Why You Should Skip The Poop Facial At All Costs (Despite The Obvious)

You've read that right. Brazilian model Debora Peixoto posted a reel on Instagram featuring her smearing her own poop on her face. She wrote, "I saw a study about it and decided to try it! It worked for me, my skin stopped flaking!" She pulls a small jar of her poop from her refrigerator, then cuts to her dabbing the brown stuff on her face using a wooden stick.

You guessed it. It was stinky, so she used a clothespin to guard her from the smell. (Read what the smell of your poop says about your health.) She then rinses and shows off her skin, saying how wonderful her skin feels. Although the video has about 2,400 likes, it's garnered 425,000 views.

People who commented on the reel thought it was satire, criticizing how people do shocking things because they read or saw it online. One commenter made a good point about why this is a bad idea. "We can all agree that our intestines eliminate the toxins and the [poop emoji] our body does not need."

Doctors agree, too. Dermatologist Dr. Sophie Momen told The Mirror that poop facials like this can get you seriously sick. "There is absolutely no scientific benefit to your skin in using feces as a face mask," she said. "In reality, this could pose more problems than benefits."

When you really think about it, a poop facial doesn't make much sense. Your body extracts the nutrients it needs from your food and gets rid of the [poop emoji] that isn't or is no longer useful. (Read what it means when you have undigested food in your poop.) 

According to The Conversation, your poop is made of 75% water, but that 25% could have some minerals that you might find in a typical facial mask. But do you want to put live bacteria on your face? How about viruses? You could have up to a billion viruses in a gram of your poop, especially when you're sick.

Plastic surgeon Tunc Tiryaki advises against poop facials because they're unhealthy and unsanitary. "Applying feces to your face can introduce these pathogens into your body through small cuts, abrasions, or mucous membranes, leading to severe skin infections or systemic illnesses," he told The Mirror. "These substances are harmful and can cause inflammation, irritation, and allergic reactions on the skin."

Peixoto said she got the idea of a poop facial from a "study," adding an image of a headline that perhaps got lost in translation. The headline said, "Harvard wants to create a poop bank that can be used to reverse aging." This refers to a 2022 opinion in Trends in Molecular Medicine that suggested that donating your stool when you're healthy and disease-free can help rejuvenate your gut microbiome when you're older. It was actually talking about a fecal transplant, which is a procedure that helps control infection. And no, you don't slab it on your face.

Perhaps Peixoto mixed the fecal transplant literature with the bird poop facial masks used for centuries in Japan. (No, don't scrape the bird poop off your car and smear it on your face, either.) To create these masks, nightingale birds are fed seeds that were produced via organic farming methods, and their poop is sterilized from bacteria, fungi, and other harmful stuff. One writer at The Guardian wasn't impressed with the results. "Nightingale facials are not ineffective, but they are unnecessary and weird," he wrote.