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!)

This is Kimberly Wilson. She’s a psychologist, not a doctor, and/but her speciality is neurophysiology and brain health.

Here’s what she wants us to know…

Avoid this very common killer

As you’re probably aware, the #1 killer in the US is heart disease, followed by COVID, which effectively pushed everything down a place. Thereafter, we see cancer, followed by accidental injuries, stroke, and dementia (including Alzheimer’s).

Over in the UK, where Wilson is from, dementia (including Alzheimer’s disease) is the #1 killer, followed by heart disease and then respiratory diseases (including COVID), and then stroke, then cancer.

As ever, what’s good for the heart is good for the brain, so many of the same interventions will help avoid both. With regard to some of the other differences in order, the reasons are mostly due to differences in the two countries’ healthcare systems and firearms laws.

It’s worth noting, though, that the leading cause of death in young people (aged 15–19) is suicide in the UK; in the US it’s nominally accidental injuries first (e.g. accidental shootings) with intentional suicide in the second spot.

In other words… Young or old, mental health is a serious health category that kills literally the most people in the UK, and also makes the top spots in the US.

Avoid the early killer

Given the demographics of most of our readership, chances are you’ve already lived past your teens and twenties. That’s not to say that suicide is no longer a risk, though, and it’s also worth noting that while mental health issues are invisible, they’re still physical illnesses (the brain is also an organ, after all!), so this isn’t something where you can simply “decide not to” and that’s you set, safe for life. So, please do continue to take good care in that regard.

We wrote about this previously, here:

How To Stay Alive (When You Really Don’t Want To)

Avoid the later killer

Wilson talks about how a recent survey found that…

• while nearly half of adults say dementia is the disease they fear most,
• only a third of those thought you could do anything to avoid it, and
• just 1% could name the 7 known risk factors.

Quick test: can you name the 7 known risk factors?

Please take a moment to actually try (this kind of mental stimulation is good in any case), and count them out on your fingers (or write them down), and then…

When you’re ready: click here to see the answer!

How many did you get? If you got them all, well done. If not, then well, now you know, so that’s good.

So, with those 7 things in mind, the first obvious advice is to take care of those things.

Taking an evidence-based medicine approach, Wilson recommends some specific interventions that will each improve one or more of those things, directly or indirectly:

Eating right

Wilson is a big fan of “nutritional psychiatry” and feeding one’s brain properly. We wrote about this, here:

The 6 Pillars Of Nutritional Psychiatry

As well as agreeing with the obvious “eat plenty of fiber, different-colored plants, and plenty of greens and beans”, Wilson specifically also champions getting enough of vitamins B9, B12, and D, as well as getting a healthy dose of omega-3 fatty acids.

She also recommends intermittent fasting, if that’s a reasonable option for you—but advocates for not worrying about it, if it’s not easy for you. For example, if you are diabetic, or have (or have a history with) some kind of eating disorder(s), then it’s probably not usefully practicable. But for most people, it can reduce systemic inflammation, which means also reducing neuroinflammation.

Managing stress right

Here she advocates for three main things:

1. Mindful meditation (see: Evidence-Based, No-Frills Mindfulness)
2. Psychological resilience (see: Building Psychological Resilience)
3. Mindful social media use (see: Making Social Media Work For Your Mental Health)

Managing money right

Not often we talk about this in a health science publication as opposed to a financial planning publication, but the fact is that a lot of mental distress, which goes on to have a huge impact on the brain, is rooted in financial stresses.

And, of course, it’s good to be able to draw on financial resources to directly fund one’s good health, but that is the secondary consideration here—the financial stress is the biggest issue, and you can’t CBT your way out of debt, for example.

Therapists often face this, and what has been referred to informally by professionals in the field as “Shit Life Syndrome”—and there’s only so much that therapy can do about that.

We’re not a financial publication, but one recommendation we’ll drop is that if you don’t currently have budgeting software that you use, this writer personally uses and swears by YNAB (You Need A Budget), so maybe check that out if you don’t already have everything covered in that regard. It’s not free, but there is a 34-day free trial.

Therapy can be very worthwhile nonetheless

Wilson notes that therapy is like non-invasive brain surgery (because of neuroplasticity, it’s literally changing physical things in your brain).

It’s not a magic bullet and it’s not the right choice for everyone, but it’s worth considering, and even self-therapy can yield benefits for many:

The Gym For Your Mental Health: Getting The Most Out Of Therapy

Sleeping right

Sleep is not only critical for health in general and brain health in particular, it’s also most of when our glymphatic system does clean-up in the brain (essential for avoiding Alzheimer’s & Parkinson’s, amongst other diseases):

How To Clean Your Brain (Glymphatic Health Primer)

Want to know more from Kimberley Wilson?

We reviewed a book of hers recently, here:

Unprocessed: What your Diet Is Doing To Your Brain – by Kimberley Wilson

However, much of what we shared today was sourced from another book of hers that we haven’t reviewed yet but probably will do one of these days:

How to Build a Healthy Brain: Reduce stress, anxiety and depression and future-proof your brain – by Kimberley Wilson

Enjoy!