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Beauty: Snail slim facial
therapy
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Having live snails crawling on your
face sounds like the thing of nightmares, but in Japan one company is hoping
people will be prepared to pay for it. Women who want to slough off dead
skin, clear their pores or roll back the years can submit themselves to five
minutes of molluscs.
"Slime from snails helps remove old cells, heal the skin after sun burn and
moisturise it," said Manami Takamura, a spokeswoman for Tokyo-based beauty
salon Ci:z.Labo, as she placed three gastropods on a woman's face. "In this
way, you can have 100 percent pure snail essence directly on the skin."
Snail slime is believed to have an anti-ageing effect on human skin, and
some cosmetics are already sold with essence of escargot. But, Ci:z.Labo
beauty salon is going one step further in what it says is the first live
snail treatment in Japan.
As part of the salon's "Celebrity Escargot Course" customers will get five
minutes of snail therapy, along with massage and other facial treatments.
The snails alone cost 10,500 yen ($106). Sayaka Ito said she had found the
treatment so relaxing that she had almost fallen asleep.
"You can feel the snails moving on your face. At first, it is surprising,
but it's actually rather nice," she said. "My skin really does feel smooth
and moist."
Would you ever try a snail facial?
( Source:
NDTV )
Could snail slime be France's
next miracle beauty cure?
(Reuters) - The French have long appreciated
snails on a plate with butter and garlic. But one rural snail farmer believes
the humble molluscs have more to offer alive than dead.
Louis-Marie Guedon says the mucus secreted by
snails are full of collagen, glycolic acid, antibiotics and other compounds that
regenerate skin cells and heal cuts.
Guedon, from Champagnolles in the west-central
region of Charente-Maritime, believes it could presage a cosmetic revolution and
has developed a secret technique to harvest the slime.
He is busy turning the innovation into France's
first industrial-scale snail mucus extraction operation with a target to harvest
15 tonnes of it next year.
"I've already been producing the slime for three
years, but manually," said Guedon, 47, who has raised snails for a quarter of a
century.
He has secured three supply contracts with local
cosmetics labs and a Paris company that mixes cosmetics for some of the biggest
names in consumer beauty products.
"This client has already ordered three tons of
slime," Guedon said.
He sells 25 million baby snails a year to snail
farmers in France and abroad from a breeding stock of 650,000 garden snails
known by their scientific names, Helix Aspersa Minima and Helix Aspersa Maxima.
Guedon preferred not to give details of his
industrial slime extraction process. But he said the system, developed by an
independent engineer, involved placing the snails in two large containers.
After the mucus is extracted, sensitive filters
purify the product, which is then refrigerated. Salt is used, but the snails are
not killed.
Guedon's 130,000 euro investment in the project
was partially financed by small business subsidies from the French government
and the European Union.
Snail mucus has already cropped up in beauty
products sold in Asia and South America, but has yet to catch on in Europe. For
the truly adventurous, a spa in Tokyo offers facials using real live snails.
(Writing By Alexandria Sage; editing by Tom
Pfeiffer)
( Source:
Reuters )
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