Collagen Supplements
To supplement or not ? Skin health, joint health in particular. Controversial topic
Yeah yeah, you donโt need to watch it, but I thought this video was quite reasonable.
Weโve heard a lot about oral collagen supplementation for a while.
As you probably already know, collagen is a crucial, widely present protein involved in tissue structure, strength, elasticity, repair, shock absorption and a number of other things too.
It comes in its own variations: type I,II,III, at least up to XXVIII in humans apparently. Some of these collagens have very specific locations and purposes, although 90% of collagen in humans is type I.
Like so many things, collagen production declines with age after our mid 20s.
Thereโs been a lot of interest in collagen, particularly with regards skin health (anti-aging perhaps), but also joint health, bone health and even performance. The jury seems to be out on some or all of thisโparticularly around skin, but there are some studies and also anecdotally some people do see benefits in some ways.
For example when I have used collagen I notice an improvement in knee pain.
Other people report this too. No this isnโt โscienceโ, and we have to be careful interpreting comments on YouTube (comments praising health stuff on YouTube can be nonsense) but these comments do tally with my own experience and I was surprised when I noticed this effect. And although I havenโt vetted them, there is some research on this subject which appears positive.
If supplemental collagen does do something, itโs a bit of mystery how it does it.
As the video by Dr. Gary explains, collagen is a long peptide chain, the gut breaks these chains down, and most of what is soldโhydrolised collagen with the unpleasant partially digested odour (and derived from either beef or fish)โis already broken down into smaller peptide chains. What actually reaches the tissues we want, and in what form, is unclear.
Itโs a remarkably similar situation to another supplement offered for skin health (and sometimes joint health), hyaluronic acid, which is a polysaccharide (a complex sugar chain made up of simpler ones).
In this case the body actually treats HA something like fibre, and studies Iโve seen seem to show hardly any reaches target tissues, a lot of it becomes food for the gut microbiome. But HA does have some measurable hydrating effect on the skin nonetheless (for as long as you take it), and one may assume it could also be affecting other tissues to some extent.
Therefore itโs been speculated by some that in both cases, the body, seeing these molecules, takes it as an instruction to make more of its own.
If supplemental collagen works through some signalling pathway, as opposed to directlyโand nobody really knowsโ as itโs relatively expensive, you could probably get away with as little as 5g EOD.
Similarly the effects of 200mg of HA last about 3-4 days (you donโt need to take it everyday for skin although itโs cheap).
People sometimes wonder what is the point of taking a supplement if youโre already getting sufficient quantities of a molecule in the dietโin this case collagen is found in fish, chicken, organ meats; while the things that form it (glycine, proline, vitamin C and so on) are found in loads of other things, (how many people really have bone broth?).
But anyone whoโs used supplements will tell you thereโs a world of difference.
The body just seems to process a concentrated separated supplement differently and far more actively and you canโt easily dose these kinds of molecule with diet. For example thereโs no comparison trying to get enough creatine in the diet for performance enhancing effects from meats and so on to even 1-3g of some creatine product. The two things are not comparable.
As with all these things your mileage may vary. But if you have knee joint pain, itโs probably worth at least a shot.
Have you used collagen? What effects, if any, did you notice ?
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