What's the Difference Between the Eye Creams?
What's the difference between all of the eye creams? I'm a UC Berkeley trained optometrist. I'm also founder, owner and the formulator of all of these beautiful eye creams. Let's rewind a little bit. My philosophy on eye cream . . . I've always divided it into two parts because the eyelid skin is also divided into two parts. There's dry eyelid skin and dehydrated eyelid skin with very different needs.
DRY EYELID SKIN
Dry flaky eyelid skin tells me it's damaged eyelid skin barrier at that topmost outer layer, the lipid layer. It needs a lot of love in order to get happy. For dry eyelid skin, I have PM Eyelid Butter. There's only one in this category. I just can't formulate a better emollient type of eye cream than the PM Eyelid Butter. It's sticky, gooey, and best applied on at night time. But I know a lot of you use it also in the morning, and that's okay too.
DEHYDRATED EYELID SKIN
For dehydrated eyelid skin, this is where I put all the actives to work. Here we are addressing things like puffy eyes, eye bags, fine lines & wrinkles and dark circles. These are the most common complaints from my patients in this category.
You're also going to see things that help bring back hydration and water. In skin care formulation, we call them humectants. In this category of eye creams, you might already have this one – AM Eyelid Gel. This contains actives to address all three of these things: puffy eyes / eye bags, dark circles, fine lines and wrinkles.
Also in this category is URABANEYES. I made this for my patient that works behind a computer, lives in San Francisco and likes to spend time outdoors training for triathlons. 5 actives to address blue light protection from devices, damage from UV radiation, and also damage from pollution.
Third in this category is SHRUBTOX . . . and I have to admit I made this for myself, lol. So, I went and saw my aesthetics provider for facial rejuvenation. I thought to myself that I should just really make an eye cream with tons of actives. So this contains 5 actives and each of them targets fine lines & wrinkles, fine lines & wrinkles . . . If I can say that really fast 5 times !!
In this DEHYRATED EYELID SKIN category, you can pick and choose what your needs are. What actives do you want to feed your eyes today? Because these are formulated from the same base type of ingredients . . . You can layer them. Mix them, You can also put them on rotation.
My super squirrel secret is that I actually like to have my patients formulate their own emulsions. So it's completely customized for their needs and on a daily basis. For example, my patient that is the triathlete - she applies URBANEYES right after training, but not on any other days.
What's interesting to note, almost all of my dry eye / meibomian gland dysfunction patients pretty much have the dry eyelid skin type. The dry eyelid skin is also more obvious when hot compresses with Focused Eye Roll is picked up again during a mini flare up. In most cases, I do find that I also need to address the dry and dehydrated eyelid skin at the same time.
So I have my patients mix like this: but I have the mix. Grab PM Eyelid Butter first. Here I'm just gonna add a little bit of SHRUBTOX to make my own emulsion.
Mix equal parts together and apply it right under the eyes right before bedtime.
With this nifty trick and 4 eye creams at your disposal, you can become your own formulator and create customized emulsions to feed your eyelid skin pretty much every single day of the week. Lastly, just never pre-mix the eye creams because we want to make sure that each eye cream maintains it's preservative system and the formula stays away from oxygen to ensure maximum potential from the actives.
Dr. Tanya Gill, OD