Causes of Dark Circles Under Eyes

First off, the skin surrounding the eyes are very thin. In fact they are one of the thinnest skin parts in the entire body, that the capillaries under it are visible and contribute partly to the blue discoloration. Add to this the fact that besides being very thin, it also is very translucent in some people.

Dark Under Eye Circles are actually bruises. Remember when you get a bruise in some other part of your body; that part gets a blue discoloration. The blue discoloration is caused by an automatic remedial process in your system. A bruise starts when a part of the body is traumatized e.g., impact, too much pressure, irregular activity, etc. Due to the trauma, some blood vessels break and allow blood to run out into the surrounding area. When this happens, the body's protective system realizes that this is highly irregular (that blood shouldn't be flowing around outside the blood vessels) and thus acts on it by breaking down the escapee blood cells. As you probably recall, the blood cells have this member molecule called hemoglobin that gives the blood its red color. Hemoglobin, when broken down, releases from its molecular structure a component with a color property that is (almost black) dark blue. This is how bruises get its dark blue color. And that dark color under your eyes is nothing more than a bruise.

How did you bruise that part under your eyes? Again, as mentioned above, bruises are usually caused by impact or undue pressure on a particular part of the body. Pressure can come from the outside, or from the inside. Under normal circumstances, blood flow to the area surrounding the eyes gets busy in the normal waking hours, and takes a breather during the normal sleeping hours. When you go beyond the normal waking-sleeping routine, those parts under your eyes gets to experience longer blood flow activity hours. And extended busy blood flow means extended pressure on the tiny capillaries in the area. Extended pressure eventually causes trauma resulting to some capillaries breaking and letting blood escape out into the surrounding area.