What is Collagen

What is collagen?

Derived from the Greek word "kólla”, which means glue, collagen is the main structural protein holding your body together.

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Collagen is the main component of connective tissue and is the most abundant protein in the human body.

It makes up approximately 30% of the whole body and 70% to 80% of the skin's protein content. As a result, you'd be hard-pressed to find a body part that doesn't contain collagen. It's in your skin, hair, bones, cartilage, digestive system, and more.

The helix structure of collagen

If you zoom in on a single collagen protein, you’d see that it’s made up of 3 chains of amino acids tightly coiled around each other. This makes collagen very strong and flexible — so it can give strength and elasticity to the skin, plus support muscles, tendons, and bones.

3 types of collagen you need to know

Type 1 Collagen
The most prevalent type of collagen in your body. It's especially abundant in the skin, where it pairs up with elastin to keep your skin resilient, plump, and bouncy.
Also found in bones, tendons, ligaments, and other connective tissues.
Type 2 Collagen
Found in your cartilage - i.e., the cushy padding that prevents 2 adjoining bones, like in your elbow, from grinding against each other.
You can also find Type 2 collagen in your windpipe, voice box, air passages in the lungs, and ears.
Type 3 Collagen
BFFs with Type 1 collagen. That means you'd spot Type 3 anywhere you'd see Type 1 (e.g., your skin, ligaments, blood vessels, and other connective tissues).
It may play a crucial role in the body's production of Type 1 collagen.

Collagen keeps your skin dewy, bones and nails strong, and joints creak-free… until it doesn’t.

Your body struggles to replace the collagen you’re losing as quickly as it's breaking down, starting from your 20s. As a result, you lose, on average, 1% of your collagen yearly.

Two things behind this decline

The natural ageing process

Like all cells in your body, collagen-producing cells (like fibroblasts in the skin and chondrocytes in the cartilage) accumulate DNA damage with age.

That means the older you get, the fewer optimally functioning collagen-producing cells you’ll have in the body, naturally decreasing your collagen levels.

Oxidative stress

While free radicals are a natural by-product of normal cellular processes, your body can also produce excessive amounts (a phenomenon known as oxidative stress) in response to external aggressors. Examples include:

counter_1 UV Rays

counter_2 Pollution

counter_3 Diets

These highly unstable and reactive molecules can steal electrons from healthy, collagen-producing cells — damaging them irreversibly. This, in turn, speeds up the rate at which you lose collagen

A decline in collagen production translates to a loss in structure. And hello, unpleasanthead-to-toe symptoms.

Dry, wrinkly, saggy skin
Dull, brittle, limp hair
Weak, cracked nails
Gas, bloating, & discomfort
Sore, achy, creaky joints

Fight back against ageing and oxidative damage with hydrolysed collagen peptides

Remember what we said about the structure of a single collagen protein? That's right: it's a triple helix of 3 amino acid chains. But what we didn't mention was that each of these chains is over 1,400 amino acids long. Meaning? Collagen is a HUGE (yes, all-caps) molecule. And due to its size, your body may have difficulties absorbing collagen.

This, in turn, limits the extent of wellness benefits you’d see from collagen supplementation. So how can we change that? Answer: using hydrolysis to make collagen molecules smaller.

This process uses water and enzymes to break the chemical bonds between proteins — chopping collagen molecules into shorter, easily absorbed amino acids. And there you have it: hydrolysed collagen peptides.

This, in turn, limits the extent of wellness benefits you’d see from collagen supplementation. So how can we change that? Answer: using hydrolysis to make collagen molecules smaller.

But wait: won't your body simply digest smaller collagen peptides into single amino acids? How's that different from if you were to eat any other protein source? While it was thought that all proteins and peptides were completely broken down into their constituent amino acids in the digestive tract, recent research shows that this is not the case for collagen.

Several collagen dipeptides and tripeptides bypass complete digestion, leaving as many as 10% remaining intact as they enter the bloodstream. The body will then shuttle these hydrolysedbioactive peptides to "areas of need" (e.g., skin, joints, and gut) where they can exert their beneficial effects.

Bottom line? If your hydrolysed collagen peptides are small enough to bypass digestion (less than 3kDa in molecular weight), you needn’t worry about their efficacy.

There are tons — but let’s start with the following.

Researchers found that women who consumed 10 grams of collagen peptides daily for 10 weeks had an 8% increase in collagen density in the dermal layer, while no increase was found in the placebo group.

Not all hydrolysed collagenpeptides are made equal

Dosage
There aren't any official guidelines on daily collagen intake. But from what we've seen in research and real-life customer reviews, the consensus is that you'd do great with anywhere between 10 to 15 grams daily.
Collagen Protein Type
We designed our products with efficacy in mind. To help you see results in record-breaking time, every serving, surpasses the time-tested minimum effective dosage.
Quality & Source
Beyond environmental concerns, dubious sourcing methods may also harm your health -who knows if the animals were fed GMO foods, injected with hormones, or given antibiotics?
Taste
Unlike carbohydrates or fat, your body can't store protein for longer than 24 hours (X). That means you'll have to stay consistent with collagen supplementation to see results. And finding a tasty collagen supplement will definitely help with that.