Can drinking collagen slow down aging?
Who doesn’t want to be smarter, better, stronger, faster and younger looking?
Wouldn't it be great to be able to take just one daily supplement that boosted your cognitive function, physical performance, heart health, bone density, natural healing processes and, on top of it all, slowed down the signs of aging?
I mean, who doesn’t want to be smarter, better, stronger, faster and youngerlooking? That's practically the bionic dream — a fantasy that, according to some wellness gurus, can be achieved simply by adding a scoop of ingestible collagen to your morning smoothie or tea.
Collagen, an ingredient extracted from animal skins commonly found in antiaging skin creams, has graduated from topical use to internal — a dietary supplement on the verge of being the next big wellness fad, with dozens of collagen syrups, drinks, powders and even gum-thing from brittle nails to brain health. Unsurprisingly, Gwyneth Paltrow is on it — having just launched a “delicious,” vanilla-flavoured collagen powder called Goop Genes, made with “ingredients backed by research.”
How much research? Some. But not much. That lack, though, isn’t stopping people from drinking it in the hopes that this might be the fountain of youth we've all dreamed of. Hopes are so high in fact, that it’s already threatening the world’s donkey population — one of the preferred sources of collagen in Asia.
The theory is simple. Collagen is an important, abundant and naturally-occurring structural protein found in the human body that plays an important role in a range of things including, skin, nail and hair health and, also, more important functions, such as healing. The older we get, the less we produce. Some people think we can fix that by ingesting animal collagen, which will somehow inspire our bodies to kick our collagen production back into high gear. The problem? It’s still just a theory.
“The real genesis of the interest in collagen came from a study that was published a couple of years ago and looked at eight healthy men and the effect it had on building new connective tissue,” says Jennifer Sygo, a registered dietitian and
sports nutritionist at the Cleveland Clinic Canada. “The study demonstrated that a dose of 15 grams of gelatin, given to the men before jumping rope twice a day for six minutes, did demonstrate a significant difference in the markers that suggest the body is building new collagen in the ligaments.”
To Sygo, team dietitian for the Toronto Maple Leafs, this peerreviewed study (conducted by researchers working at the University of California, Davis) is exciting, since there’s traditionally very little that can be done — from a nutritional standpoint — to speed up healing tendons and ligaments. If the study is replicated and backed up with more research, though, it could open up a whole new course of treatment for injuries and chronic joint pain. But, Sygo warns, it’s still early days and one small study. New studies are ongoing and, while they might confirm the results, they haven’t been published yet.
This, however, isn’t slowing down the booming collagen industry. In China, for example, a collagen derived from donkey skin called ejiao (ass-hide gelatin) that used to be prescribed for specific illnesses, such as anemia, has gained a reputation as a magic elixir. It’s become so popular that, since 1990, about half of China’s 11 million donkeys have been killed for their skins. As collagen supplement producers have cast about for foreign sources, the trade has sparked a potentially extinction-level crisis in India, Pakistan and many countries in Africa, where farmers still report a problem with donkey theft, despite a ban on the trade by 14 African countries.
Nobody in Canada (that we know of ) is using donkey hides, but this illustrates the ethical and health concerns that are bound to come up when it comes to sourcing ground up animal parts. Even leaving PETA, endangered fish stocks and global warming from meat production out of the discussion, contaminants and heavy metals, such as arsenic and mercury remain a concern. As such, many collagen producers, such as Great Lakes Gelatin and Genuine Health Essentials, are offering sustainably and naturally sourced options. With Genuine Health’s “Clean Collagen,” for instance, both surf and turf varietals are sustainably sourced — one made from byproducts (scales and skins) of wild-caught fish in the North Atlantic; the other from bovine skins of grass-fed and pasture-raised USDA cows. They start at $26.99 for12,10 oz. satchels and the suggested dosage is one 10 oz. serving a day.
For my collagen self-experiment, I chose the turf option, because I’m worried about heavy metals in fish. The powdered bovine skins come in flavoured or unflavoured, but mine happened to be pineapple/berry, which sounds great, but didn’t taste like either and smacked of artificial flavour.
I asked Sygo about some of the far-reaching claims being made about collagen and read a list to her that included cognitive function, physical performance, heart health, bone density, hair and nail support and skin hydration. This was her response:
“You know, we’re getting ahead of ourselves here and I’m going to urge people to understand that there’s so much in the research that we don’t yet know the answers to. When you have reputable researchers at a university publishing in the area, it totally amplifies the buzz and gives a level of gravitas to the whole situation. Yes, the genie is a bit out of the bottle right now, but we need a little bit more time to know how well this works.”
I’m happy to follow her guidance and put my collagen and bionic dreams on a back shelf on the pantry while I wait for the research to come in. I bet I’m one of the few though. Waiting for results and evidencebased medicine just isn’t a thing humans do very well.
At least not in the face of brittle nails, aging skin and the promise of a fountain of youth.