8 Reasons Why We Need to Add Collagen to Our Diets for Optimal Health

If you are like me, you’ve heard of collagen and how it’s supposed to be amazing for you. It’s in a lot of beauty products, drinks, and supplements, but what is it and what does it really do?

Long story short… Collagen is a protein that provides structure and support in our bodies. Most of the time we tend to think that when collagen declines, it just causes wrinkles and saggy skin but there are oooooh so many other things collagen does in the body.

Below are the 8 reasons why you should start adding collagen into your diet…

1. Wrinkles, Cellulite, and Sagging Skin

The structure and firmness in your skin is provided by your body’s production of collagen. Once we turn 25 years old, the body starts to produce less and less collagen. Which once the production of collagen slows down, we begin to get wrinkles, cellulite, and sagging of the skin.

Yikes! That’s actually pretty young if you think about it.

2. Thinning Skin- More cuts and abrasions

I have many memories of my grandfather sitting in his lazy boy chair bleeding from a cut. We of course would freak out and ask him if he was ok and he usually would grunt that he was fine. I had no clue back then that when you get older your skin gets thinner because of the lack of collagen.

The skin is made up of about 70-80% of collagen. It is a glue-like substance that helps the skin repair itself. Without the production of collagen, the body is unable to repair the skin. It then gets thinner over time and tears and rips a lot easier.

3. GI Problems

The digestive tract is lined with collagen and 70% of our immune system is stored right there in that digestive tract. When the collagen breaks down in the GI tract, we are no longer able to absorb the vitamins and minerals that are essential to our health. This is when bowel issues like loose stools and bloating come into play. Ugh… no one likes that at any age!

Collagen contains Glycine, an essential amino acid that is a powerful anti-inflammatory that helps protect the mucus lining in the gut. When your collagen declines it takes with it glycine. And when that goes… you not only begin to have food sensitivities but you then have chronic inflammation in your GI, thus causing more issues and a lot of pain.

Didn’t know collagen was so prominent in your digestive tract and affecting so much of your overall health… did you? Me either!

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4. Hair Growth

As we now know, collagen also supports a healthy digestive tract that protects and heals the lining of the gut leading to maximum vitamins and minerals and (especially) protein absorption. The more nutrients you are absorbing into your system, the healthier your hair and nails will be.

Collagen is made of amino acids, one of them being proline. Your hair is mainly made up of the protein called keratin which consists of proline. So… collagen is helping by adding proline into your system to have stronger and healthier hair.

5. Stronger Nails

We’ve seen how collagen strengthens hair, it also absorbs and distributes protein for the growth and strengthening of the nails. Studies have shown that supplementing with collagen it promotes an increase of 12% of nail growth and a decrease of 42% in the frequency of broken nails. That’s a pretty good bonus if you start adding collagen to your diet.

6. Joint Pain and Bone Density

Did you know there is more collagen than calcium in your bones?

Collagen provides the structural framework on which calcium and other minerals are bound together. There is around 90% of organic bone mass from collagen in our bodies, which contributes to providing bone flexibility and healing.

Also, collagen fibers make up about 70% of the body’s cartilage. It’s responsible for the structure and strength of the joints and let’s not forget tendons that contain a whopping 85% of collagen!

Collagen makes up a lot of our bones, cartilage, and tendons. This is why we have more aches, pains, and brittle bones as we age because of the decline in our collagen production. Aging is just not fun… it just hurts to do things we easily did before and we can chalk some of it up to the decrease of good old collagen.

Are you convinced yet? If so, this is my favorite powered: Collagen

7. Bigger and Stronger Muscles

Ask every bodybuilder out there, they know how important protein is to building muscles. Our muscles system relies heavily on collagen.

When we exercise for strength or increase muscle mass, there are tears in the tiny fibers that make up muscle tissue. Collagen along with other nutrients goes in and repairs, making our muscles bigger, stronger, and more resilient.

8. Heart Problems

Collagen is also in the lining of all of our arteries. I bet you are thinking now… wherein our body do we NOT have collagen? Seems like it’s literally everywhere, that’s because it is!

When collagen production begins to degrade, the lining of the arteries becomes thinner and has less adaptivity. This will affect the blood being carried to your heart and circulated to other parts of your body. With the lack of collagen in our arteries, we have a greater risk for high blood pressure and even heart disease.

Conclusion

The name collagen comes from the Greek word meaning glue, and as you can see it really does hold the whole body together from your skin, down to your bones.

And as we age, we can help our declining collagen by adding it into our diets through food or supplementation. Studies have shown that 2.5–15 grams of a daily dose of collagen is said to be safe and most effective to help with optimal health.

Here are a few ways to help introduce collagen into your diet.

HERE ARE SOME GREAT HEALTHY RECIPES TO HELP YOU GET THAT EXTRA COLLAGEN YOU MIGHT NEED: