Your skin becomes less flexible with age, but you can improve it by reducing sun exposure, having a healthy diet, and applying topical creams such as retinol. When considering healthy, glowing skin, the word collagen is the first one that comes to mind, and rightly so. Collagen protein maintains skin flexibility, hair, and nail quality. It also helps in muscle recovery. Your body produces collagen naturally and keeps skin and muscle health. However, collagen production declines with age, and your skin becomes less flexible and develops wrinkles.
Collagen supplements can help you regain the young elasticity naturally. The best collagen supplements usually work on skin, hair, joint, and muscle health. But just how does it happen? Let’s explore how collagen can be the miracle solution for your hair care and skincare regimen.
Why Does Skin Elasticity Change?
Skin is your body’s largest organ. It acts as a shield against the outer elements. With age, everyone’s skin naturally accumulates signs of aging. Besides deteriorating collagen, skin also begins to lose elastin, a protein that enables skin to stretch and rebound. Elastin can be found in the connective tissue of the dermal layer of the skin.
Both environmental and lifestyle causes can exacerbate and hasten elastosis. They are:
- Sunlight exposure
- Pollution of the air
- Failure to consume a healthful diet
- Smoking
- Sudden and severe weight reduction can also create elastosis.
How Does Collagen Work?
New studies point to taking collagen, especially as hydrolysed peptides, beneficial to your skin’s health from the inside out. Let’s discuss eight possible ways these supplements can affect you:
1. Boosting Your Body’s Own Collagen Production
When you take collagen that’s broken down, it turns into tiny particles in your stomach. These particles go into your blood, travel all over your body, and reach deep into your skin. Some of these small particles act like messengers. They tell special cells in your skin to make new collagen, elastin, and other good stuff.
So, collagen supplements like ARRAVITE Collagen-20 help your skin make more of its good stuff. This fights the slowdown that happens as you get older. Over time, your skin might get firmer and thicker. The best collagen supplements for skin and hair improve collagen presence and help your body produce more collagen naturally.
2. Enhancing Skin Hydration
Collagen can also help your body make more hyaluronic acid. This stuff is fantastic because it holds lots of water. When you have more hyaluronic acid deep in your skin, your skin can keep much more moisture. Stronger collagen also helps retain the skin’s moisture.
Dry skin can look dull. It also makes fine lines show up more. When collagen helps your skin hold more water, it can look fuller and smoother. This makes small wrinkles more challenging to see. Many people find that collagen supplements for skin help their skin look brighter.
As per a study, Women took a collagen supplement. After eight weeks, their skin had much more water. This was more than women who took nothing. (Source: PubMed)
3. Reducing Wrinkle Depth and Appearance
When your body makes more collagen, your skin gets more moisture and becomes more flexible. Collagen makes the deeper layers of your skin more substantial, filling the wrinkles from inside. So, wrinkles don’t look as deep or as easy to see. Your skin also gets fuller. This makes the top of your skin feel smoother.
4. Improving Skin Smoothness and Texture
When your skin has more collagen and more water, and maybe more elastin, the top of your skin looks smoother. If the deep part of your skin is strong and has plenty of water, the skin you see and touch will be softer too.
Rough skin can make you look older. Taking collagen can help your skin feel softer and look nicer. People often want to make their skin better like this when they look for supplements for hair and skin health.
5. Counteracting Collagen Fragmentation
Aging and sun damage not only decrease collagen content but also break up the native collagen network so that it cannot support itself as well. Amino acids and peptides from supplements supply the raw materials (such as glycine, proline, and hydroxyproline) needed to assemble new, intact collagen fibres, possibly mending and reorganising the dermal framework.
A broken collagen network results in loss of firmness and contributes to wrinkle development. Providing raw materials for the production of new collagen assists in reconstructing a more robust, more organised matrix.
Systematic reviews tend to find that collagen peptides maintain the integrity of the dermal matrix, implying an action against fragmentation. (Source: Springer Nature Link)
6. Supporting Dermal Thickness
As fibroblasts stimulate more activity following peptide signalling (as described under point 1), they deposit more overall constituents of the extracellular matrix, particularly collagen. This results in a direct increase in the thickness of the dermal layer of skin.
Thin skin is one frequent feature of the ageing process and gives skin its more fragile look and wrinkly appearance. Enhanced dermal thickness can add youthful resilience and cushioning back in.
The same study revealing enhanced collagen density suggests enhanced substance of the dermis, leading to its thickness.
7. Support the Extracellular Matrix (ECM)
The Extracellular Matrix (ECM) is the intricate network outside skin cells, offering structural and biochemical support. Collagen is the major structural component of the ECM. By supplying peptides that activate fibroblasts and the fundamental amino acids, collagen supplements for the skin directly play a role in maintaining and reconstructing a healthier, more functional ECM.Â
A healthy ECM is essential for the elasticity and hydration of the skin and for structural support to hair follicles. So, the benefits apply to both hair and skin. Degraded ECM is a characteristic feature of aged skin, which causes wrinkling, sagging, and impaired hydration.Â
Maintaining ECM health treats these problems at a fundamental structural level. Hair supplements frequently consider general dermal health, with collagen playing a central role.
8. Providing Essential Amino Acids for Repair
Collagen contains special amino acids like glycine, proline, and hydroxyproline. Your body needs these. Why? To build and fix collagen everywhere, especially in your skin. When you take collagen supplements, you give your body a good stock of these essential building blocks.
Maybe your food doesn’t give you enough of these amino acids. Or perhaps your body needs more, like when you get older or need to heal. Supplements can step in here. They give your skin the basics to look after itself and make new cells. Thus, it helps keep your skin healthy and strong.
To conclude…
Collagen supplements won’t magically fix all lines or make you look young overnight. But more and more, science shows they can naturally help your skin from the inside. They might help your body produce more collagen. They can also add moisture, give your skin what it needs to rebuild, and strengthen your skin’s deeper layers. So, these supplements, especially those for your skin, can help make your skin healthier and wrinkles look smaller.
Remember, you need to take them regularly. You’ll often start seeing a difference after a few weeks of using them daily. It’s a good idea to talk to your doctor or a skin doctor before you start any new supplement.
References:
de Miranda RB, Weimer P, Rossi RC. Effects of hydrolyzed collagen supplementation on skin aging: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Int J Dermatol. 2021 Dec;60(12):1449-1461. doi: 10.1111/ijd.15518. Epub 2021 Mar 20. PMID: 33742704.Â
Dähnhardt, D., Dähnhardt-Pfeiffer, S., Segger, D. et al. Restoration of the Ultrastructural Integrity of the Dermal Collagen Network by 12-Week Ingestion of Special Collagen Peptides. Dermatol Ther (Heidelb) 14, 2509–2521 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13555-024-01251-8