Snail Slime For Acne: Pure Fad Or The Ultimate Secret?

It’s the natural remedy which you hoped would never be discovered. In recent years, snail slime has swept the streets of natural skincare like a tidalwave, and it shows no sign of abating.

The secret to revitalising your skin has supposedly been oozing around your garden for years, at the very second you were furiously typing on your laptop to find a cure.

Maybe your jaw has dropped as well when a snail slime “recommended for you” has popped up while shopping for grapeseed oil. What kind of maniacs do they take us for?

To traditional dermatologists, this is evidence the natural crew has finally gone too far, that the train has left the station, that the cheese has finally slid off the cracker. To the natural crew, this is a revelation, proof that the cures for all woes are all around us in this Earthly paradise we live in. To the average Joe, snail slime is just disgusting.

Companies can call it snail mucin all they want, but we know exactly what it is – slime. Nevertheless, they’re making millions. Others are supposedly getting the skin of their lives, inspiring awe. Plenty of crazy remedies have failed (colloidal silver), but I’d never hesitate to recommend yogurt mixed with turmeric.

Here’s all you need to know about snail slime…

 

The path to snail slime

Like every character now since 2005 when Batman Begins came out, snail mucin has a detailed origin story.

It started in the dry deserts of Chile in 1980, where the Bascunan family ran a snail farm exporting the delicacy for hungry French people. Their business failed, but while gathering the snails, father and son were amazed at how smooth their hands became. Previously, they were riddled with cuts from handling sharp metal cages.

Thus, the first modern human had discovered the wonders of snail slime. Dr Fernando Bascunan, the oldest son of the family, then conducted his own scientific study. 15 years later, the family launched Elicina, a snail slime cosmetics company, which now sells to 45 countries.

Even further back, Hippocrates supposedly combined crushed snails and sour milk for curing inflamed skin. Legend states that the Mapuche tribe of Southern Chile have been applying snail slime since the days of Antiquity.

Some say that snail farming is cruel, as originally, snails were dunked into a boiling water pot filled with salt or vinegar. However, these days, humanity and snails are cooperating peacefully.

For example, South Korean skincare company CosRX uses a mesh in a dark room. For 30 minutes, the snails are left to roam the net with their own free will, leaving easily collected slime. The temptation to give them a push and speed things up must be overwhelming, but afterwards, the same snail will be ignored for 2 months. Not all is revealed though; in 2013, one French farmer claimed to have invented a “secret technique” for pumping out of 15 tons of snail mucus per year.

If you’re horrified by the mere thought of rubbing in snail slime, then you ain’t seen nothing yet. In Thailand, snail spas are now rampantly popular. In the Chiang ma spa, you turn up, and the doctors lie you down with a towel over your eyes. They cleanse your face with a special recipe in cream form.

Then the moment comes; they open a cage containing several giant African snails, which steadily crawl up your face over the course of a “relaxing” half hour.

Northamptonshire, England also had one, which has now closed. Tokyo’s snail spa offers 60 minutes of snail magic followed by electrical pulse therapy. 5 resident snails are trusted with this sacred duty (as of 2013, anyway). There are numerous beauty websites where reporters have had to take one for the team and “enjoy” a session at these clinics.

 

The popularity of snail slime

The whole recent explosion in snail slime can be pinpointed with high accuracy to 2011. It came from South Korea, a breeding ground for the wackiest skincare remedies on Earth, where beauty addicts will experiment with anything.

Korean beauty is a big craze itself in the US – see the “10-step Korean beauty routine” – and snail slime is a minor subplot.

In the UK, South Korean beauty titan Cosrx says that their sales have jumped by 500% since snail slime launched in February 2020. Snail slime bottles sell out as fast as a Michael Jackson comeback ticket and since 2011, Italian snail farmers have seen their profits soar by 325%.

The craze grew to such hurricane force in South Korea that it could no longer be contained and spilled over international borders. In 2019, the snail slime beauty market was estimated at $314 million in value, within a $1.2 billion value snail farming industry (2017).

 

The power of snail slime

So what does snail slime supposedly do? It is “the most natural anti aging product ever” which is “scientifically proven to regenerate cells”. One advert talks of slime from Chungnam snails “in the Korean Green Zone”, a non-existent magical land that sounds like a videogame level. Some snail spa visitors claim to have felt younger within 30 minutes. One website claimed that if snails use their slime to regenerate their own shells, then why wouldn’t that slime regenerate your skin?

Those are some of the dodgiest claims, but more widely, across advertisements and raving blog articles, it’s supposed to specialise in anti-ageing.

Snail slime will tighten your skin, give it a glow, erase fine lines, and peel back the years to reveal a revitalised, much younger you. There are people showing up on forums claiming to be pimple free after years of suffering, but to be fair, most companies don’t proclaim it as an acne miracle, sticking with youthfulness.

The other side of the coin has dermatologists gravely insisting that snail slime is a fad and that for anti-ageing you would be better off sticking with scientifically proven AHAs. Also, a snail’s mucus is important for keeping its body moist; it’s packed with polysaccharides which capture moisture from the air. Therefore, some skeptics argue that snail slime only tightens your skin by drying it out, and that an egg white mask would work equally well.

Some argue that it’s a pure cash in. True, it’s hard to deny that the wackiness of snail slime earns companies millions in unpaid advertising by acting as perfect tabloid fodder, but that doesn’t prove anything in itself.

 

So what is the truth?

The truth is that most of the internet hype is pretty damn accurate. In fact, it might be the most accurate I’ve seen of any remedy.

Snail slime really does look fantastic for ageing, wrinkles and smoothness, and this 2007 study is the best evidence so far. The only flaw was being in vitro, on skin cells rather than living creatures.

Anyway, the first result was that snail slime increased superoxide dismutase and glutathione-s-transerase. Both are antioxidants; the first can deactivate free radicals called superoxide anions, which are sometimes generated by an overactive immune system, while GST specialise in many free radicals. The scientists wondered whether snail slime contained GST and SD or whether a compound inside could stimulate them. Secondly, snail slime increased the numbers and survival of fibroplasts, important cells for the wound healing process.

That’s great and all, but finally, and most interestingly, snail slime suppressed MMP-1 and MMP-2.

These two matrix metallo-proteases are the puppet masters behind collagen recycling. For example, increasing MMP-2 is how UV radiation causes extra wrinkles. MMP-1 slashes through both type 1 and type 3 collagen, before the other MMPs break down the fragments. There’s countless MMPs; MMP-3 activates and deactivates other ones, whereas MM-12 specialises in dissolving elastin.

Snail slime went deeper into the molecular chain, increasing TIMPs, the protein that restrains MMPs. They speculated that snail slime could contain a natural molecule with a similar shape to TIMP.

The good news: the subject was Mollusk Cryptomphalus aspersa, the common garden snail. I’ll see you back here in ten minutes.

With this 2009 study, we have 27 actual humans, and all the complexities that come with living breathing skin that isolated cells might not capture (not to say that in vitro studies are useless though). First they were burnt, and then some slimy snails crawled up the wound. It was probably conducted next door to an experiment testing chocolate consumption on happiness.

After 14 days of twice daily application, the snail slime group showed fast skin cell epithelization compared to a regular burn ointment group. Collagen wasn’t mentioned, but it’s always a factor in wound healing.

Then there’s an oft-reference ageing study. It was double-blind, 14 weeks long, placebo controlled – this is the moment where snail slime lives or dies. It succeeded with aplomb, significantly reducing fine facial lines (periocular rhytides, if you want to be technical) after 12 weeks. The vaguer measure of “skin quality” didn’t improve though.

We have one study on collagen, and two more on the results that you’d expect from collagen.

 

More collagen mania

This study tested the mucus of 50 giant African snails, AKA Achatina Fulica, the species used by most South Korean skincare companies.

There was no vagueness or marketing hype here: applied to human skin cells, the slime increased collagen types 1 and 3, which was previously decreased by UV radiation. The profile of collagen became more youthful, with a shifted ratio away from type 1 and towards type 3. It manipulated enzymes directly, namely MMP-1 and MMP-2.

However, there’s one flaw here: giant African snails are rich in achasin, a natural antibiotic which shields the snail from bacteria. Other snails lack this mega molecule, so the study’s wider value rests on whether the achasin or the more common compounds were responsible.

Good news then: this 2018 skin cancer study looked just as great. It suppressed human melanoma cells nicely, but reducing the MMP-2 enzyme was a big reason why. It’s another fantastic result for collagen, and a bonus was inhibiting tyrosinase. That’s the enzyme which synthesises melanin, the classic target for hyperpigmenation. Snail slime reduced it with 2/3 of the strength of the pharmaceutical drug koji acid.

Importantly, the species was the common Helix aspersa maxima, oozing around in gardens everywhere, and it caused no damage to healthy cell viability. One cool power was that the melanona cells lost the physical ability to adhere to skin cell proteins.

A few years ago, the dismissive comments that snail slime “has no decent studies” would have been more accurate. However, things are now changing. 

Where the studies go wrong is in the degree of hype, like all your wrinkles vanishing in a blinding flash, but generally, snail slime seems to be the real deal.

Even if there weren’t any studies, I would gamble that snail slime has potential. Snails need it to retain moisture, fight infection and defend their delicate skin against UV light. It isn’t solely for slithering up a wall. In nature, it’s a complex, all giving substance on par with breast milk or royal jelly in beehives.

Considering that, I would not be surprised whatsoever if rubbing this slime into your face restored lost collagen and elastin proteins. Some remedies snail slime has more potential than include: cucumber, egg whites, lemon juice, and papaya.

 

The explanation – not so clear cut

Conventional wisdom state that the power of snail slime lies with allantoin. This compound is derivative of uric acid and occurs in most mammals.

It’s also the signature bioactive compound in the wound healing herb comfrey root. We’re off to a flying start with the fact that allantoin is added to lipsticks, shampoos and suntan lotions everywhere.

Importantly, in this study, allantoin’s powers matched snail slime’s quite well. Isolated allantoin led to particularly tough and well-formed collagen fibers in a wound healing group, and also made the inflammatory response to the open wound more efficient. Whole comfrey root demolished isolated allantoin for calming irritated skin in living human beings (study), but allantoin still performed well. It sounds like we have the suspect in our sights…

But there’s a big question of the actual dosage in snail slime. It’s definitely in there, that’s no myth, but according to this 2018 study, the quantities were far lower than expected: “we observed only small amounts of two components that were previously considered the signature molecules of snail mucus“. The other was glycolic acid, a relative of citric acid, which dissolves the outer layer of skin cells and gives you a fresh new sheen.

Snail slime actually contains collagen itself, 1–100mg per L, but this just a coincidence: it can’t affect MMPs. It might have benefits itself though.

Somewhere, in the rich soup of compounds making up snail slime, is a compound that downregulates collagen-destroying enzymes.

 

The verdict

Like it or not, within 2 years you will be letting snails crawl all over your face and there’s no point in resisting.

OK, that’s exaggerated. There are many other fantastic collagen remedies. Snail slime doesn’t match the basics like upping your vitamin C intake, quitting smoking, dodging arsenic and getting the correct amino acids like lysine. It isn’t cream of the crop among topical treatments either, with aloe vera, tamanu oil and shea butter to contend with.

However, this craziest of remedies looks really great in the studies, pulling all the molecular levers. Snail slime will never wipe 10 years off in 10 minutes, because MMP manipulation always takes time. As for acne, achasin is the African giant snail’s antibiotic and could easily kill p.acnes bacteria, although there are no studies. We rule out nothing, but right now, snail slime is most promising for sleek and youthful skin.

This article actually has a double purpose: it’s also a get rich quick manual written in code. If money is what you seek, then potato crops are yesterday’s hero; snails are the key.

Just look at Thailand. Farmer Phatinisiri Thangkeaw was once frowned upon by her rice farming compatriots, as her snails repeatedly escaped and ate their crops. But with the dawn of snail slime cosmetics, they started selling them back to her instead. Thangkeaw now earns $320 to $650 a month by farming 1000 snails.

Across Thailand’s Nakhon Nayok region, 80 snail farms have sprung up recently. They each sell the raw slime to Thailand’s Aden International, which enriches the slime’s quality. By selling powdered snail slime to Korean cosmetics companies as a raw material, Aden International earns a gigantic $57,000 per kg. Meanwhile, one kg of gold is currently worth $61,600. Farmers are even honing their farming methods like grass-fed meat, with free range snails that eat wild vegetables and mushrooms.

Snail slime may be a fad, but long may it continue. 

 

Thanks for reading!