Collagen is one of the latest buzzwords in health. It’s hard to escape a grocery store without seeing tubs of powdered collagen or browse in a drugstore without noticing creams that claim they’ll boost collagen to keep you looking young for decades to come. But how important is collagen for your skin, really?

What is Collagen?

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Collagen, a protein naturally produced in the body, is also a popular supplement and beauty product ingredient that claims to improve the health of your skin. It constitutes 1/3rd of all protein in the body. It is responsible for maintaining the elasticity levels in the skin, supports the structure of muscles, vital organs, and also helps cushion the joints around bones. That’s not all.

The most important job of collagen is ensuring healthy and radiant skin by maintaining its elasticity. If the collagen levels in your skin are high, your skin will naturally appear firm and supple. This is the reason why people with adequate levels of collagen have a healthy and youthful skin texture.

Why it is important for the skin?

Collagen is a protein that serves as one of the main building blocks for your bones, skin, hair, muscles, tendons, and ligaments. Your body naturally makes collagen.

Various factors like pollution, stress, UV rays and age lead to a reduction of collagen production in the body. In fact, after the age of 20, natural collagen production in the body decreases gradually.

Skin starts developing signs of aging like wrinkles, fine lines, uneven skin tone amongst others. In order to maintain healthy levels of collagen in the body and thereby radiant and youthful skin, it is important to ensure that you supplement your body with external sources of collagen builders.

The rising popularity of plant-based nutrition has led to several brands offering wellness products that can increase collagen production in the body. Collagen is available for consumption in the form of supplements also as many people are unable to meet their Collagen requirement through conventional diet.

Vegan sources contain collagen-boosting ingredients that promote natural collagen production in the body. These are completely safe, effective, and perfect for long-term consumption as they are devoid of harmful chemicals and synthetic ingredients.

The marketing for collagen products claims they can improve skin elasticity, reduce visible wrinkles, and increase blood flow to the skin.

The Best Way To Consume Collagen?

Beauty enthusiasts are divided into two teams when it comes to picking the best source of collagen between oral supplements (OTC) and topically applicable creams. We had to investigate what was better than the other and so we headed straight to the expert. There are only 19 studies on oral collagen done on a total of 1125 patients.

Hence, the evidence-based data are considered inadequate so far. However, these patients showed mild improvement in skin hydration and elasticity after taking oral collagen for 90 days.

However, the results of topical therapies to improve collagen over 3 months are significantly higher and scientifically proven. Hence, as of today, topical application of retinol, peptides, alpha hydroxy acids, treatments such as platelet-rich plasma, micro-needling, non-ablative lasers are better options to build collagen. Orally, a good amount of proteins in the diet and amino acid supplements would be beneficial too.