Would you dabble in Snail Slime for great skin? Read below, TODAY.com's article on South Korea's latest beauty trend.
Are nature’s slimiest creatures slithering onto store shelves?
Snails – or more accurately, their guts and slime – have become the latest fad in skin care.
Hailed for its active ingredients, snail extract is popping up in
beauty lines across South America and skin care mecca South Korea. Both
low- and high-end companies have taken to the sticky ingredients, which
debuted on the market in the mid ’90s and range from seemingly tame to
slightly bizarre (BB Cream features “mucus from red ginseng-fed
snails”).
“I spotted it while on holiday in Korea and noticed it was flying off
the shelves,” said Paris B, 35, a beauty blogger for Mywomenstuff.com.
“Although gross-sounding, the [Tony Moly Intense Repair Live Snail]
cream seemed to be beneficial … and it did seem to make my skin feel
softer and finer.”
What’s so appetizing about slime? In 2006, Chilean farmers reportedly
noticed visibly smoother skin after handling snails they were breeding
for the French food market. Packed with glycolic acid and elastin, a
snail’s secretion protects its own skin from cuts, bacteria, and
powerful UV rays, making mother nature’s gooeyness a prime source for
proteins that eliminate dead cells and regenerate skin.
It’s a treatment that that has been used as far back as ancient
Greece: Hippocrates reportedly prescribed a mixture of sour milk and
crushed snails for skin inflammations. These days, it’s marketed as an
acne treatment, spot and scar remover, and burn healer.
“It’s a 100 percent pure and natural product that allows them to
replace the typical chemical skin creams,” said spokesman Christian
Plaut of Andes Nature, which sells a popular snail cream in South
America. “Consumers must usually buy several creams separately to get
the same benefits.”
To produce their coveted slime, snails are exposed to “safe
mechanical stress,” in which they’re stimulated repeatedly during a life
cycle. The obtained slime is then filtered numerous times until it’s
finally packaged for human consumption. Companies such as Labcconte USA
use their own snail farms to guarantee secretion purity, and return the
slowpokes to their hatcheries after the extraction process.
Not that slime is the only way to ensure a smooth face. “Lots of
species, including humans, secrete mucus rich in hyaluronic acids ...
but that doesn't mean you'd put phlegm on your face,” said dermatologist
Dr. Bobby Buka, who instead recommends non-mollusk products such as
First Aid Beauty's 5-in-1 face cream for similar results.
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