Do you have bags under your eyes? Yes or No? Or does your eyes look puffy after you wake up in the morning? Are you worried? Are you stressed for your swollen eyes whenever you get up in the morning?
Well, mild swelling or puffiness under your eyes in the morning is common as you age. The normal amount of fat that helps support the eyes can then move into the lower eyelids, causing the lids to appear puffy. There are other reasons too apart from the aging process.
Reasons For The Puffiness Under Your Eyes In The Morning
1. Too Much Salt Intake
If your diet contains sodium in higher amounts, your body is more likely to retain more fluids. When too much sodium enters the cells, water enters for diluting it, and this can often cause cells to become full of water. Again when you consume too much salt, your body becomes dehydrated. It stores as much water as it possibly can and stockpiles it for the future. It can often cause fluid retention. As your body swells up, the skin under your eyes can retain fluid, leading to puffiness.
2. Allergy
Allergy can also be an important factor as it causes your body to produce histamine, which can cause inflammation, itching, and redness. When you have allergies, your eyes are contacting airborne allergens, and when it hit your eyes, they dissolve in your tears and contact the lining of your eye. They react with antibodies in your eye cells. It causes your body to release histamine into your system, causing puffiness.
3. Lack Of Sleep
A bad night’s sleep or inadequate sleep can cause your eyes to look swollen when you wake up in the morning. Because if you are stressed out, it leads to the release of the hormone cortisol, which changes your body’s salt balance causing water retention, leading to swelling of tissues around your eyes. Have a proper good night’s sleep by sleeping early.
4. Conjunctivitis
Swollen or puffy eyes can also be caused by certain eye conditions like conjunctivitis, which is normally the result of an infection. Other symptoms you might notice alongside puffy eyes are itching and sticky discharges.
5. Sleeping With Contact Lenses
Sleeping with your contact lenses is a big NO-NO. It can encourage bacteria to grow in the tiny gap between the lens and the surface of your eye, causing puffiness. Not only that, wearing contact lenses to sleep is harmful and can damage your eyes permanently.
6. Drinking Too Much Alcohol
After a heavy night of drinking alcohol, you almost seem to wake up with puffiness under your eyes in the morning, which is either due to inadequate sleep last night or due to dehydration. Avoid over-consumption of alcohol as it may lead to other health risks too.
7. Inadequate Water Intake
If you don’t drink water adequately, your body will stockpile fluids. When your body is dehydrated, it desperately tries to retain more water, causing the area under your eye to swell. Therefore, do not forget to hydrate your body throughout the day.
8. You Have A Thyroid Condition
If you are suffering from hyperthyroidism, you might have a tendency to get puffiness under your eyes, which is a result of a thickening of the fat around your eyes. Although it may cause eye puffiness, a natural way to tackle it is to stay hydrated.
9. Periorbital Edema
Periorbital edema can make your eyes look puffier when you wake up in the morning. Once you wake up and start blinking, you might notice that your eyes are looking less puffy. It is due to the buildup of fluid around the eye that gives it a puffy look.
10. You Hiked Up The Heat
Heat can dry the mucous membranes in the eyeball. When you raise the temperature in your house, your eyes can become more sensitive and drier. It makes the tissue in your eyes thicken and irritated, which to leads to puffiness. Even turning the central heating up in winter can make eyes dryer and more sensitive than usual, as heat causes dehydration of mucus membranes in the eyes.
11. Not Thoroughly Cleansing
Face cleansers can get trapped in the folds of your eyelids. Further irritation can be caused by using eye makeup removers, eye shadows, etc. which boast preservatives. Then you rub your eyes quite often to get rid of the irritation. This rubbing creates inflammation, which leads to leaky blood vessels causing puffiness.
12. Crying
If you have cried last night or do it quite often, your eyes work quite hard to make tears. Since the tear glands must work to produce tears, they’re creating a less salty fluid. So, it causes differences in salt concentration between these tears and the surrounding tissues, leading to swelling of the eyelid.
13. Periods
Bloating is a common phenomenon during periods in women. When you have your periods, you bloat, and your eyes can do the same. Eye swelling caused by your periods typically disappears after a few days.
14. Rubbing Your Eyes
You tend to rub the eyes from time to time because of irritation or redness or allergies, even in your sleep or when you wake up, causing inflammation and swelling in that area. To keep your eyes healthy, avoid rubbing your eyes constantly, clean them with water, etc.
15. Stress
Stress is definitely an important factor for causing puffiness. It produces the stress hormone cortisol and thereby changing the salt balance. Stress also disrupts the sleeping cycle that doesn’t make you to get a proper sleep, which further aggravates puffiness.
