OMG!! Can't believe I'm seeing a thread on this! This was the BANE of my existence until I was 22. I'm of Mediterranean descent and I'll bet many of those who suffer from this are Italian/Spanish/middle-eastern. It has to do with skin pigmentation; it has NOTHING to do with sleep. If you have circles once in a while when you party, fine, it's sleep. I ALWAYS had dark circles, even when I slept 10 hours. I couldn't wear contact lenses; always wanted to wear shades. Basically, I always looked like death warmed over :/ It was ruining my life; girls didn't like it. I wore makeup to cover it up, but that made me feel embarrassed and I was always hiding my "cover stick". And of course, if I went swimming or out in the sun where I'd sweat, I'd look ridiculous. I also started tanning, so I'd be dark all over and the contrast wouldn't show. I took tanning pills that turned my palms orange. It was a NIGHTMARE!!
I went to a bunch of QUACK dermatologists who didn't know their ass from their elbow. Some said nothing could be done, others had radical bullshit remedies. One quack said "it's due to blood vessels under the skin; we could go in and scoop 'em out". Yeah, no. One guy said to use the sort of makeup burn victims used.
It was ruining my life and suicide entered my mind.
And then at 22, sick of all the clueless suburban dermatologists I'd seen, I ventured to NYC, to Dr. Lewis M. Feder. And he knew exactly what to do. He did a chemical peel. A VERY strong chemical peel - I looked like a burn victim for a week. But it burned off those layers of skin that were heavily pigmented, and underneath was MUCH less pigmented skin. Normal skin. I looked...like everyone else.
This all sounds very silly, I know. But to a young man who looked like a freak, and then became normal, it was life-changing.
I went to a bunch of QUACK dermatologists who didn't know their ass from their elbow. Some said nothing could be done, others had radical bullshit remedies. One quack said "it's due to blood vessels under the skin; we could go in and scoop 'em out". Yeah, no. One guy said to use the sort of makeup burn victims used.
It was ruining my life and suicide entered my mind.
And then at 22, sick of all the clueless suburban dermatologists I'd seen, I ventured to NYC, to Dr. Lewis M. Feder. And he knew exactly what to do. He did a chemical peel. A VERY strong chemical peel - I looked like a burn victim for a week. But it burned off those layers of skin that were heavily pigmented, and underneath was MUCH less pigmented skin. Normal skin. I looked...like everyone else.
This all sounds very silly, I know. But to a young man who looked like a freak, and then became normal, it was life-changing.