Japanese Beauty Clinic Offers ‘Snail Facial’

Having snails crawling across your face may sound creepy, but Japanese women are being offered just that as a beauty treatment.

Starting on Monday, women who want to get rid of dead skin, clear their pores or roll back the years can submit themselves to a snail facial.

Manami Takamura, an employee of the Tokyo-based beauty salon Ci:z.Labo, explained that ‘Slime from snails helps remove old cells, heal the skin after sunburn and moisturise it.



‘In this way, you can have 100 per cent pure snail essence directly on the skin,’ she said

As part of the salon’s ‘Celebrity Escargot Course’ customers get a 60-minute treatment costing £161.

This begins with faces being washed before the molluscs are gently placed on the cheeks and forehead then allowed to move around as they please. Then comes a series of massages, masks and electrical pulse machines using creams infused with snail mucus to ensure that the live secretions fully penetrate the skin.

Snail slime is claimed to have an anti-ageing effect on human skin, and some cosmetics are already sold with essence of escargot.