Should You Be Taking a Collagen Supplement?

Collagen is shown to be effective in skin creams and we know how well they work as injections, but if it’s best to care for your skin from the inside out, wouldn’t it make more sense to take collagen in the form of a supplement? That’s the idea behind products like Neocell Collagen Beauty Booster and Reserveage Collagen Booster, which promise thicker hair, stronger nails, fewer wrinkles and more youthful skin.

Collagen is a structural protein that occurs in the connective tissue of the body, literally holding everything, including your bones, joints, muscles, tendons and skin, together. Collagen, along with keratin and elastin, give the skin its structure, strength and elasticity. As you age, your collagen production goes on the decline, which can lead to weak bones, joints and muscles and, yes, wrinkles.

Collagen supplement companies claim that their products will provide your body with the cellular building blocks that are necessary to keep your skin tight as you age. It is also said that collagen supplements work better than creams, which can only penetrate the top layers of the skin, as supplements are able to reach the deepest layers of the skin from the inside out.

But do collagen supplements actually work?

There hasn’t been much research done on collagen supplements but one recent study showed that there was a 20 per cent reduction in wrinkles around the eyes of women who took a collagen supplement once a day for eight weeks. There was also a 65 per cent increase in procollagen, which is the precursor to collagen. This means that a supplement might actually improve the ability of the body to produce more of it’s own collagen. Best of all, these benefits didn’t disappear as soon as the women stopped taking the collagen supplement. Four weeks later, their wrinkles were still 11.5 per cent less than when they started.

Of course, not everyone is convinced that a collagen supplement can keep your skin looking like it did when you were in college. Proteins like collagen aren’t capable of focusing on just one part of the body, such as the skin, once they are processed in the stomach. Kind of like how you can’t just burn fat from just one part of your body, such as your thighs.

So, should you be taking a collagen supplement?

It’s probably not a bad idea. Even if it all the collagen from the supplement doesn’t go straight to your skin, it will still help prevent wrinkles and, at the same time, protect your bones, joints, muscles and other parts of your body as you age. Sounds worth it to us!