Step up your self care game with collagen
Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash
The term ‘collagen’ started to bothering me lately (obviously coz am in my late twenties), so I did my own research on collagen and got pleasantly surprised with how much this amazing fundamental protein has to offer. It’s basically a self care game changer for people who like to age gracefully and healthy. Let’s see what collagen’s got!
What actually is collagen?
Collagen is the most abundant protein that can be found in our body, if simply put collagen is like the body’s “Glue” that holds body parts together. It makes up about 70%of the skin layer and present in the dermis of the skin. Stability of our body’s hair, nails, skin and joints has a high influence on the collagen production. Collagen has a spectrum of benefits ranging from plumpness of our skin to restoring the leaky gut of one’s body. Let’s elaborate its benefits on skin health
If you gut collagen, will it eventually leads to a younger looking skin?
Collagen makes up about 70% of your skin. There are other constitutes like elastin and hyaluronic acid, but collagen really is the “big guy” in skin composition.
Our skin constantly affected by age, environmental pollutants and bad food choices and tend to loss it’s plumpness and glow. Collagen plays major role in radiance and plumpness of the skin. As we mature our ability of producing collagen bows down leading to slow breaking down of the dermal layer, this process causes wrinkles and loss of elasticity. Do you know that starting from our early twenties our body’s ability of producing collagen naturally declines 1% a year! So that’s disappointing right?
When it comes to ways of incorporating collagen to our diet first thing you should know is the form of collagen that is most effective. There are some interesting natural collagen sources like fish (Scales), animal bone broth, wild berries and chicken feet (now you know the Korean skin care secret 😉 😉). But these things kinda not looking so practical to have in our daily lives, so I looked other ways of incorporating collagen and found that they are present in form of creams and supplements.
Either it is a cream or a supplement, you should check for the form of collagen that is present in the product and that should be collagen peptides. Collagen peptides are partially digested collagen that are water soluble to be easily formulated to serums, creams or supplements so that they can be easily absorbed in to the body. If we apply a cream containing hydrolyzed collagen to our skin, it will further break down to amino acid and then fibroblasts will use those amino acids to produce collagen. There are many collagen containing face creams available in the market but always look for brands that holds good trust among consumers, some of them are
- Olay wrinkle correction serum
- Drunk elephant protini polypeptide cream
- L’Oréal collagen moisturizer
Let’s see how we can get benefits from collagen supplements or drinkable collagen.
Even in collagen supplements what we need to see is whether is it containing collagen peptides. Most well renowned brands mention this in their package so you just have to read and choose. Collagen peptides are partially digested protein so that they can be easily absorbed by our body. It is advised to avoid collagen supplements that have added probiotics, antibiotics and artificial sweeteners as it could alter the activity of collagen in unfavorable ways. Collagen supplements mostly come in finely milled powder form and might have some weird after taste. So people tend to use it with their tea, coffee or smoothies.
If you are a strong evidence based person to believe in the effectiveness of a product, you’ll be happy to hear that benefits of collagen peptides on overall health has backed up by clinical trials conducted by some top rated universities. A study from the university of Kiel, Germany has found statistically, improvement in skin elasticity after 8 weeks of taking collagen supplements. They have basically given one group of people a placebo and other group a collagen peptide supplement, and later found the skin elasticity of the group who took collagen was significantly improved after the trial period. Many studies have also proved the positive effects of collagen peptide consumption on skin photo aging (aging due to solar rays).
These are some amazing collagen peptide supplements that are available in market right now
- Vital proteins collagen peptide
- Garden of life glass fed collagen beauty
- Anthony’s Hydrolyzed Marine Collagen Peptides
Collagen supplements generally considered to be safe with very minimal side effects, if you still have doubts please take a second opinion from a healthcare professional.
To sum up
Collagen peptides does not stop at being the “fountain of youth” it offers many other health benefits for an individual from restoring and preserving the cartilage that aids in bone function, improves digestion by repairing and strengthening the gut lining and enhancing weight loss by preserving lean muscle mass. So it’s really high time for all of us to consider taking a collagen supplement,if we really need a total self care “gem” that will give us a precious yield in the years to come.
