Do you need more collagen to stay healthy?

We all know that collagen plays an integral role in building and supporting vital tissues in the body, but do we need more than that? With important benefits for skin, hair, nails, and joint structure, maintaining an adequate amount of collagen supports healthy functioning of the body. Especially for women, supplementing with collagen also helps skin, hair, and nails become healthier. In addition, this ingredient is also beneficial for the gut, as it aids in healing any inflamation.

Clinical studies show that consuming more collagen can lead you to counteract the effects of collagen degradation in the skin, combat the formation of wrinkles, improve elasticity, and help skin stay hydrated. Not only that, collagen can also be injected into the skin to help correct scars or dents.

What affects our collagen levels?

There are many reasons for this. When we reach the age of 30, the natural collagen production in the body will decline, resulting in the skin becoming thinner, losing elasticity, and eventually forming wrinkles that are difficult to remove.

In addition to the natural decrease of collagen production in the body, another common cause is the long-term accumulation of excess sugar in the body which hinders the ability of collagen to self-repair. For pregnant women, hormonal changes also affect collagen metabolism to help skin become more elastic, adapting to the expansion in the abdomen as the fetus develops. Therefore, this is also a stage where you need to add a large amount of collagen to meet the needs of the body.

How to increase collagen production?

To form collagen, our body makes procollagen-a precursor all collagen begins to produce from. This precursor is a combination of the amino acids glycine and proline along with vitamin C. So, by making sure to consume foods rich in these nutrients, we can support self-collagen building. course.

Include foods such as:

Proline: egg whites, wheat germ, milk, mushrooms, asparagus

Glycine: chicken skin, gelatin, pork skin, bone broth

Vitamin C: Citrus, bell peppers, ripe fruit

For those who follow vegan or vegetarians diets, you can still increase your collagen intake with powdered supplements used in daily drinks (vitamins, juices, coffee, etc.). You can also intervene from the outside with collagen enrichment filler injections or red light therapy to contribute to improving collagen production in the skin.