You there?

These are the lovely girls who answer your phone call

if you call up, so, say hello.

- Hello. (laughter)

- Thank you.

Today I'm answering a question from our Facebook page.

And the question is about eye bags

and how to get rid of them.

So, firstly, to answer this question, I'd just like to

talk a bit about what eye bags are.

Eye bags are actually a prolapse of the fat

that's beneath the eye in the lower eye lid.

This can be genetic or can occur with aging.

Also, another thing which causes the appearance of eye bags

is the appearance of a trough, a tear trough

underneath the eye bag, which basically is a

ligament as attachment to the skin down to the

underlying muscle and bone.

This pulls the area down underneath the fat pad

to the, you knows, pull that area down,

so basically you have a bulging fat pad,

and then you've got a tear trough, which is

an attached area which is sunken in.

So this really defines and delineates the lower eyelid.

So the treatment of eye bags can be both

non-surgical and surgical.

In some cases, non-surgical would be better,

and in some cases, surgical would be better,

and in some cases, a combination would be better.

So firstly, if you have a lot of fat under the eye,

this may need to be removed with lower lid blepharoplasty.

The surgeon often goes through the conjunctival

or the red part of the eye.

Through that they'll take out fat through the cut there,

so it's a scar-less operation, you don't see any scars.

But it's an operation nonetheless, and often

people will be scared about this.

So the other option is nonsurgical.

And this can be done with dermal fillers,

and what you can do here is use dermal fillers to

fill up the trough, or the area beneath the lower eyelid.

That basically lifts up the trough back up to the level

of the eye bag underneath.

So you get a more even transition from the

lower eyelid to the cheek.

Now, in cases where there's quite severe fat herniation

or fat bulge, this may not give the ideal outcome.

Your doctor will assess whether that is the best way to

go about it or whether you need surgery first.

Sometimes also, surgery can have the risk of taking out

too much fat, in which case often fillers are used

to actually bring that whole area back out again.

So sometimes a combination of both surgery

and fillers can used.

I hope this helped to answer your question,

and I look forward to getting some more

Facebook questions and posts from you guys

in the future.