Snail Mucin: Before or After Hyaluronic Acid?
“New” active ingredients show up in the skin care world all the time, but are they worth all the hype?
When it comes to snail mucin, another active that's been made popular by K Beauty trends, the history is deeper and more promising than you may think.
When introducing snail mucin into your routine, it’s important to know exactly where it fits in. Should you apply it in the morning or as part of your evening routine? Should you apply snail mucin before or after hyaluronic acid?
Let’s take a deep dive into snail mucin and help you sort out how to incorporate this product into your skin care ritual.
What is snail mucin?
Snail mucin is the skin care term for what's essentially snail slime. We know — that may sound like a skin care ingredient you’re not interested in putting on your face, but hear us out.
Snail mucin is experiencing a massive surge in popularity — one that has been extremely well-earned. This ingredient has the potential to make a big difference in your skin’s health, wellness and appearance.
But how?
Essentially, snail mucin is one of the primary biological tools that snails have to make sure their bodies stay hydrated and lubricated — after all, that’s how they’re able to get around so effectively. For snails, no mucin means no transportation. It’s crucial to their survival.
Those same properties also translate directly into benefits for your skin. If you’ve been around the skin care world for any time at all, you know how important hydration is. While there are a lot of different ways to improve and support your skin, providing it with moisture is an absolute must.
Plus, snail mucin is rich in components like antioxidants, collagen and elastin, which are also game-changers for your skin. When used properly, snail mucin can not only boost your skin’s hydration status but also help it appear younger, firmer and more radiant.
What is hyaluronic acid?
Hyaluronic acid (or HA) is a staple in many people’s skin care routines — and for good reason! Hyaluronic acid has more than earned its place in the skin care hall of fame. This ingredient can be found naturally in the body (like in joint spaces and around the eyes), so it's one people typically respond well to — natural products are usually far more easily accepted by the body.
When you think about hyaluronic acid, think: hydration.
HA is best known for its incredible ability to both attract moisture to the skin and hold it inside the skin. With an increase in skin hydration comes firmer, plumper skin that is less likely to show fine lines and wrinkles. It’s also more resilient, bouncing back much more easily than skin with a compromised moisture barrier.
And honestly? No layer of the skin on your face is as crucial as the moisture barrier (also known as the stratum corneum layer of the epidermis). The moisture barrier performs two separate but equally important jobs — keeping external factors (like environmental pollutants and toxins) out while also keeping the moisture already inside your skin from escaping.
Supporting the skin barrier should be one of the main goals of your skin care routine, and using hyaluronic acid is one of the most effective ways to do this.
Is it better to apply snail mucin before or after hyaluronic acid?
The best skin care routines are put together like a successful game of Tetris — every step, skin care product and active ingredient has to fit perfectly into the others around it. Snail mucin and hyaluronic acid are no different.
When they’re seamlessly incorporated into your skin care routine, they have the potential to be a true power duo.
The key to knowing if you should use snail mucin before or after hyaluronic acid is looking at the products themselves. Both of these ingredients can be found in a range of skin care products, from cleansers to moisturizers and beyond.
If your actives are found in different types of products, follow the usual progression — cleanser (an absolute must for prepping your skin for the rest of your routine), toner, serums, then moisturizer.
As far as consistency goes, snail mucin products tend to be a little heavier than hyaluronic acid products. Because of that, people choose to either separate them out (using the lighter hyaluronic acid during the day and snail mucin at night) or use them sparingly. Less is more, especially in the case of serums. Using too much doesn’t make your skin better — it just means you'll use it up faster.
If you do combine snail mucin and hyaluronic acid, you’ll want to start with your hyaluronic acid product. As a general rule of thumb, you’ll always want to start with whichever serum product is thinner in consistency. This allows each product to be as effective as possible, as it has a better chance to get deeper inside the pores. While it wouldn’t hurt anything to use snail mucin before hyaluronic acid, it may stop the HA product from working as well.
How to add snail mucin and hyaluronic acid to your skin care routine
Now that you know the correct order to apply your snail mucin and hyaluronic acid, you just need to know where to apply them in your routine.
The first step is always to start with cleansing your skin thoroughly. Your skin is constantly coming into contact with external factors, like pollutants.
In addition, your hormones and body’s natural ability to create sebum also lead to buildup on the skin’s surface. In order to make the best use of your products, you need to clear this away so that your pores are as open and accepting to your skin care products as possible.
Once your skin is cleansed, this is where a toner would fit into your routine. Toners help to further remove any debris from your pores and really prep your skin for serums. Another benefit of using a toner (especially one that contains an exfoliant) and hydrators together is that they can help soothe the skin — it’s a real win-win.
After your toner has dried, it’s time for your snail mucin and hyaluronic acid (or, should we say, hyaluronic acid and snail mucin).
Even though both hyaluronic acid and snail mucin are effective moisturizers, you'll still need to use at least a lightweight moisturizer to finish your routine. This can also work to seal in moisture and, when combined with a quality sunscreen, can also keep your skin healthy and protected — both in the long-term and the short-term.
How else can you keep your skin glowy and hydrated?
While snail mucin and hyaluronic acid can both do wonders for your skin’s radiance and hydration status, they aren’t the only way that you can achieve the results you’re looking for. Boosting your skin care routine with a few expertly placed and prescribed treatments can really help to enhance your complexion even more.
One of our favorite multi-purpose skin care treatments at Skin Pharm is microneedling. If you’ve never heard of this impressive, well-rounded cosmetic treatment, we’d love to let you in on how it works and why we love it.
Microneedling works by tricking the skin into thinking that it has been injured, so the skin naturally sends increased collagen-repairing cells to the areas of treatment.
The result is an improvement not just in your hydration status but also in fine lines, hyperpigmentation, scarring and skin firmness. Plus, microneedling requires less downtime than many other treatment options — but we still recommend scheduling your appointment at least a couple weeks before any big events.
If you want to bump up your results even further, add platelet-rich plasma (PRP) to your treatment. PRP harnesses the amazing powers of your own body’s healing abilities to transform your skin and boost its ability to repair itself. This isn’t a new concept, either.
Certain medical specialties, like orthopedics and wound clinics, have been utilizing PRP for decades. The more we learn about it, the easier it becomes to utilize it to improve our skin’s health and beauty. PRP can be injected just under the skin’s surface on its own or applied to the skin and gently microneedled in.
In summary...
Knowing whether snail mucin should go before or after hyaluronic acid is just half the battle — understanding which skin care ingredients can be safely combined and the best practices for doing that is also crucial.
If you’re working to create the perfect routine to best support your skin, Skin Pharm is here to help.
Sources:
Advancing Discovery of Snail Mucins Function and Application | PMC
Hyaluronic Acid: A Powerful Biomolecule with Wide-Ranging Applications—A Comprehensive Review | PMC
Review of applications of microneedling in dermatology | PMC
