 Many of us are very self-conscious about having dark circles under our eyes. But did you know they are actually very, very diagnostic from a traditional Chinese medicine point of view? From our profession's point of view, there are areas on the face and the tongue and the body that are indicative of much more systemic imbalances in the body. And in this video, I thought I would share a little bit about dark circles under the eyes, both east and west, and what they mean. Hey guys, I'm Dr. Alex Hine, author of The Health Book Master of the Day and doctor of acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine. So before we jump into this video here today, there are two very important links right below the video. The first is for a free guide, four daily rituals that can potentially help you add years to your life with traditional Chinese medicine. And the second is if you'd like to become a patient of mine locally in Los Angeles or virtually via telemedicine, you can reach out to my clinic and my private practice right below this video. So there can be many, many different causes of dark circles under the eyes. The two most common that I see clinically are people, one, that aren't sleeping well, no surprise there, so insomnia, but two, lots of people with insulin resistance. People who are gaining large amounts of weight, particularly large amounts of fat, and have issues processing lots of sugar in their body. Now, even though those are the two largest causes I see of having dark circles under the eyes, really it just being an extension of being chronically sleep deprived, there are a whole host of other minor causes. For some people, fluid retention. I've seen people with thyroid issues where they have edema and lots of facial swelling, alcohol and tobacco use. Sometimes spring allergies for people can cause lots of facial swelling, aging on its own, hypothyroid, quote unquote adrenal issues like cortisol resistance, cushions, et cetera, and diabetes and insulin resistance. Now, in one particular paper, for example, called chronic stress, glucocorticoid receptor resistance, inflammation and disease risk. There's a line in here, not necessarily talking about dark circles under the eyes directly, but how chronic psychological stress is associated with a greater risk of depression, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, autoimmune diseases, upper respiratory infections and poor wound healing. So for some people, this sort of adrenal insufficiency, which is truly a more rare medical condition, but from a day to day point of view, nervous exhaustion as used to be called, or what a lot of lay people call adrenal fatigue, which is not a real diagnosis, but that general pattern is often one of the causes as well. Now, from a traditional Chinese medicine point of view, dark black like that is the color of the kidneys, right? The kidneys associated with the winter phase. And a lot of the herbs like Dihuang that we use to strengthen kidney function, like in the formula Shen Qihuan, kidney cheap pill, are often used to treat disorders related to the kidneys. Now, from our point of view, any really severe or long-term or life-threatening illness that's chronic often involves the kidneys. So the kidneys from our point of view can include genitourinary issues, the bladder, literally the kidneys can include the adrenals even. But often we treat autoimmune disease, hypothyroid, including Hashimoto's hypothyroid, severe depression, chronic fatigue. Again, adrenal issues, people who have kind of chronic exhaustion sort of syndromes, executives and elite athletes that are working and training to the extreme for long periods of time that then fall into these general chronic fatigue sort of illnesses for years. We're often treating the kidney. So the kidney is not only the physical kidney but also represents a host of systemic functions in the body related to the adrenals and stress response. So from our point of view, when people are manifesting with dark circles under the eyes, they are experiencing kidney chi deficiency, which is a relatively deep diagnosis, a relatively deep level of exhaustion. And I like to think of this as the battery deficiency. The battery being the quote life force battery or the overall, let's just say vitality battery. When you have a severe enough level of depletion and exhaustion, you will start to experience dark circles under the eyes. Now, from our point of view, another condition that can be related to some people have severe pigmentation changes around the eyes that are not just dark circles, but are really the next level. And from our point of view, that can be an issue that we call blood stasis or blood stagnation. Often abdominal palpation will reveal more extensive blood stasis issues, particularly in the low abdomen. There's a bow tie finding, as we call it, that forms a bow tie like shape underneath the belly button. If this is the umbilicus, it's in this general area, commonly found in men and people who have what we call kidney chi deficiency. From my point of view, when people really have serious dark circles under the eyes, they're often experiencing chronic stressors or chronic illness from the point of probably autoimmune disease, hypothyroid or Hashimoto's, that kind of thing, are very, very common diagnoses that we see clinically. So again, these fall into the bucket of what we call kidney chi deficiency. Kidneys are also, the color black is the associated color with actually the kidneys. And the kidneys are sort of my mentor called it the surrender organ, because the kidneys have a kind of will quality to them. And if you overuse willpower and will and you're push, push, push, pushing, it produces a sort of adrenal exhaustion or hypothyroid sort of picture. So the more stress, the lower the functioning of the thyroid. And very often, we treat the thyroid from treating the kidneys from a TCM point of view. So in my mind, most commonly clinically, when we see someone with really bad dark circles under the eyes, we're treating kidney chi deficiency and that is why. So I hope that helps you guys today, a little TCM lesson for you. Don't forget to check out those links right below the video and I'll see you soon.