Considering collagen is just a regular protein shouldnt it be digested into amino acids before being absorbed and have no medical/cosmetic effect beyond being a source of protein just like eating a steak or an egg?
In: Biology
You mean like how they recommend eating jello sometimes?
It’s a “clear fluid”/water soluble and very easy to digest, like broth or like how menudo/soup is good for hangovers or being sick
I don’t know of any doctors that recommend collagen. If they do, they’re probably selling it themselves.
I’ve never once recommended oral collagen and I don’t think any of my colleagues have.
I have seen tiktok doctors try and shill it though to line their pockets
If there is something wrong with how your body produces collagen, oral collagen doesn’t help. Your body will digest it then rebuild collagen from scratch, and the rebuilt collagen will have whatever problems you usually have.
Collagen breaks down into amino acids, which are fed by the body to your current collagen to repair and regrow. You can read a metastudy on the topic [here.](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10180699/)
You can get your collagen from any relevant food source, supplements are generally for folks who don’t believe they are getting enough in their current diet.
They have different amino acid profiles, maybe someone wants the high glycine levels found in collagen, like i have used it for. To your point, it’s not really necessary and isn’t a replacement for whole food proteins, but just supplementary to it
My understanding is that when we eat protein, the body breaks that down into the amino acids that it then uses to construct different tissues in the body.
Different proteins break down into different amounts of the different amino acids (whey protein is a “complete protein” in that breaks down into all of the different types required) and the different amino acids are then used for constructing different tissue – some tissue may require a lot of one type of amino acid where another might require more of another type.
But the amino acids that are present in the proteins we consume may not all be bio-available in the same quantity, the amino acid is there but your body can’t easily get hold of it and make use of it. And as such it’s suggested that although collagen is a low grade protein, it actually supplies to your body more of some amino acids (in the form of collagen peptides) that might be present in other forms but that your body can’t easily use.
And it’s reported that this different blend of what your body can actually use leads to benefits in areas such as improving bone density (and perhaps skin elasticity and other areas) whereas a lot of the more usual “high quality” proteins are geared towards muscle growth (for body builders and athletes etc).
References:
[https://physiqonomics.com/whats-the-deal-with-collagen/](https://physiqonomics.com/whats-the-deal-with-collagen/)
[https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/collagen-for-osteoporosis](https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/collagen-for-osteoporosis)
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5793325/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5793325/)
Steak, eggs, and pure collagen have different amino acids. Protein isn’t just protein. Collagen specifically has a ton of glycine and proline.
You can get enough glycine and proline from just eating, namely skin, connective tissue, bones. And if you eat enough red meat or eggs your body can make do. But if you have limited intake of meat and connective tissue (i.e. vegan/vegetarian) you can just take collagen supplements.
I went down this rabbit hole a while back. In theory, collagen should be no different than any other type of protein. Studies are consistently showing that skin is improved with collagen consumption.
But why? I haven’t even seen a plausible hypothesis.
Either the studies are flawed and there is no benefit from collagen or there is some part of the digestive process that isn’t fully understood.
There are people who are overstating these studies (which are all basic studies and may or may not be flawed) to sell collagen.
There had been some small scale studies that have said that oral collagen supplementation can help with skin elasticity, its fairly inexpensive, and has little downsides.
The rest is my own speculation:
I suspect that consuming it just allows for a guarantee that the precursor amino acids are available for your body to use to allow for upkeep to your own collagen. You could likely get a similar effect from just consuming equivalent amounts of the raw amino acids, but this would require more processing and money to manufacture than just using what would otherwise be waste from the meat industry.
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