Collagen supplementation is becoming increasingly popular and in today’s video I want to discuss what collagen is and what kind of an impact it can have on your health if you choose to supplement with it. Hey guys, Dustin Williams here and for the best nutrition, health and fitness advice, make sure to subscribe to my channel and hit that little notification bell so that you are notified whenever I post a new video every Wednesday. I want to start with an overview of what collagen is. From there we’ll lead into the benefits, the potential benefits of actually utilizing collagen as a supplement in your diet and then because I’ve already went through the process with myself and also with my clients through process of elimination, recommend what I feel is probably the best collagen supplement out there and then we’ll finish up with specific reasons as to why you may not want to use collagen or just certain contraindications whenever using collagen.
First off, what is collagen? Collagen is actually the most abundant protein in the body. It makes up our bones, our skin, our muscles, and our tendons just to name a few things and it actually equates to around one third of the total amount of protein that’s in our body. One of the things about collagen is that we have the ability to create collagen on our own inside of our bodies. If we are giving our body all the nutritional tools that it needs to be able to create the collagen, and the thing about collagen is as we age, our ability to create collagen typically will start declining sometimes as early as age 25 but that doesn’t mean that we can’t combine it. This leads to the question, why might you want to use collagen as a supplement? But before we get into that, how many of you guys have actually used collagen as a supplement before?
Let me know below in the comments and then let me know why you chose specifically to use collagen or add it into your diet. Reason number one, why you might want to consider including collagen supplementation into your diet is the potential to help with joint health. There was a specific study done where essentially what they did is they gave five grams of collagen and they gave this three times per day and they only gave it over a period of three days. So this wasn’t a very long study. And what they found is that by doing this there was actually a beneficial effect on joints and just the three day period, showing something as simple as taking one tablespoon of collagen at each meal can definitely help you and your joint health over a period of just three days. Reason number two is that it can actually help with bone health.
As I mentioned earlier, collagen makes up part of bone. There was a specific study where they took 131 females and they did this study over a period of 12 months. So, it’s definitely more of a long term study. And in this 12 months they only gave them five grams of collagen per day. So it was a smaller dose, definitely not a lot. And what they found is that over the course of this 12 months, that the women that took the five grams of collagen per day actually saw a 7% increase in the density, their bone mineral density making a big difference whenever you’re talking about osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, the other types of bone diseases out there being able to increase bone mineral density by 7% just by supplementing with five grams of collagen per day. Reason number three, whenever you take collagen and you compare it to a general whey protein or casein protein powder, they’re definitely different.
They have a different amino acid profile, and while I don’t believe that taking a collagen, a protein supplement completely replaces like a whey protein or casein protein because the amino acid structure is different. Some of the benefits of adding some of the collagen in as compared to the whey protein is that you’re gonna eliminate any additives, any fillers, any excipients, any of the unnecessary things that you typically get from a whey protein in order to make it taste good. Most of the collagen supplements out there, especially the one that I’ll talk about in this video, it is pretty much tasteless so you can mix it into anything and not really even know that it’s there so you get the benefit of getting some of the protein and the benefits of collagen without some of the extra junk that you would typically see. That gets added to a lot of the protein powders out there.
Reason number four, I’m sure you are already aware of this, but collagen can definitely play into your skin health. As I mentioned earlier, collagen definitely makes up quite a bit of your skin and making sure that you have enough collagen can help play in that role. There was a study where they took women and they did it over a period of eight weeks and during this eight weeks they gave them between two and a half and five grams of collagen per day, which again is kind of a lower dose. It’s definitely not a high dose of collagen. They gave him between two and a half and five grams per day over the eight weeks. And what they found is that over this eight weeks that they saw a significant decrease in the dryness of their skin and also a significant increase in the elasticity of their skin.
So definitely over an eight week period, taking a small dose daily, having an impact on their overall skin health. So let’s talk about recommendations whenever you’re looking for college. And there’s a couple of things that I personally would recommend. The first thing is that I recommend that it comes from grass fed beef. That’s typically gonna be one of your better sources of collagen whenever you’re getting it from that, it’s easier to avoid any of the additives and fillers whenever you’re looking for it. The other thing is that I would recommend that you get a hug, hydraulic sized collagen, and essentially the reason that I would recommend that you would get this is because whenever you mix it into a drink, it will make so much easier. It doesn’t clump up if you get just a pure gelatin. Um, whenever you’re looking for something like that, it typically has to be mixed into like a very hot beverage like coffee so that it dissolves really well and it doesn’t mix very well in anything else.
It clumps up, but if you get the hydraulic size version of it and it’s gonna make it way easier to mix into your drinks to utilize it and you’re still going to get the same benefits. These specific brand that I would recommend is great lakes. I would recommend that you get the great lakes hydraulic sized collagen. I’ll put a link below down in the description for you so that you can go directly to it. It meets the criteria that I mentioned before. It comes from grass fed cattle. It is hydraulic sized and whenever you look at the ingredients list, the collagen is the only thing listed. There’s nothing else. No extra junk, no additives, no fillers. It’s a really good supplement. Definitely the one that I would personally recommend. I’ve used it myself. I’ve recommended it to multiple clients as well. Now there are a couple of situations whenever I wouldn’t recommend using collagen or just not recommend using a lot of it.
One of these examples is going to be if your overall goal is to add muscle mass. As I mentioned earlier, collagen has a different amino acid profile than what you’re gonna get out of whey protein or your muscle meats or eggs or dairy. It’s a different amino acid profile. Doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t take collagen if that’s your goal, but it does mean that you probably should take a lower dose of it so that you can get the majority of your proteins from your muscle meat, your eggs, your dairy that have a different amino acid profile in it. So if the goal overall is to add muscle, I would focus on keeping your collagen intake a little bit lower. And the other thing that you want to make sure that you consider whenever taking collagen is regardless of your goals, if you’re something, if this is something that you wanna take long term, I would definitely recommend that it does not make up a large percentage of your protein.
I would recommend that you definitely keep it below 30% of your total protein intake because as I mentioned before, it’s got a good amino acid profile. Uh, it’s really high in certain amino acids that are lacking in other muscle meats, but it also is lower in certain ones like branch chain amino acids. So this is why you would want long term most of your protein to still come from your muscle meats and from your, your dairy and your eggs and a casein protein, other protein sources that you’re using. And I would not let the collagen make up any more than 30% I would definitely keep it under 30% maybe even under 20% for the long haul. As you can see, supplementing with collagen can definitely have some solid benefits as long as you are utilizing it properly. And of course supplementing and using the right brands. If you enjoyed this video, I would appreciate it if you would smash that like button and don’t forget to subscribe to the channel. And if you would, write helpful below down in the comments if you found this video helpful, but I will see you guys in the next video.