All the skincare experts and beauty gurus have gone crazy over collagen.

Collagen is in every personal care product on the market: creams, lotions, oils, serums, soaps, and everything else.

So, of course, supplement manufacturers are fighting to sell you collagen in an easy-to-swallow form. We've been conditioned since Dr. Linus Pauling overhyped Vitamin C to buy as a supplement whatever we want more of inside our bodies, whether that makes sense or not.

Collagen is critical to the health and appearance of your skin, so it's hard to overstate its importance.

Collagen Holds You Together

Fundamentally, collagen is just another protein. It's not complete, however, because it's missing the amino acid tryptophan. 

It makes up 30% of your body's protein - 75% of the entire weight of your skin.

Because a reduction in collagen is most noticeable in our skin, that's what most concerns us. However, it's required for all our tissues that need strength: connective tissues such as bones, ligaments, muscles, and tendons.

In your skin, collagen provides most of the size and mass. It's sort of like a concrete wall, though it's not only firm but flexible. It helps give your skin its elasticity.

That's why the loss of collagen also makes your skin thinner and stiffer.

The Problem of Collagen Degradation Over Time

Like all good things, collagen goes down as we age. We lose around 1% each year.

That's not much year over year, but eventually, the skin that started out looking new, full, and fresh as a baby began to look like the shattered concrete walls of a Berlin apartment building at the end of World War II.

Collagen also carries out biological functions that also help keep your skin strong and looking youthful.

Collagen creates fibroblasts in the middle of your skin, the dermis layer. That helps new skin grow.

It also helps replace dead skin cells.

In addition, collagen helps your blood clot.

Lifestyle Threats to Your Collagen

To have more collagen - certainly to slow down your rate of collagen loss:

1. Quit smoking

2. Stay out of damaging sunlight

3. Stop consuming foods with processed sugars and grains

Collagen is also damaged by autoimmune diseases and genetic mutations. (If your problem is rheumatoid arthritis or lupus, see your doctor.)

About Consuming Collagen

However, just because collagen is so important, that doesn't mean we need to swallow supplements of it.

It appears we're supposed to make it, not take it. 

The collagen molecule is quite large. Until recently, we believed that, if swallowed, it wouldn't survive the digestion process. 

(Remember: during digestion, your body breaks food down into the very small molecules it can absorb and put to use.)

However, research scientists have found tiny pieces of ingested collagen in the blood of experimental animals.

Collagen peptides are tiny pieces of collagen molecules. When consumed by mouth, these pieces apparently can accumulate in your skin and your cartilage.

Supplement manufacturers hope that's what you want. However, there's no strong evidence that random collagen peptides you swallow in a capsule help your body even if they survive digestion.

Do You Really Want to Swallow Another Animal's Collagen?

Just as we do, animals manufacture their own collagen for their own hard and tough body parts: bones, tendons, teeth, hair, gristles, and other connective tissues.

Supplement sellers don't make collagen from scratch. That pill on Amazon could contain such popular sources of collagen as:

* kangaroo tails

* duck feet

* bird's feet

* horse skin

* rat tail tendons

* frog skin

* alligator bones and skin

* sheepskin

* fish bones, heads, scales, entrails, fins and skins

Most collagen in the US comes from cows instead of kangaroos. However, 2-4% of the population are allergic to bovine collagen. That means two to four collagen supplement consumers out of every hundred will experience an allergic reaction to collagen obtained from cattle.

Collagen from cows also comes with another risk: "mad cow disease" - the prion disease, bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE).

The FDA has regulations in place to prevent the spread of BSE. However, collagen is exempt from those rules.

Foods Proven to Increase Collagen:

1. Beta-carotene

In a study lasting three months, women ate 1 1/3 cups of sweet potatoes daily. Their levels of collagen went up four times.

2. Lycopene

In this study of 20 women, half ate three tablespoons of tomato paste every day for three months. The other half ate their usual diets.

In the end, the researchers burned the rears of all the women with a strong UV lamp.

The women who ate the tomato paste for three months healed much more quickly than the women who didn't.

3. Chlorophyll

Chlorophyll makes plant leaves and stems green, so you get it from any fresh green plants, especially dark leafy vegetables.

In one study, participants were given extracts of chlorophyll daily for three months.

In the end, the ones who took the chlorophyll had more collagen, more skin elasticity, and fewer wrinkles.

A similar study tested the effects of an extract of curly kale for ten months and concluded a diet high in carotenoids was the best prevention against premature skin aging.

4. Sulforaphane

Sulforaphane is a powerful phytochemical found mainly in cruciferous vegetables: cauliflower, cabbage, kale, broccoli, and others.

Sulforaphane mobilizes your skin's cellular defenses against the damage caused to your collagen by air pollution, dust and dirt in the air, and ultraviolet radiation from the sun.

5. Soybean compounds

One study tested the effects of soybean compounds on the skins of 29 older women.

They took soybean compounds four times daily for six months.

When the researchers measured the results, they found 25 out of the 29 women had thicker skin, more collagen and more elastin fibers.

6. Vitamin C

To make more collagen in your skin and other connective tissues, your body also needs Vitamin C.

You do not require the megadoses found in most vitamin supplements. The FDA-recommended nine servings per day of fruits and vegetables should provide you with plenty.

MOST IMPORTANT: Protect your skin from excess sunlight.

https://nutritionfacts.org/video/do-collagen-supplements-work-for-skin-aging/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Icvm2Q1ksis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-belT8th3g

https://nutritionfacts.org/video/how-to-boost-collagen-synthesis-with-diet/

https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/23089-collagen

https://www.webmd.com/vitamins/ai/ingredientmono-1606/collagen-peptides

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/20854436/