How Can Collagen Improve Your Skin
Collagen is the most abundant protein found in the human body. It is in bones, skins, muscles, and tendons. It’s the scaffold that holds the body together.
Collagen is classified into two types: the endogenous and the exogenous.
- Endogenous collagen: It is synthesized naturally by the body. They have a number of very important functions. The depletion of endogenous collagen can cause several health problems.
- Exogenous collagen: It is an artificially synthesized collagen. They are synthetic and introduced into the body through ways such as supplements. They are also used for medical and cosmetic purposes, including the repair of body tissues.
What Is A Collagen?
Collagen is a hard, insoluble, and fibrous protein that accounts for about one-third of the body protein composition. Collagen comes from the Greek word ‘kolla’ meaning glue. It literally holds the bones, skins, muscles, tendons, and ligaments together. It is also found in blood vessels, corneas, and teeth.
How Can Collagen Improve Your Skin Health?
Collagen plays a vital role in strengthening skin health. As you age, your body produces less collagen, thereby causing dry skin and the formation of wrinkles. The artificial introduction of collagen helps in slowing down this process, by reducing wrinkles and dryness.
A study showed that female subjects who took a collagen supplement containing about 2.5 to 5 grams of collagen for 8 weeks experience less dry skin and wrinkles than those who didn’t take the supplement.
This wrinkle-slowing down effect of the collagen is attributed to its ability to stimulate the body to naturally create collagen. Also, taking these supplements also boost the production of other essential skin proteins including elastin and fibrillin.
There are also claims that collagen supplements help in removing acnes, but this has not been supported by scientific research.
Foods That Contain Collagen
The consumption of collagen-rich meals is a natural and easy way of improving skin health. Collagen is found in connective tissues of animals. Thus, the consumption of chicken skin, pork, beef fish, etc., are great sources of collagen.
Foods like contain gelatin-like bone broth are also sources of collagen. Gelatin is the product of cooked collagen. Unfortunately, studies are yet to prove that eating collagen-rich foods increases the collagen level of the body after it has been cooked. Hence, supplements are essential and more effective.
Digestive enzymes break down the collagen in foods into amino acids and peptides. However, supplements contain broken down collagen, this makes it easy for the body to assimilate it more easily than collagen in food.
Side Effects of Collagen
There are not many known risks associated with taking collagen supplements. Collagens are made from food allergens like fish, eggs, etc. People who have an allergic reaction to these foods are affected by these collagen supplements.
Potentially, the intake of collagen supplements has the potential to cause digestible side effects like heartburns.
In a Nutshell
The ingestion of collagen has many beneficial health effects with few risks. Supplements reduce wrinkling and drying of the skin and may also increase muscle mass. Collagens also reduce bone loss and relieve joint pain.
Since studies are yet to prove the effectiveness of collagen-rich foods after they have been cooked, supplements are great alternatives. Supplements are easy to use and relatively safe.