For firmer skin, especially around the eyes, look for peptides in your products. They’re the foundation of proteins like collagen, keratin, and elastin.

Crow’s feet. Fine lines. Exhaustion. Dark Circles. Loose skin. They all happen to the best of us, especially as we age—sometimes as early as our 20s and 30s. And it’s totally normal, because the body produces less collagen, elastin, and keratin over time, which are the proteins that the skin needs to stay firm, bright, and strong.

One way to get ahead of these aging concerns, or to significantly slow them down (if they’ve already begun), is a thorough skincare regimen. Many ingredients in skincare products help supplement the skin to ensure things like firmness, brightness, smoothness, and more. And one of the best ingredients you can seek out to counter things like fine lines and wrinkles is peptides.

As you age, your skin loses elasticity, like a balloon that loses air over time. Its production of skin-forming collagen decreases, and thus people often rely on protein or collagen supplements to help improve elasticity (and in particular, around the eye area).

Peptides in skincare products are absorbed into the skin and are used as building blocks to create complete proteins (like collagen) to help bring more "bounce" into your skin. Without these peptides, those proteins might float around in the skin aimlessly; the peptide creates the chain that helps them fortify and plump the skin.

You’ll most commonly see peptides in eye creams, like Cardon’s Dark Circle Eye Rescue. That’s because the eyes have some of the most thin, fragile skin on the body. Here are a few of the ways that thin, susceptible skin shows signs of aging, and how peptides can help:

1. Dark circles

As the skin barrier thins, it becomes easier to see through to the blood vessels on the other side of the skin. This can be a permanent issue, or a temporary one (like in the mornings, after a poor night’s sleep, or a dehydrating night of binge drinking). A peptide-powered eye product can help thicken and fortify this area, preventing that translucence.

2. Wrinkles

Those crow’s feet might be endearing to your friends (“It’s a sign of how expressive you are, since you’re always smiling!”), but to you, they’re proof or your mortality. OK, maybe that’s dramatic, but the eyes do so much expressing that their corners are the first place to show wrinkling. A proactive peptide regimen can slow down this process by keeping skin firmer and more resilient.

3. Puffiness

Everyone has tiny little fat deposits under the eyes. It’s totally natural and normal. However, when skin is firmer, it is able to keep these fat deposits tucked up under the eye, where they belong. When it is looser and degrading, those deposits sink further down, and give us the phenomenon known as eye bags. By using peptide products to keep this area stronger and firmer, you can prevent the excess baggage.

4. Inflammation

As the skin around the eyes is more susceptible to wear (and to harsher skincare ingredients), it can easily become inflamed or irritated. Peptides can help soothe and reduce inflammation, or fortify the skin against future agony.

They’re typically best used in the morning, with your nourishing and hydrating skincare products (and ingredients like niacinamide, hyaluronic acid, and Vitamin C). You can let your night cream act as a bedtime nourisher, since other overnight ingredients like glycolic/lactic/salicylic acids might significantly diminish the power of the peptides.

While you can see immediate benefits from using a peptide-powered product (like firming of the skin, reducing puffiness, or increasing circulation, thus reducing darkness), you’re also playing a long game with them. Fine lines and wrinkles don’t go away overnight, and you also want to decrease the sagging and thinning of the skin barrier (which is what causes puffing and dark circles in the first place). So, it’s important to incorporate peptides into your regimen for the long haul, not just on the days you wake up looking like a panda bear.