Snails and Your Skin

 

A few years ago, snail goo, a.k.a. snail slime, snail mucin, snail mucus^retch, or snail secretion filtrate, was a trendy skincare ingredient making the rounds from Japanese spas to the Western media (and imagination). Snail is no longer the much-hyped fad ingredient that it once was. Unlike many fad ingredients, however, snail hasn’t faded into obscurity. Instead, at the end of its long slow journey from medicinal use in Ancient Greece to cosmetic use on my Ancient Face, snail has settled placidly into its current role as a surprisingly standard skincare ingredient.

Snail mucin is collected without injury to the snails. The snails are fed a clean and nutritious diet and, during the typical harvesting process, are placed on rough and/or very mildly electrified gratings. The mucus that they produce to lubricate and protect their skin from the surface they’re on is then gathered and purified for cosmetic use. Alternatively, snail slime is sometimes produced by…uh…manual stimulation of the snails. Some manufacturers are even gentler still, as we’ll see below.

What does that protective goo do, though? The research into snail mucin’s effects as a topical skin treatment isn’t extensive, but as I’ve said before, a lack of research does not demonstrate a lack of effectiveness, and the research that does exist is promising. Snail secretion is humectant, emollient, antimicrobial, antioxidant-rich, and contains collagen, elastin, and cell communication-facilitating glycoproteins, among other skin-friendly components. It may have wound healing abilities and shows promise for the repair of photoaged skin (snail is the star of my post-sun skincare routine) and atrophic acne scarring. At minimum, therefore, snail slime is a lovely natural moisturizer. It may also have long-term anti-aging and skin-smoothing benefits. Also, if you prefer your skincare to come from nature with as few intervening stops in the lab as possible before it hits your face, snail mucin fits those criteria very well.

Image courtesy of COSRX and Triangle Studio, created for Fifty Shades of Snail and Memebox. Keep reading to find out why.

As with any other unfamiliar skincare ingredient, patch test to rule out any sensitivities and remember that YMMV–but don’t dismiss snail slime out of hand just because it sounds strange. Snail can be great. So great, in fact, that the more snail secretion a product contains, the more I want to put it on my face. And that leads us to the real reason we’re here today: to learn more about COSRX’s Advanced Snail 96 Mucin Power Essence and Advanced Snail 92 All In One Cream!