Is Baking Soda The Cure For Your Undereye Circles?

We've been fed a lot of tips and tricks when it comes to remedying our undereye circles. There's the classic fix (cucumber slices), the impractical one (cold spoons), and the good-in-theory hack (covering them up with red lipstick). We've jumped through many-a-hoops to appear wide-awake. Well, YouTube vlogger Darshika Patel is adding yet another DIY treatment to our list: baking soda. In the above video, Patel proceeds to mix one to two teaspoons of "everyday" baking soda with a few drops of water to make a "sugar syrup"-like paste. Using the back of a spoon, she applies the concoction to her undereye area. One point of warning, she notes, is to smear — not rub — the mixture onto the skin. "Your dark circles will get worse if you irritate the delicate skin under your eyes," she says. Wait five to 10 minutes for the mix to dry. Wipe it off with a wet wipe of some kind, again, making sure not to upset that fragile undereye zone. Though the skin around your eyes might feel a bit tight afterward, Patel insists that that's a good thing, because it means the mix has worked its magic. "Your bags will have diminished and your dark circles should have also improved," she states. Alas, even though Patel makes a pretty convincing case, we consulted a dermatologist to see just how legit the trick really is. "Baking soda may give a modest improvement in the appearance of undereye skin, but you need to be careful about causing skin irritation," says Joshua Zeichner, MD. "Baking soda has an alkaline pH, while the skin's natural pH is slightly acidic, which is necessary for healthy skin-cell functioning. Increasing the pH can lead to irritation and impairment of the skin barrier." Moral of the story: Baking soda might appear to decrease the appearance of bags in the short term, but, in the long term, it could do more harm than good. Basically, ladies and gents, baking soda should be left in the pantry and not on the vanity.