Fish nibbling spas dip toe in Scottish water

• Chow down: a visitor to a fish therapy spa has her feet exfoliated by garra rufa fish nibbling the dead skin. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty

In the latest beauty craze to sweep Britain, tiny toothless carp are placed in tanks where glamorous spa-goers allow them to feast on their feet, removing dead skin to leave them soft and smooth.

Christina Wright, founder of Appy Feet, which runs a chain of fish spas in England and whose first Scottish spa opens in Edinburgh's St James Centre tomorrow, says that far from being painful, the sensation is actually quite pleasant.

"It feels like putting your feet in a bowl of champagne," she said. "It's a fizzing sensation, a very nice, gentle pins and needles. A lot of people scream or giggle in the first 30 seconds but once they understand that the fish are not going to hurt them then they can just sit back and relax."

The fish, known as garra rufa fish or doctor fish, only feed on dead or infected skin, allowing healthy skin to grow more easily. They originate in Turkey, and have long been used in the Far East to treat skin complaints. The fish saliva contains an enzyme called diathanol which is said to improve the skin regeneration process.

Joanne Revill-Price, a former local council environmental health officer who gave up her job to set up the Beauty Fish Foot Spa, which opens in Glasgow on Thursday, first came across the treatment while on holiday in Singapore.

"I saw it there several years ago and thought it was fantastic and I've been thinking seriously for the last 18 months about bringing the treatment to Scotland," she said.

"What the fish do - removing the dead skin - is something you could normally only do during a pedicure or a trip to the chiropodist's and it's not a very enjoyable process."

An average treatment takes around 20 minutes and costs 20, with around 150-200 fish nibbling on each foot.

It has also been claimed that the fish foot spa can help those suffering with a number of serious skin conditions - with some psoriasis sufferers even travelling from Britain to Turkey in order to have the treatment before it was made available in the UK.

"It's a great healer of eczema and psoriasis," said Wright. "We've got a lot of sufferers who come to us quite often and say that the day before their treatment they can't walk, and for two days afterwards they can. It's not been proven yet but there's still a lot of research going on."

However Bevis Man of the British Skin Foundation sounded a note of caution.

"Some sufferers of psoriasis believe that going to a fish spa can bring with it some benefits in terms of their symptoms. If this is the case, then by all means continue the process," he said.

"However it's worth pointing out that the actual benefits for this treatment have yet to be proven scientifically, and that it is essential to continue with the more traditional methods of psoriasis management."

Advocates of the treatment also claim that it can stimulate circulation, a common problem with diabetes sufferers.

Eddie Fullick, 52, has suffered from type two diabetes for 30 years and started visiting a fish foot spa regularly after he found the treatment alleviated his problem. "I have very bad circulation in both my hands and feet and I've found that through regular use of the tanks I was actually getting feeling on the bottom of my feet for the first time in years. My circulation would really improve and it would last eight days or so after a treatment before it started reversing."

A spokesperson for Diabetes UK said: "We've seen no evidence for it and we tend not to recommend things unless there's been research done, however if people are getting benefiting feelings from it I would imagine it's a pretty harmless treatment."

Communal tanks, common throughout the Far East, have been accused of being "unhygienic", and the practice has been banned in seven American states. But both Scottish fish spas insist that they have the highest hygienic standards.

What it felt like

EMMA BARBER, 34, is an environmental consultant working in Glasgow

"I WAS on holiday with my partner in Singapore when I saw somewhere that was doing the fish foot spa treatment. I wouldn't normally go for a pedicure, I'm not into anything like that really, but because it was something so different I decided to give it a go.

"Unlike some of the fish spas in this country where you have individual treatment areas, it was communal, so you take your shoes and socks off, sit down with everyone else and just put your feet into this big tank. I was a bit wary at first, and when you put your feet in it feels really strange, just so weird. The fish come swimming round your feet and it's a really odd sensation, like a tingling feeling. It's a bit ticklish, which is not to say if you don't like your feet being tickled then you won't like it, because it's really quite a lovely feeling. It's like a foot massage, except that the pressure's a lot lighter than if it was being done by hands.

"As it went on I was thinking, I shouldn't really be doing this, it doesn't seem right somehow, but the feeling was so nice that I began to relax. My treatment was about 20 minutes long and I was quite reluctant to get out by the end of it, I could have stayed there for ages. My feet had been aching because I'd been doing loads of walking all that day and it really takes that ache away."