Make Your Collagen Work Better

This is Dr. James Nicolantonio. He’s a doctor of pharmacy, and a research scientist. He has a passion for evidence-based nutrition, and has written numerous books on the subject.

Controversy! Dr. DiNicolatonio’s work has included cardiovascular research, in which field he has made the case for increasing (rather than decreasing) the recommended amount of salt in our diet. This, of course, goes very much against the popular status quo.

We haven’t reviewed that research so we won’t comment on it here, but we thought it worth a mention as a point of interest. We’ll investigate his claims in that regard another time, though!

Today, however, we’ll be looking at his incisive, yet not controversial, work pertaining to collagen and glycine.

A quick recap on collagen

We’ve written about collagen before, and its importance for maintaining… Well, pretty much most of our body, really, buta deficiency in collagen can particularly weaken bones and joints.

On a more surface level, collagen’s also important for healthy elastic skin, and many people take it for that reason alone,

Since collagen is found only in animals, even collagen supplements are animal-based (often marine collagen or bovine collagen). However, if we don’t want to consume those, we can (like most animals) synthesize it ourselves from the relevant amino acids, which we can get from plants (and also laboratories, in some cases).

You can read our previous article about this, here:

We Are Such Stuff As Fish Are Made Of

What does he want us to know about collagen?

We’ll save time and space here: first, he’d like us to know the same as what we said in our article above

However, there is also more:

Let’s assume that your body has collagen to process. You either consumed it, or your body has synthesized it. We’ll skip describing the many steps of collagen synthesis, fascinating as that is, and get to the point:

When our body weaves together collagen fibrils out of the (triple-helical) collagen molecules…

• the cross-linking of the collagen requires lysyl oxidase
• the lysyl oxidase (which we make inside us) deanimates some other amino acids yielding aldehydes that allow the stable cross-links important for the high tensile strength of collagen, but to do that, it requires copper
• in order to use the copper it needs to be in its reduced cuprous form and that requires vitamin C
• but moving it around the body requires vitamin A

So in other words: if you are taking (or synthesizing) collagen, you also need copper and vitamins A and C.

However! Just to make things harder, if you take copper and vitamin C together, it’ll reduce the copper too soon in the wrong place.

Dr. DiNicolantonio therefore advises taking vitamin C after copper, with a 75 minutes gap between them.

What does he want us to know about glycine?

Glycine is one of the amino acids that makes up collagen. Specifically, it makes up every third amino acid in collagen, and even more specifically, it’s also the rate-limiting factor in the formation of glutathione, which is a potent endogenous (i.e., we make it inside us) antioxidant that works hard to fight inflammation inside the body.

What this means: if your joints are prone to inflammation, being glycine-deficient means a double-whammy of woe.

As well as being one of the amino acids most key to collagen production, glycine has another collagen-related role:

First, the problem: as we age, glycated collagen accumulates in the skin and cartilage (that’s bad; there is supposed to be collagen there, but not glycated).

More on glycation and what it is and why it is so bad:

Are You Eating Advanced Glycation End-Products? The Trouble Of The AGEs

Now, the solution: glycine suppresses advanced glycation end products, including the glycation of collagen.

See for example:

Glycine Suppresses AGE/RAGE Signaling Pathway and Subsequent Oxidative Stress by Restoring Glo1 Function

With these three important functions of glycine in mind…

Dr. DiNicolantonio therefore advises getting glycine at a dose of 100mg/kg/day. So, if you’re the same size as this rather medium-sized writer, that means 7.2g/day.

Where can I get it?

Glycine is found in many foods, including gelatin for those who eat that, eggs for the vegetarians, and spinach for vegans.

However, if you’d like to simply take it as a supplement, here’s an example product on Amazon

(the above product is not clear whether it’s animal-derived or not, so if that’s important to you, shop around. This writer got some locally that is certified vegan, but is in Europe rather than N. America, which won’t help most of our subscribers)

Note: pure glycine is a white crystalline powder that has the same sweetness as glucose. Indeed, that is how it got its name, from the Greek “γλυκύς”, pronounced /ɡly.kýs/, meaning “sweet”. Yes, same etymology as glucose.

So don’t worry that you’ve been conned if you order it and think “this is sugar!”; it just looks and tastes the same.

That does mean you should buy from a reputable source though, as a con would be very easy!

this does also mean that if you like a little sugar/sweetener in your tea or coffee, glycine can be used as a healthy substitute.

If you don’t like sweet tastes, then, condolences. This writer pours two espresso coffees (love this decaffeinated coffee that actually tastes good), puts the glycine in the first, and then uses the second to get rid of the sweet taste of the first. So that’s one way to do it.

Enjoy (if you can!)