Image via Sephora

When you try a million products every week, you tend to be the first person your friends turn to when they get stymied by the shelves at Sephora. Sure, they could just read the blog (cough) but instead they seem to think that they can get the INSIDE inside scoop. In recent weeks, I've answered quite a few of these types of questions, like so many questions that I've finally clued in that I should just post the answer.

From Sasha, who is so gorgeous you'd think she's a print model:

What's the deal with Hylexin? What are you pimping for under eye circles these days?

I haven't tried Hylexin yet, so I can't speak to it specifically but Erin did and wasn't impressed. It claims that it's actually breaking down the blood that's showing up under the layer of skin. Unfortunately though, if you're like me, dark circles are almost an automatic just because of your ancestry and complexion, and that blood is there for a reason anyway. I'm a little skeptical about the claims there. Something else to note: they are made by the same company that makes Strivectin, which is one of the few cos companies that has actually been significantly fined by the USDA. They have bigger fish to fry than going after stretchmark cream people, so you have to know that they were making some pretty big fake claims. I trust Erin's advice implicitly. As for the Strivectin line (and they have an eye cream too) I have NOT been impressed with it.

What I'm pimping? Kinerase. But that's for long term and doesn't help when you've woken up hung over or you just got off a 7-hour plane trip. For my own personal eye circles, I do the sleep and hydrate thing as much as possible, and whenever I see that I have circles, I pound 40 ounces of water in an hour's time and it usually fixes my issue. I have NO idea how much longer I'm going to get away with that, though, as I have the benefit of having more fat in my face than most sufferers of dark circles, and as you age, that fat starts going away.
 
The other thing I do is dab a caffeinated moisture treatment around the orbital area (a good one is Clinique's Moisture Surge Eye Treatment, but they recently discontinued it. I've been buying it on eBay, which is NOT a good idea but you might still find it at some Clinique counters) and then top with Yves St. Laurent's Touche Eclat, the sheerest and most wonderful undereye concealer and the only one I've ever found is worth the bother. It's pricey though, but my stick has lasted much longer than I'd ever thought it would.

From Kimberly, the host of The Daily Special:

I'm well aware that you are not my own personal Wikipedia, but something I've always been interested in, and scour the shelves of Sephora regularly for is a good preventative routine. It seems that all the lotions, potions, and edible body paints out there promise to reduce the appearance of fine lines and age spots, but what should people my age be doing regularly, and buying regularly to delay this crazy phenomenon known as aging. Since I'm totally obsessed with Product Fiend now, I thought I could ask you if you have any suggestions/could share it on the site for other like-age-range gals?

Personally, I've always had religious sunscreen use, because if I forget and am out in the sun for more than five minutes, I burn to a crisp. Of course, sunscreen is a given, but in my grilling of various skin doctors, they say that environmental stress beyond sunscreen is huuuuuge. Like you can use sunscreen all the time and still have aging due to other causes. Oxidation, either internal (meat and dairy was mentioned by two different doctors as huge contributors to aging) or external (pollution, exposure to second-hand cigarette smoke or just, you know, first-hand smoke), is going to kick you in the pants. So, the whole anti-oxidants spiel is totally on point. 

But you asked about products: Dr. Yael Halaas highly recommends green tea products, but then again, she sells them, so it's not entirely unbiased, and I get a sense that green tea is the oat bran of the '00s but in my opinion, it can't really hurt either. There's significant research supporting topical Vitamin E and Vitamin C, which again, can't hurt anything. philosophy and Dr. Sebagh both make vitamin C powder that you can dump into whatever moisturizer you're using. So I guess if you dumped the Vitamin C powder into a green tea infused Vitamin E moisturizer, you'd be really well covered. Oh, and for what it's worth, you can totes do it yourself on the cheap by just loading up a mortar and pestle with a few Vitamin C tablets from Target on a daily basis, or follow this great recipe. But if you're addicted to products, that probably isn't as satisfying as the expensive little vial of important looking branded stuff. I mean, seriously, we all know that products are grossly overpriced and we buy them anyway, so it's not like this is probably very shocking.