PHWOAR FISHY: The Fish Sperm Facial Everyone’s Getting

There are a lot of strange/interesting skincare ingredients. Bee venom, snail slime, horse fat…even placenta. In the spotlight at the moment are polynucleotides derived from fish sperm.

Let’s get the obvious out of the way first: while these polynucleotides are derived from fish ejaculate, there isn’t a shady side hustle going on in the fish farm. Scientists have extracted DNA from the sperm and whipped it up into a clinical-grade injectable which helps boost your collagen levels.

What Are Polynucleotides?

Polynucleotides are long chains of nucleotides. If you remember anything from your GCSE science lessons, these are the building blocks of DNA. When applied to the skin, these molecules help regenerate and repair tissue at a cellular level. They are sort of high-tech messengers that tell your skin that it’s time to refresh, repair, and glow.

For this treatment, the DNA is extracted from salmon or trout sperm and purified into fragments that are biocompatible with human tissue, meaning your body recognises and welcomes them – using them to trigger healing processes, stimulate collagen production, and improve skin texture and elasticity.

Where Did This Trend Come From?

Like a lot of aesthetic medicines, polynucleotide therapy started out with actual medical applications, for example in wound healing and joint repair. When practitioners noticed how dramatically it improved skin quality, it wasn’t long before people started to explore using it for cosmetic benefits.

What Can It Actually Do?

Polynucleotide treatments are touted for their ability to:

• Hydrate and plump the skin

• Improve elasticity and firmness

• Soften fine lines and wrinkles

• Calm inflammation and redness

• Speed up healing post-laser or microneedling

What Areas Can It Treat?

Very commonly this is used to treat the under-eye area in isolation, but depending on your concerns/budget you can get it almost anywhere you like. I am greedy and like to consciously give a lot of love to my neck, so I opted for full face and neck.

How Much Does It Cost?

I had this at my usual/favourite clinic, SE1 Medical Aesthetics. For full face and neck it cost £900 per session and I had three sessions, though I received a bit of a loyal customer discount. If you just wanted one area done (e.g. your under eyes), it would cost £300 per session. 

I haven’t compared this to other clinics, but what I like about SE1 is that they never cut corners on things that will increase positive results and/or decrease negative ones. For this treatment, they pay extra for specialised needles so that their doctors can administer the polynucleotides with a much reduced chance of swelling. I did read some horror stories about people with puffed up eye bags for multiple weeks, but I had a very comfortable experience and a lightning-fast recovery.

What’s the Treatment Like?

Polynucleotide treatments are definitely more clinical than cozy. As it is an injectable treatment, you should not cut costs and seek out a doctor to administer it.

Here’s a general rundown of what to expect:

1. Prep:
Your skin will be cleansed, and a topical numbing cream is usually applied to keep things comfortable. I tried with and without the numbing cream. While it wasn’t really painful, it was much harder to relax without numbing. Especially around the eye area. 

2. Treatment:
The technique will differ depending on the practitioner, but the goal is to inject lots and lots of small amounts of the polynucleotide solution just under the skin’s surface in the desired area(s). I had my whole face and neck treated and it took about 30 minutes. At SE1 Medical Aesthetics, they use nano needles and sort of ‘flick’ the solution under the skin.

3. Aftercare:
I looked like I had a weird heat rash or had some sort of allergic reaction for a couple of hours. I was recommended an arnica cream to help with the healing, but by the next day it had almost completely disappeared.

Here you can see in how in less than an hour I went from being numbed, to a bit bloody, to just a bit red on the tube home.

Are There Risks or Downtime?

Polynucleotide treatments are generally very well tolerated, but no injectable is completely without risk. The most common side effects are:

• Mild redness or swelling

• Tiny bruises at injection sites

• Tenderness or a slightly bumpy texture for a day or two

More serious side effects are rare, especially if you're going to a qualified professional. 

When Will I See Results?

Like any treatment that’s focused on triggering your skin’s own collagen production, it takes up to three months to see the full results. So this isn’t an overnight transformation with a wild before/after. That said, out of the many treatments I’ve had, this was the one that got me the most compliments after just the first session… that’s worth something!

Most people are recommended a course of three treatments, spaced around 2–3 weeks apart, for best results. I like best results, so that’s what I did.

Final results last around 6 months, after which you can opt for a one-off maintenance session to keep your skin in that plump, dewy sweet spot.

My Personal Results

I tried to do the best possible before/after I could. I kept the same skincare regime, did not have any other procedures, and waited near enough a full three months. BUT, I have lost quite a bit of weight between now and then, which ruined the experiment a bit. I asked ChatGPT what it thought and it said that it could tell my skin quality & tone was improved and my under-eye area was noticeably softer, but that the overall improvements to facial structure are more likely a result of the weight loss. I’ll let you judge for yourself.

Before polynucleotide treatment

(Almost) three months after polynucleotides

AAA Rating

Every procedure I get received a rating from A (meh) to AAA (get it now). I rate this AAA. It is quick, almost painless, and really flexible in terms of application areas. I also very much enjoyed soaking up the compliments afterwards. The only downside is that it’s expensive to do the whole face/neck. I now either need to try and factor in £900 every six months for a refresh, or compromise on the number of areas I have treated.