Everyone wants to be healthy, both physiologically and physically. Your ability to look and feel healthy depends much on your understanding of what your body needs, and supplying them. Collagen is one such compound.
In this article, we will delve into the world of collagen, exploring its significance and why it is essential for our overall well-being. We will examine how different factors, including diet, lifestyle choices, supplements, and cosmetics, can positively impact its synthesis and maintenance.
Table of Contents
What is Collagen?
Collagen is a fibrous protein that is the most abundant in the human body. It is a key component of our skin, bones, tendons, ligaments, cartilage, and other connective tissues.
Chemically, collagen is made up of amino acids, particularly glycine, proline, and hydroxyproline. These amino acids form a unique triple-helix structure, giving collagen its characteristic strength and stability. There are different types in the body, each with specific functions and distribution throughout various tissues.
Further, collagen is the protein found in muscles, tendons, skin, bones, and hair, making up more than 30% of proteins in your body.
Why Is Collagen Essential?
It provides structure to your body and strengthens your skin, muscles, bones, and connective tissues. Put simply, it is the protein that keeps your skin looking healthy and plump by maintaining its elasticity.
Moreover, it helps maintain your bones, joints, cartilage, and tendons in a healthy state.
Apart from providing structural support, collagen also plays a role in wound healing, tissue repair, and skin elasticity. It helps maintain the moisture and firmness of the skin, contributing to a youthful appearance. It also helps cushion and protect joints, ensuring their smooth movement and flexibility.
Why Should You Care?
The fact is that collagen is produced naturally in the human body optimally during the early years. But as you age, the synthesis process slows down. Also, accumulated collagen starts to break down over time, leading to the characteristic signs of aging, such as wrinkles and dry, sagging skin.
The effects of its loss with age may include the following 2:
- Loss of natural fullness in the face, neck, and body;
- Sagging skin;
- Wrinkles and fine lines;
- Lifeless hair;
- Joint pain;
- Teeth problems; and
- Weak blood vessels
Other effects may include tendon/ligament stiffness, muscle mass decrease, wear in cartilages, and thinning of intestinal walls 3.
What can help?
You can’t stop your body’s loss of collagen as you age, but you can take certain actions to enhance its production, supplement the loss, and slow down the breakdown process.
Let’s look at what you can control.
1. Diet
Collagen occurs naturally in animal foods, but not in plant foods. According to Healthline, it is highly concentrated in some parts of the animals, such as the skin and joints.
Therefore, with no offense to vegetarians, consuming animal products, such as bones or bone broth, skin, ligaments, chicken skin, fish and shellfish, and pig knuckles may help replenish the compound.
Also, some plant foods may help enhance natural production by supplying nutrients, such as Vitamin C, Zinc, Vitamin A and E, Manganese, and Copper.
Examples of such foods include oranges, berries, tropical fruits like mango, kiwi, pineapple, and guava, garlic, leafy greens, such as Spinach, kale, Swiss chard, and other salad greens, beans, cashews, tomatoes, and bell peppers. Read more on Thirteen Foods that Enhance its Production.
Furthermore, diets rich in beneficial plant compounds, such as carotenoids, flavonoids, tocopherols, and phenolic acids could serve as antioxidants that help improve skin health. They do so by reducing inflammation and protecting against collagen degradation. Some of these bioactive compounds can also be taken as supplements.
Notably, health-promoting carotenoids can be obtained by consuming certain foods. For carotenoid sources, read foods rich in carotenoids. To learn about foods rich in flavonols, please click here. And for beneficial food phenolic acids, please click here.
Finally, avoid foods that trigger inflammation in the body as they can hinder collagen production. These include foods high in sugar, simple carbohydrates, processed meat, and some other processed foods.
2. Lifestyle
Reducing collagen loss in the body is the best approach, compared to trying to replenish it later in life. Indeed, it is easier to slow down the physical signs of aging than to try to reverse them after they appear.
The following lifestyle factors are preventive:
Avoid smoking: According to the International Journal of Dermatology, smoking downregulates the synthesis of type I and type III collagens, which results in accelerated skin aging. And it does more; it elevates tropoelastin and increases collagen degradation. Double blow.
There are many self-help books and resources that can help you quit smoking. Please find them here.
Reduce Stress: According to NBIHealth, chronic stress does not only lower collagen production but also leads to chronically elevated stress hormones that damage collagen and impair immune function.
Protect your Skin from the Sun: According to the Journal of American Academy of Dermatology, prolonged sun exposure causes alterations in skin collagen. Thus, it is important to protect the skin from UV rays.
It may be a good practice to use sun-blocking creams and sunscreen cosmetics on every exposed area of the skin. Do well to consult your doctor before choosing a product.
3. Supplements
Collagen peptides are available as supplements. Some of them are made of Type 1 & 3 peptides. These provide the proteins & amino acids necessary to support healthy bones, skin & nails. They also improve joint function.
The supplements are available in powder form or as tablets, which are easy to use. The powder is usually dissolved in hot or cold water, coffee, tea, smoothies, soups, and other liquids.
4. Cosmetics
Collagen creams and serums can help increase their production in the skin. These include products rich in vitamin C and hyaluronic acids.
Some of them contain hydrolyzed forms that are absorbed directly into the skin. They are believed to help reduce wrinkles and improve skin elasticity.
The Bottom Line
From commercials of beauty products to health-related messages, cosmetologists, nutritionists, and health experts alike often praise the wonders of collagen when it comes to health and beauty.
This article provides insight into what exactly it is, its natural and synthetic sources, why it is so essential to the human body, as well as how diet, lifestyle, food supplements, and cosmetics may affect its production and/or slow down loss in the body.
References
Marengo, Katherine (2019). https://www.healthline.com/health/beauty-skin-care/collagen-food-boost#keep-an-eye-on-sugar
Opting Health (2022). 10 Nutritious Foods High in Carotenoids. https://optinghealth.com/foods-high-in-carotenoids/
Arisa Ortiz & Sergei Grando (2012). Smoking and the Skin. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-4632.2011.05205.x
Amazing articles!