Fitness
World Ocean Day: Why everyone is obsessed with sea moss – and five other great beauty products from the sea
Search Beautytok — the Tiktok subculture focused on sharing tips, tricks, and new products in the beauty industry — and chances are you’ll notice a surplus of teens and wellness influencers digging teaspoons into jars of what looks like slime.
The substance is often green, sometimes yellow, but always gelatinous. Many of them scrunch their noses when swallowing, and almost all of them say: “I swear by taking this product every day.” (At the time of writing, the term boasts 1.3 billion views on the platform.)
Hailed by fans as a miracle worker, sea moss — otherwise known as Chondrus crispus — is a common edible sea vegetable that can be found on rocky shores in the Northern Atlantic.
Like other frilly sea vegetables, such as nori and kelp, sea moss is rich in nutrients such as magnesium, iodine, iron, folate and calcium.
The plant can be consumed raw and in supplement form, but it’s more often consumed as a gel, made by soaking the dried plant in water, blending it and letting it coalesce in the fridge.
Some claim it has helped to heal their gut, clear their skin, regulate their menstrual cycle, strengthen their immune system and/or help them shed weight.
The foremost sea moss business in Ireland is Sea Moss Sublime, run by 26-year-old Lucia McCabe and her team of seven in a two-storey office in Ballymount. McCabe came to it by way of her own, years-long struggle with hormonal acne.
“At one stage I was offered Roaccutane, but I was told that if I got pregnant while taking it, my baby could be deformed, and I was just so horrified,” she says.
“So I started researching natural ways to clear acne and I came across an American blogger talking about sea moss on TikTok.”
That was the late summer of 2022, right before McCabe found an Irish supplier.
“I started to develop my own formula through trial and error. Then within one week of taking it, my skin cleared up completely. I posted a before-and-after photo on my Instagram, and from then on my DMs were flooded. Within a month, Sea Moss Sublime was in business.”
The consumption of sea moss isn’t new or entirely foreign; the cell walls of sea moss contain carrageenan, a sulfated polysaccharide primarily obtained from red algae and used as an important ingredient in the cosmetic industry.
But in recent years, celebrities like Kim Kardashian and Hailey Bieber have helped sea moss rise to the fore in its own right.
Today, Sea Moss Sublime sells four sea moss-centric products: gels, gummies, capsules and face masks.
And the brand’s main marketing tool is the same thing that’s worked from day one: Before and after pictures.
“I used to ask people to send me before and after shots because I knew the product worked,” McCabe said. “I’d give out free jars to those who did it, and people were really responsive to that.”
Indeed, the company’s Instagram account boasts a number of these photographs, mostly of young women, all who suggest that sea moss is responsible for clearing up everything from acne to eczema and/or psoriasis.
“If you’ve got eczema or psoriasis, you need to listen to me,” one woman in an Instagram video on the profile says. “The secret is sea moss.”
Looking to protect cells from oxidative stress as well as maintain your hair and nails? Seabody Beauty uses Maraderm™ extract from bladderwrack to do so.
Voya made their name on their Sligo seaweed baths. Today, you can enjoy their multiple benefits from home.
All Rí Na Mara products incorporate natural ingredients from the sea. Their Facial Oil, using all natural oils, is particularly good.
This light, pore-minimising formula contains a complex of Algae, Kelp and Seaweed extracts and is designed to brighten and improve the skin’s surface appearance.
A bath and body product that uses both Atlantic kelp extract to invigorate the body, and plastic reclaimed from the sea to do some good.
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