Kim Kardashian is putting what on her face? The reality star and Skims founder is no stranger to testing new devices and services in the name of beauty experimentation, and she just tried one of her most out-there treatments yet.
In a recent episode of her Hulu series The Kardashians, the SKKN founder revealed that she tried a new skincare treatment made from salmon sperm. Yes, you read that right: salmon sperm. "I got a salmon sperm facial with salmon sperm injected into my face," Kardashian explains in the episode.
It sounds wild at first, but the thing is, a version of this treatment is actually already popular overseas. Polynucleotide injections, which are made with DNA derived from fish semen, have gotten some buzz as of late after popping up in Australia and in Korea. As Allure reported in May, studies have shown that polynucleotide can be beneficial for wound healing, because they support tissue regeneration and stimulate collagen production. As an injectable, “early in vivo studies have shown improvement in skin tone, fine lines, skin elasticity, and hydration,” Rod J. Rohrich, MD, a board-certified plastic surgeon in Dallas, previously told Allure.
The injections go by names including Pluryal Silk and Nucleofill, and some doctors overseas are using them as a skin booster (delivering shallow injections to make skin glow) or mixed with hyaluronic acid to instantly plump and boost skin's own regeneration over time.
You can't get polynucleotide injections in the US, though the Kardashian effect could potentially shine a little more light on them, maybe piquing interest—but that's a big maybe. No version of polynucleotide injections are currently approved by the FDA. “I don't know when the FDA is going to ever approve milt-derived chemical compounds for human use in Americans,” Roy Kim, MD, a board-certified plastic surgeon in San Francisco, has previously told Allure. (Milt is another word for fish semen.)
Kardashian didn't specify what type of treatment she had gotten, or where she'd had it done.
Turns out that Kardashian isn't the only celebrity experimenting with fish sperm as skincare. In 2023, Jennifer Aniston shared that she had tried it too. “First of all, I said, ‘Are you serious? How do you get salmon’s sperm?’” Aniston told WSJ, adding that she didn't notice any major results and prefers weekly peptide treatments. Kardashian herself has tried vampire facials—which she has said she regrets—and once said she would “eat poop” if it kept her looking young. “I was kind of joking, but now that I think about it, I would probably eat shit if someone told me, ‘If you eat this bowl of poop every single day, you’ll look younger,'" Kardashian told Allure in 2022 before amending her response to maybe just a bite.
Will we all be injecting salmon sperm into our faces in the future? It's certainly not impossible, but we'll let Kim lead the way for now.
