Are Collagen Supplements Effective?

I spent the past weekend with a few thousand of my closest friends, some in person and others via live broadcast; that always means I get some good questions, including one about collagen I couldn’t answer.

A healthcare professional had told one attendee that collagen supplements were broken down into individual amino acids before being absorbed, as proteins are from any source, thus he was wasting his money buying collagen supplements. I decided that the answer could benefit everyone, so this week we’ll cover collagen basics.

Collagen is a protein and therefore is made up of amino acids. We can manufacture it, but just like other characteristics of aging, we make less as we get older. Collagen provides structure to all connective tissue such as skin, tendons, bones, and ligaments. We notice it most in our skin. Crepe skin? Smile lines around the eyes? Those come courtesy of reduced collagen. There are close to 30 types of collagen that have been discovered, but the most prevalent are types I–IV. Of that, over 90% are type I.

Collagen is made of repeating sequences of tripeptides or three amino acid blocks; they form three chains that twist to make a triple helix. The primary amino acid sequence of collagen is glycine-proline-X or glycine-X-hydroxyproline where X can be any of the other 17 amino acids. Glycine is the amino acid with the smallest structure; that allows the collagen triple helix to twist tightly and thus adds strength to the structure wherever it’s used, including the skin.

That’s the structure of collagen. On Saturday, we’ll answer the absorption question and look at how to use collagen most effectively. In tomorrow night’s Insider conference call, I’ll cover collagen more in depth as well as comment on the recent United States Preventive Services Taskforce on vitamin supplementation. If you become an Insider before 8 p.m. Eastern Time tomorrow, you can join me live to get your questions answered.

In the meantime, maybe you should just be proud of those smile lines—you’ve earned them, after all.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Reference: StatPearls. Biochemistry, Collagen Synthesis. Marlyn Wu; Kelly Cronin; Jonathan S. Crane. 2021. PMID: 29939531