Bags Under Your Eyes? It May Be A Sign Of High Cholesterol

Have you tried everything to get rid of the bags under your eyes? Are those dark circles making you look continuously tired no matter how much you sleep?

If you tried the various products and still have no relief for the dark circles under your eyes… if you’ve tried sleeping more, cutting caffeine, watching what you eat, and still those dark circles are there, you might be facing something a little bit more concerning…

Xanthelasma - a deposit of yellow fats in the tiny blood vessels surrounding your eyes.

It’s a common side effect of high cholesterol.

How The Bags Under Your Eyes Relates To High Cholesterol

cholesterolCholesterols are a type of fat typically used to produce hormones, cell walls, and neurotransmitters. We do need a lot of cholesterol in our system because it forms all of these healthy connections.

But, it’s what your body does with these cholesterols that matter.

There are specific proteins that take the cholesterol where it needs to be. It could move from your liver to your cell structures, your knees, your brain, or your adrenal glands. The specific protein that does this is low-density lipoprotein or LDL. Keeping your body healthy and running correctly requires a certain amount of LDL in your system.

Now, there’s another type of protein called high-density level protein or HDL. This protein finds damaged or stray cholesterol and take them back to the liver for processing.

The ratio of HDL to LDL tells us what your body is doing. If your LDL is too high, something in your body demands more cholesterol production than it needs. A lot of times, this is inflammation.

When a part of your body is inflamed, it calls for your liver to produce more cholesterol to fix the damage. But, if you’re dealing with low-level inflammation, there’s nothing to fix, so all that cholesterol keeps hanging around in your system. Often, your digestive system is inflamed, and you don’t know it.

Statins don’t fix the problem, in fact, they make it worse.

The only way to fix the problem of high cholesterol caused by inflammation is by eliminating the inflammation. Normally, cutting out bread, wheat products, dairy, and soy takes care of this.

And miraculously, your cholesterol numbers will come down because there’s no more inflammation.

So What Does This Have To Do With Your Eyes?

Cholesterol is a type of fat, and when fats don’t have anything to do, they cause trouble. Having too much random fat floating around in your body causes plaque buildup in your arteries and deposit in small capillaries throughout your body.

These deposits look like tiny yellow balls. Sometimes, they’re so small they look like specks of dust.

Because the skin around your eyes is so thin, you can see the blood vessels and arteries quite easily. So when one of these little fat balls gets stuck in these capillaries, the skin is no longer translucent and looks dark.

If you get a lot of it, you get heavy bags and dark circles around your eyes.

Fortunately, if you can get your cholesterol under control by solving the actual problem, the heavy dark bags can disappear.

The Reason You Want A Higher Fat Diet

bagsContrary to what got pushed on us for the past 20 years, dietary fat does not equal high cholesterol. In fact, the opposite is true. High sugar and low-fat diets cause more cases of high cholesterol than fats ever could.

That’s because of what the sugar does in your body: it causes inflammation.

The sugary foods often contain wheat and dairy, which triggers our digestive system to become inflamed. Your body creates more cholesterol to try and take care of the problem.

Cutting out fats exasperates the problem.

When you cut out healthy fats from your diet, your body has to keep reusing what it has. So, even if you have high cholesterol and you’re taking statins, your body is going to force itself to keep all of that cholesterol in your bloodstream to take care of future problems. It’s kind of like an insurance policy, putting a bit aside in case you can’t get what you need.

And in the case of low-fat diets, it’s the very thing you’re trying to get rid of that your body’s holding on to the hardest.

How should you be eating?

Fill your diet with fruits and vegetables, aiming for around ¾ of everything you eat to be fruits and vegetables.

Next, add in whole cups of meats and 100% whole grains.

Finally, liberally use natural fats that include butter, olive oil, coconut oil, nut oils. Avoid the highly processed and hydrolyzed canola and vegetable oil.

Going back to a more natural diet will help you reduce your cholesterol levels and put you on track for a much more healthy lifestyle. When your body is no longer fighting its food, it heals itself.