Aidan:
Hello and welcome to the Ideal Nutrition podcast. My name is Aidan Muir and I’m here with my co-host, Leah Higl. And this is episode 216, where we are going to be talking about collagen for skin health. And the structure of the podcast today is basically going to be a bit of a brief intro where we talk about the mechanism and give a bit of a broad overview.
And then for the rest of it, we’re basically going to be going a little bit back and forth, going through the arguments for and against collagen. Starting with the arguments for, and sharing our two cents on that. Then, arguments against, sharing our two cents there. We will then give a bit of a summary.
Leah:
Starting firstly with mechanisms. So, the very oversimplified version is that because collagen does make up a very large portion of the dry weight of skin, theoretically, supplementing collagen could help. If we were to draw this out to a slightly more complicated version, as people age, collagen in the skin does become fragmented. As well as the fibroblasts, which normally produce and maintain collagen, tend to become impaired, also.
And it’s both of these changes that contribute to things like wrinkles. So, in theory, supplementing collagen could potentially offset this. Now moving a little bit into dosage and how to take it, like normally we wouldn’t put this particular information so early in the show. We’d usually leave this like more towards the end. But it’s a bit of a relevant aspect for interpreting the research and the rest of the things we’re going to discuss.
Essentially, the standard dosage based on current research that helps from a skin perspective is 2.5 to 10 grams per day, potentially. So both bovine and marine collagen could work, but marine collagen is actually the one that appears to be more closely linked to skin health. Ideally we’d be looking at taking 2.5 to 10 grams daily of either the Marine Collagen or the Bovine with the Marine Collagen having a bit more link with skin specifically.
Aidan:
Now we’re going to start with the arguments for. So, argument one, the research shows that it helps. And it’s not just a tiny amount of research. We have a meta analysis of 26 randomised control trials finding consistent benefits.
With the majority of topics, if you have that much research finding consistent benefits, you would just jump straight towards being, this probably works. That’s where the research stands right now.
Leah:
So the research does consistently find that that specific 2.5 to 10 grams of collagen supplemented daily for at least eight weeks is linked with improved skin elasticity and hydration.
Another general argument you could make is that collagen supplementation improves collagen synthesis in the body and the amino acids glycine, proline and hydroxyproline are most linked with this. So again, from a mechanistic point of view, it makes sense and then the research is also quite promising.
Aidan:
Yeah, and I largely agree with that as well. We do see that in research. We see an increase in collagen synthesis. We do see those amino acids being mostly linked to it. We would probably talk about the debate later about whether just increasing total protein intake in general does that.
But, we do consistently see collagen research leading to improvements in skin health. And we also only really find hydroxyproline in collagen supplements. So that’s unique and not something we would see with general protein intake.
The third argument we’ll go with is that some studies have found a measurable reduction in wrinkle depth after eight to 12 weeks of supplementation, particularly with that hydrolyzed marine or even bovine collagen.
Leah:
So definitely agreeing with the caveats there that this has been a consistent finding, but the results are not huge. I think that’s a really important part. Like they’re relatively modest improvements, especially when we’re looking at things like the wrinkle depth and those kinds of outcomes. And it’s not necessarily super noticeable.
That is noteworthy. Another argument you could make though, on like the counter side to that is supplementing with collagen is safe and it doesn’t really have any downsides other than like the financial aspect of purchasing a supplement. So if this is something you are interested in, it’s probably worth trialing, even if there is limited improvements, because there are very limited downsides.
Aidan:
Yeah, this is an easy agree. Obviously, if you didn’t want to pay for it for the small potential benefit, fair enough. I do think effort is a bit of a cost in a way, as well as being like, if you lower the bar too low, you can end up taking 20 plus different supplements. But if you want to try it, there is no downside.
So it is an easy agree. Now, let’s talk about the arguments against collagen being helpful for skin health. So argument number one, it might not outperform basic protein plus nutrient sufficiency.
Leah:
Yeah, I think this is a big one because the combo of those things probably does matter more. And there are a lot of nutrients that play a role in skin health. And even outside of nutrition, there’s a lot of things that play a role in skin health. Like sun exposure, wearing sunscreen, things like that.
But, just because other stuff matters also doesn’t mean that collagen cannot play a role. And it might be one of those things that is like a small, easy win, just like a lot of supplements that we talk about. And if we take the research at face value, there’s enough there to indicate that if protein is matched, results do still seem to favor the collagen supplementation groups.
Because although research isn’t directly testing that the dosage of collagen used is often so low that it doesn’t noticeably increase protein intake and there does still seem to be a positive outcome. But, playing a bit of devil’s advocate, many studies in this area of research are industry funded. So, a large portion of positive research is funded by supplement companies that are selling collagen supplements, which could potentially raise concerns about bias.
Aidan:
This is a common thing I see people say, but I do largely disagree with it. And I think a lot of the people saying it just actually haven’t checked. It’s just something that’s very easy to say. But one, if you go through and actually look at all of the research, there is a surprisingly high amount of non-industry-funded research.
It is less than 50 % of the studies in randomised control trials out there, but it’s still surprisingly high. The reason I chuck this surprisingly in there is when you think about it, you’re like, why would somebody who’s not in the industry, like why would they fund this? If you’re trying to sell college supplements and you believe it helps you with skin health, of course you would fund it because it helps you sell your products.
If you weren’t in that camp, like why would you be spending money on this? But we actually do have research on that. And the thing that makes this a clear largely disagree is the outcomes of research that is not funded by industry in this area are equally as good as the industry funded ones. You can fact check that yourself if you want. In the show notes, we’ve got that meta analysis. You could go through every individual one if you want.
I don’t think there’s many people out there doing that, which is why this claim exists. But you can check that if you want. Now, the third argument, and we to a degree have shot ourselves in the foot a little bit with stuff we’ve spoken earlier, but the third argument that people say is that collagen is digested like any protein.
Leah:
Yeah, and we could definitely partially disagree with this. We’ve already kind of covered that where there are relevant aspects like the hydroxyproline being very unique to collagen, but also on the flip side, the research just looks positive in general. So, kind of grain of salt with that one to a certain degree.
And then another argument could be made around lack of standardisation with collagen products. So, different products in practice might not be as good as each other. And it’s like, what are we actually comparing here in terms of like dosages and other ingredients in these particular supplements.
Aidan:
And this one’s an easy agree as well. Some of them have too low of a dosage of collagen, although it’s a bit odd because as I was saying, like there’s that quite low 2.5 range, like 2.5 to 10 is the range we’re typically looking at. So, if you’ve got less than 2.5, that’s pretty crazy, but some products do.
Some don’t even contain collagen at all. And they list collagen on the front of the product, more through the lens of having other ingredients that they believe would boost collagen production, but it’s something still worth looking for. This one is less of a common criticism of collagen, more specifically of supplements just in general, but it is a pretty easy to agree with that standardisation.
Leah:
A little bit of a summary, some take-home points from everything we’ve discussed. Right now, the evidence does lean in favour of collagen being beneficial or helpful for skin health. If you really care about skin health, it’s likely worth doing if you have the context that it doesn’t make a huge difference and it’s just going to be just one of the things you’re doing amongst many things that you were doing to take care of your skin health.
Our colleague, Sophie, used wording that we really liked that was along the lines of, in research, collagen has been found to help with things like fine lines but not deep set wrinkles. So, I think just having realistic expectations around collagen supplementation, if this is like the main goal for you, is important.
I wouldn’t expect anything magical to happen. It’s not going to be an option that is like Botox or something like that. It’s not going to have that kind of crazy difference, but it could be that five to 10 % difference over a long period of time that you might be looking for.
Aidan:
This has been episode 216 of the Ideal Nutrition Podcast. As always, if you could please leave a rating and review, that would be greatly appreciated.