Twitching down your skin and sucking out your blood, leeches might easily prompt cringes. They can also, presumably, soak years out of your visage. Australian model Miranda Kerr gave the tiny creatures a chance.
This past weekend, Kerr attended Goop Health Summit, organized by actress Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop skincare brand in Culver City, California. There, the model revealed she has put herself under leeches' hundreds of teeth in the name of beauty. While Kerr’s unorthodox skincare experiment immediately buzzed over the internet, the routine is not particularly novel.
“It’s adventurous,” a slew of media outlets quoted Kerr. “Health is wealth. They’ve been doing leech therapy for thousands of years.”
Leech facials have garnered attention in the last several years. Yet, the procedure has often raised eyebrows in either disbelief, disgust or both. Even Paltrow, who is known for her extravagant skincare recommendations like vaginal steaming and bee sting therapy, did not hide her surprise at Kerr’s encounter with the bloodsucking worms.
The model not only let the leeches feed on her blood. She found them a new home – her koi pond. Kerr took the leeches with her to prevent their death after the facial (leeches cannot be used more than once and are, hence, killed).
While Kerr is the latest celebrity to make news with her leech facial, the benefits of the treatment are both lauded and disputed. Contained in leaches’ saliva is a gamut of proteins and lipids, especially topical lipids that are considered to be good skin moisturizers. Yet, the beauty effects of the concoction of one’s blood and leeches’ saliva are still to be studied in depth.
