Biggest Collagen Study Yet Shows What It Does (& Doesn’t) Improve

On May the 4th (International Star Wars Day), we joked:

May The Fourth Be With You ✨

If you’re trying to remember what that mystical web-like thing is that surrounds us, fills us, and binds us together… It’s collagen! So, to help your body make more collagen, make sure to get plenty of protein, vitamins C & D, and also copper and zinc!

_{Read the science: We Are Such Stuff As Fish Are Made Of}

…and we were also telling the truth, because as collagen really is…

The stuff that holds us together

The name literally means “makes sticky” (coll— = to stick, —gen = to make), and that’s exactly what it does. It’s necessary for many “body bits”, including bones, joints, skin, and more.

But there are a lot of conflicting claims about what it will and won’t do as a supplement. We’ve talked about this before, doing some mythbusting such as:

Are Collagen Molecules Too Big To Be Absorbed? ← the short version is: 1) through the skin? Definitely 2) through the gut? Yes, unless you take them apart first, in a way the body can reassemble later

This latter thing (taking the collagen molecules apart first, in a way the body can reassemble later) is what is going on in the case of collagen peptides.

However, even they aren’t a panacea.

Researchers (Dr. Julia Gawronska et al.) did the biggest research review of this topic yet, and analyzed 16 systematic reviews, 113 randomized controlled trials, and 7,983 participants to assess collagen supplementation across multiple health outcomes.

The review itself is interesting, and/but we know you’ll be most interested in the answers it arrived at, so we’ll skip straight to those:

• Skin and joint benefits: collagen supplementation showed consistent improvements in skin elasticity and hydration, and it reduced osteoarthritis-related pain and stiffness, with stronger effects seen when taken over longer periods.
  • Most of these studies started at 5g/day, by the way, though doses up to 20g/day are also very common. More than 30g/day is unlikely to give meaningful additional benefits, unless your diet is very low in protein (in which case, because collagen is made of proteins, yes, the extra will be beneficial, but only because of the dietary shortfall for which you are in that case compensating)
• Musculoskeletal effects beyond the above: collagen was linked to modest improvements in muscle mass, muscle structure, and tendon structure, suggesting limited but plausible support for aspects of healthy aging.
  • This is likely a combination of the same effects as the above, and also that once again yes, collagen taken as a supplement is supplementing dietary protein, so if your diet was low in that, getting more will help—hence the “modest improvements” on the population level, since the numbers are population averages.
• Sports performance, for some reason: the review found little evidence that collagen improves exercise performance, post-workout recovery, muscle soreness, or tendon mechanical function.
  • We’re unsure as to why why anyone thought that collagen would improve those things, but we acknowledge that it’s good in science to not leave assumptions untested, so it’s as well that the science was done, even if the results were not exciting and just confirmed what a reasonable person might already have expected.
• Other health outcomes: results for cardiometabolic health and oral health were mixed or inconclusive, with no strong evidence for major benefits in cholesterol, blood pressure, blood sugar, or dental outcomes.

You can read the paper in full, here: Collagen Supplementation for Skin and Musculoskeletal Health: An Umbrella Review of Meta-Analyses on Elasticity, Hydration, and Structural Outcomes

Prefer to do things as naturally as possible, and/or perhaps you are vegetarian/vegan?

Check out: The Best Foods For Collagen Production

Want to learn more?

For a much more in-depth understanding of the pharmacokinetics of collagen, you might like this book we reviewed:

The Collagen Cure: The Forgotten Role of Glycine and Collagen in Optimal Health and Longevity – by Dr. James DiNicolantonio

Take care!