Sea snails amazing benefits

Scaly-foot sea snail (Crysomallon squamiferum)

There is no doubt that snail slime has plenty of qualities like curing pain. Snail slime contains chemical products that allows them to catch their preys when they bite them. Researchers at Queensland University, Australia, have used it to develop an oral medication to ease the most severe cases of pain with an efficacy as similar to morphine’s. 

Snail medication creates no addiction and is required in small doses to work. After proving these effects, scientists used to relive pain in humans. At first it had to be injected directly onto the spine, with a limited usage.

In its oral form, snail slime gets to ease the severe pain as the one suffered by people with a peripheral neuropathy, in much more smaller doses than the regular medications used to treat this condition, and with no risk of addiction.

Another amazing quality of sea snails is the strength of their shells. According to the MIT, the shell of the Crysomallon squamiferum snail (that lives in the Indic Ocean) is so resistant that it can be used to as base to make shields for soldiers and to improve of military vehicle armour. 

Familiarly called scaly-foot snail, the shell of this gastropod is different from any other natural shell. It has three layers, able to divide the energy that could weaken or fracture it. This makes of it the strongest of protection.

Snail slime as a beauty product

One of the reasons why snail farming is so profitable these days is because of its slime. That’s right; snail slime is used in the manufacturing of skin care and skin beauty products as the famosue "snail cream".

Medicinal properties of snail’s slime are known from Ancient times. It was used as syrup for cough and ulcers. But in the late 20th century as snail farming grew for culinary use, they were discovered the skin regenerating effects it had in snail farm workers for healing their wounds and the smoothness for their hands. Snail has, among other properties, regenerating its very own tissues and shell.

The slime of the Helix Aspersa specie is the one used for the beauty industry to prevent as to treat skin problems such as:

• Acné
• Warts
• Cellulites
• Scars
• Stretch marks
• Wrinkles
• Skin blemishes
• Wounds
• Burns

Dermatologists and pharmaceutics guarantee the efficacy of snail slime, but warn that for beauty products made of it to have antioxidant en regenerating properties; the slime must have been extracted when snails are stressed out.