D3 has been linked to higher levels of VEGF, so it might be beneficial to take that as well as it sets things into motion. Keep in mind that Vitamin A and zinc are also good for wound healing and skin repair, as well as folic acid. So for your morning regimen:
- Super Vitamin K mix from Life Extension I guess because that's a nice potent formulation
- 2,000 mg Vitamin C
- 2,000 IU Vitamin D3
- 10,000 IU Vitamin A
- 50 mg zinc
- 2,000 mg folic acid (aka folate)
And that's for the vasculature alone. If you can take a pomegranate extract in the morning that'd be even better (or just eat real pom haha)
So holistically-speaking, here's the kicker: you must be frequently dabbling in the cookie jar for some stimulation if you know what I mean. That kinda stuff burns your fat quickly, and makes dark circles more visible. Ease off on the partying there tiger. You need to regain the lost fat underneath your skin. Subcutaneous fat is the kind you want. Eat lots of glucose- or dextrose-based carbs. Stay away from fructose-based because that turns into visceral fat. (This means no sucrose either). Try to find candy that's made with glucose syrup as one of the first ingredients. Or I guess you can eat other carbs like fries & rice but those are boring haha. Once you get adipocytes forming at the capillaries around your eyes and you put on a bit of weight, that's when you'll see most of the improvement. However if distribution of your body fat is more central (central obesity), you may want to take additional things to improve liver function such as milk thistle and curcumin (the alpha lipoic acid will help as it is), as well as split your 3 meals a day into 6 snacks a day to ease liver load and allow it to regenerate. Eat more protein. Take other factors for your HPA axis to boost hormonal levels and get that nice even body tone going (cognizin for the pituitary gland, astragalus and ashwagandha to ease adrenal fatigue, etc.) and take digestive enzymes as well, such as pancreatin, to ensure good nutritive absorption from food and to ease burden on your liver. Eat fibre (such as oatmeal) to help absorb toxins out of your body.
But if you're a lazy guy, then the quick fix is: take 10 grams of creatine to help retain some water in your body and your dark circles will disappear greatly.
Edited by holdout, 11 July 2014 - 02:33 AM.
