A listener recently asked: Can collagen fillers remove wrinkles? There are so many ads now.

To be honest, this question is also quite poking me, because I am now due to work needs, always need to be on camera, bad skin will affect the quality of my video. But my skin is not very good at the speed of the naked eye year by year, mainly in the color more and more black and yellow, more and more spots, more and more wrinkles, skin moisture less and less, in a word, this face is getting older and older.

Although we all know that time is like a knife to kill a pig, but who does not want the time to be merciful and kill us more slowly? If there is a demand, there is a business opportunity, and if we can develop a reliable product that can delay skin aging, the demand is too large. Now, among all such products, collagen products are the most well-known and the most commodity forms. So, are collagen-like products an IQ tax?

In order to find the answer to this question, I mainly read the following documents selected by the literature assistant:

① A review article published in Harvard Health Press (HHP) on April 12, 2023: https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/considering-collagen-drinks-and-supplements-202304122911

②In February 2022, it was included in a review article by the NIH, the National Institutes of Health:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8824545/

③In May 2021, a review article published in the Harvard School of Public Health:

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/collagen/

The websites of the above mentioned documents have been marked out, and you can also read the original text if you are interested. As I said before, when there are a lot of individual research papers on a hot topic, one of the shortcuts we can take as science science is to look at high-quality literature reviews. This is the equivalent of having some experts summarize a lot of literature for you and tell you their conclusions.

After reading the above three articles, I feel that I still do not quench my thirst. So I went back to my expert advisor, Dr. Lu Peng. As you may know, Dr. Lu is the food and nutrition scientist who collaborated with me on the Science Guide to Foods. He is now an assistant professor in the Division of Food Structural Biology at the Institute of Agronomy and Life Sciences at the University of Tokyo. His research direction is to find and identify functional ingredients in foods. I asked Dr. Lu Peng a lot of professional questions, and also consulted some of his views and opinions.

The Science Guide to Foodies

Before I talk about my findings, I think it's important to understand what collagen is, which is important to understand what I'm going to say.

What is collagen?

Collagen is a substance found in all multicellular animals and belongs to the fibrin family. As the main component of skin and bone, collagen is the most abundant protein in mammals, accounting for 25% of the total protein mass. We usually stew all kinds of broths or bone soups, and when it cools, it freezes, and that's what collagen does. The easier it is to stew this skin-frozen ingredient, the richer the collagen content. Collagen, clearly visible under an electron microscope, is a rigid, three-chain helix structure.

When collagen is bonded together, it forms fibrous collagen fibers, which in turn coalesce into larger structures that are a few micrometers in diameter and can be hundreds of micrometers long. In your mind's eye, you can imagine twine, and if you take apart the twine, you'll find that twine is formed by many strands of thinner twine, and each strand can often be subdivided into finer fibers, which are similar to collagen fibers. Why our skin can be smooth and elastic, rely on these collagen, they are like a rubber band twisted into a twine, support our skin. With age, the collagen in the skin will slowly become less, the elasticity of the skin will decline, and wrinkles will occur. In short, the quality of skin, collagen content plays a crucial role.

Are collagenous products an IQ tax?

If you could find a way to increase the amount of collagen in your skin, it would naturally make it smoother and more elastic, but would applying collagen directly to your skin or taking it orally help?

Below, I summarize my personal conclusions after this research as follows, just for your reference:

Topical collagen-like proteins

Collagen products mainly have two different forms of external use and oral use. Topical products can basically be regarded as IQ taxes. From the point of view of the principle of action, collagen cannot enter the dermis of the skin, and even if it does, it cannot enter the collagen fiber bundles in the skin. For example, although the twine is made with twine, but you throw a twine into a pile of twine, these twine will not automatically become part of the twine, playing twine is an extremely complex process. The human body syntheses collagen and then rolls it into collagen fiber bundles. This process is like a complex factory assembly line to produce products. Raw materials must be put into the specified feedstock to be useful.

Topical collagen products are actually palliative, just like using a mask to hydrate the skin, that is, just finished the one or two hours, the water is absorbed by the epidermis, will play a certain visual effect, but will soon be evaporated. Therefore, topical collagen products are essentially no different from moisturizers, which temporarily replenish the epidermis of the skin with moisture and other elastic substances, just like sprinkling water on cement. The first splash on it will be wet, but it will soon dry. Therefore, to buy topical collagen products, you might as well buy cosmetics, the price is cheap and the effect is good.

​Oral collagenoid protein

The situation of oral collagen products is more complicated. If only from the perspective of the paper, there are both positive and negative conclusions. There are some studies that support the effect of oral collagen on skin condition, but there are many studies that do not support the effect. In other words, the conclusion of this question is currently controversial in the scientific community. The review article from the Harvard School of Public Health said they found that most studies on collagen supplements were funded or partially funded by relevant industries that might benefit from positive findings - in other words, most studies with positive conclusions were of interest and the neutrality of the research institutions was not good enough. The article also says that the reason they use the word "most" is to be on the safe side, in fact, they did not find completely independent studies that were not funded by industry, but it is also possible that they did not find enough research, so they say "most" to be on the safe side. However, we should not completely dismiss these positive findings.

Dr. Lu Peng's opinion

Dr. Lu Peng's view is very clear, he believes that oral collagen is highly likely to be ineffective. He has two reasons, the first reason is from the molecular mechanism of action level. Any collagen products, as long as they are taken orally, will be decomposed into amino acids under the action of proteolytic enzymes in the stomach and intestines, and then absorbed by the human body. Our body then uses these decomposed amino acids to produce various proteins. As for the number of certain types of proteins produced, it is affected by a variety of complex factors such as genes and internal environment. It has little to do with the quantity of ingredients. If oral collagen is effective, it is better to eat more egg white and beef, and there is no need to buy health care products, because the amino acid types of collagen are not as much as egg white and beef. The proline and glycine that collagen contains are not even essential amino acids.

The second reason is to look at a higher level of information sources than the paper, such as most collagen products are claimed to have the effect of skin moisturizing, but the problem is that in Europe and the United States, New Zealand, Australia, this food effect is not recognized, in other words, the regulatory authorities of these countries believe that there is no such food effect as skin moisturizing. In Japan, skin moisturizing properties are recognized, but only one substance, Glucocerebroside, is recognized as having a role. There were 16 collagen moisturizers in the functional food database with the lowest level of evidence, but the level of evidence was too low. China also acknowledges the moisturizing effects of skin, but has not approved any products for this purpose.

Molecular structure of [glucoencephaloside]

My personal opinion

Let me give you my personal opinion. Taking all the information I have, I believe that oral collagen products have a weak, if any, effect on the skin. But we can't completely deny the existence of efficacy now. However, considering that oral collagen does not have any safety risks, and the price is not very expensive, if you are not very poor money, then I am not strongly opposed to you buy a trial, if it is effective, you will earn, if it is ineffective, it is a small loss of money. Although collagen products have not yet been recognized by the authoritative regulatory authorities, the possibility of being recognized in a few years cannot be ruled out. After all, every similar product has to go through a long process from being proposed to being recognized. I don't know if collagen products are in this long process.