Collagen Protein Explained: How Important Is It for Fitness?

Move over whey, collagen protein is the new supplement in town and everyone’s talking about it! But is it worth the hype?

Over the past few years, much has been said about collagen protein, which seems to be promoted everywhere. Reading some ads, you’d think it fixes everything; builds muscle, heals joints, builds smooth skin, and gives you shiny hair! With all that, why wouldn’t you want to take collagen protein?

Well, the truth about collagen protein supplementation is it has been misrepresented. This doesn’t mean it’s bad at all; it just means it’s not always the best choice of protein, depending on your goals.

This article will try to clear the confusion concerning collagen protein.

What Is Collagen Protein?

Even though everyone seems to promote collagen protein, many people don’t know what it is!

Collagen is the most abundant structural protein in the human body, making up 30% of its total protein content. It’s primarily responsible for providing structure in the body’s connective tissues, including tendons, cartilage, skin, and even bone.

As a protein, collagen is essentially made up of amino acids. However, the amino acid profile of collagen protein is highly unique, which is what makes it such a powerful and essential nutrient.

Amino Acids In Collagen

While there are over 300 different types of amino acids, protein comprises a combination of 20. Of these 20, 11 amino acids are either non-essential or conditionally essential. Non-essential means your body can synthesize adequate amounts internally, while conditionally essential means your body can synthesize adequate amounts internally under normal circumstances, but sometimes, during times of high stress, you need some from your nutrition.

The other 9 amino acids are known as essential amino acids, as you can only get them by consuming them through your diet. If not, your body will never have them, making them an important piece of the puzzle.

Collagen protein is made up of 19 amino acids, but it’s missing one of them, tryptophan. Unfortunately, tryptophan is one of the 9 essential amino acids, meaning it’s an incomplete protein. We’ll get back to this below when we talk about muscle growth so remember that.

What really makes the amino acid profile stand out is the concentration of just three amino acids:

• Glycine
• Proline
• Hydroxyproline

When comparing the concentration, these three amino acids make up 50% of the total amount of amino acids.

These three amino acids then join to form a bioactive peptide, all gathered together and wound together to form the triple-helix structure of collagen protein, similar to how rope is formed. This amino acid profile, and the resulting triple helix structure, are not seen anywhere else and are what make collagen protein so powerful.

Types Of Collagen Protein

There’s not just one type of collagen protein; in fact, there are 28 types of collagen.  Of all these types, about 90% come from type I. With that said, here are the 5 most common types of collagen.

• Type 1: This is the most common type of collagen in your body, found in bones, skin, tendons, ligaments, connective tissue, fibrous cartilage, and teeth.
• Type 2: Found primarily in elastic cartilage, this collagen type is crucial for joint function.
• Type 3: This type provides structural support to organs, muscles, and arteries.
• Type 4: Located in the skin’s basement membrane, Type 4 collagen plays a key role in maintaining stability.

When choosing a collagen supplement, it’s generally recommended that you use type I and type III for skin, nails and anti-aging effects.

Do Collagen Supplements Work?

Collagen supplementation is praised as an amazing protein because it has many awesome bodily functions. However, this praise is largely misplaced. While it is true that collagen is essential for optimizing human function, there is a disconnect between eating collagen and collagen production in the body. Eating collagen doesn’t automatically mean you’ll stimulate collagen production.

A crude example would be to suggest that you should eat a heart to help build a strong heart. That sounds crazy, but this is ultimately what is being suggested. While collagen protein is unique, you can’t just eat collagen and have it absorb whole. Rather, your body will break it down into amino acids and use them accordingly.

This means that you may eat high-quality collagen protein. However, it will be digested into smaller amino acids. At this point, you don’t get to say, “Hey collagen amino acids, I want some of you to go to my knees and some of you to go to my skin.” Again, this is a crazy example, but again, it helps illustrate what is being suggested.

Think about it like this: When you eat a nice piece of steak full of protein, you’re actually eating the muscle of cattle. For example, a tenderloin is cut from the psoas major muscle. Another example is eating chicken breast, which is muscle meat. This is why these meats are great protein sources—they’re muscle!

However, even though you eat some chicken breast or muscle, the muscle doesn’t go through your system intact and just mesh into your existing muscle! Rather, it’s broken down so the amino acids are released and transported to where it’s needed.

Keep in mind, protein from plant sources will also be broken down into amino acids which can be used. The point is that the source of protein you eat is simply a means to deliver amino acids.

This is what happens when you eat collagen. Your body breaks it down into peptides (small chains of amino acids) or amino acids, which are then absorbed and brought to where needed.

Another thing to consider is that the three most abundant amino acids in collagen are glycine, proline, and hydroxyproline. These amino acids are conditionally non-essential, meaning your body can generally produce sufficient amounts internally.

Now, this doesn’t mean that a collagen protein is worthless. At the end of the day, it still delivers amino acids, which can be used to perform a litany of processes. The real question is whether taking collagen protein has any significant benefit over taking whey protein.

Answering this isn’t as clear as you’d think with all the hype around it lately. While there are studies that show collagen supplementation provides benefits, it’s very hard to find collagen protein compared to other protein sources.

Benefits Of Collagen Protein

Let’s discuss some of the actual benefits that a collagen supplement could give. It has been used for decades and apart from muscle growth, there are two primary proposed benefits which we’ll discuss below.

Cosmetic Purposes

One of the more common uses of collagen is in cosmetics to help produce healthy, smooth skin and increase moisture. In fact, this was one of the original uses before the fitness community caught on to it.

A large meta-analysis from 2021 reviewed the supplementation of hydrolyzed collagen by 1,125 people between the ages of 20 and 70¹. They found that consistent use over time reduced wrinkles, smoothed skin, increased skin hydration, and increased elasticity.

We should also talk about the use of collagen creams. Collagen creams are often used for skin care and face care. The issue is that again, collagen is too large to be absorbed and used internally as is or stimulate collagen growth. However, this is also why you see many of these creams with vitamin C as that could. Regardless, while collagen creme won’t stimulate more collagen, it does seem to help to improve skin moisture.

Bone & Joint Health

Just like collagen, bones can become more brittle as we age. When this continues for a longer duration with no therapy, a person can develop various conditions such as arthritis and osteoporosis. As collagen is a major structure within bones, it’s clear how a drop in these two is related.

Again, numerous studies have found that consuming collagen supplements can increase bone mineral density, provide a protective effect on articular cartilage², and result in symptomatic relief of pain³.

Is Collagen Protein Good For Muscle Growth?

Here’s where the biggest problem with collagen protein lies. And to be clear, this isn’t a problem with collagen protein but rather how it’s promoted. Influencers often praise collagen and claim it’s good for muscle growth. The problem is it’s not good for muscle growth.

Remember when we went over the amino acid profile of collagen and mentioned that it’s deficient in one of the essential amino acids? So that’s the problem.

For a protein to trigger muscle protein synthesis, it requires sufficient amounts of all 9 essential amino acids⁴. If it only has 8 essential amino acids and missing one, you’re out of luck.

We do need to note that we’ve learned a lot about complete and incomplete proteins over the years. Previously we believed you need all 9 essential amino acids simultaneously to trigger muscle protein synthesis. Thanks to research, we now know that’s not entirely true as long as you eat all 9 essential amino acids within proximity.

This means the amino acids in collagen could help support muscle protein synthesis, but it’s definitely not an optimal choice. In fact, if you look on the website of Vital Proteins, one of the most popular brands of collagen protein, they even admit this on their site, saying;

“And while collagen peptides do not build muscle, they are shown to help support muscle function.”

We actually have a few studies that have compared whey protein with collagen peptides. One study compared two 30-gram whey or collagen protein servings on muscle protein synthesis in “healthy older women”⁵. Whey protein elicited higher rates, and the researchers concluded, “WP is a more effective supplement to support skeletal muscle retention in older women than CP.”

Related:

Another study compared whey protein to collagen peptides. However, they added leucine to the collagen, so it equaled whey⁶. This is a very important aspect as whey is very high in leucine, which is the primary amino acid responsible for triggering muscle protein synthesis. The two groups then followed a training program for 10 weeks, with the whey protein group experiencing significantly greater muscle mass.

This means you should not choose collagen protein if building muscle is your primary goal; you are doing yourself a disservice.

How to Increase Natural Production Of Collagen

Our bodies begin with high amounts of collagen to support bone and joint health. The problem is that over time, collagen can degrade, and you will gradually lose collagen. 

Many different factors dictate the rate of loss, but studies suggest that most people start losing 1% of their collagen yearly starting in their mid-20s⁷. This means that you could lose up to 25% by the time you’re 45!

This can lead to weaker and sore joints. That said, there are things you can do to help maintain your collagen supplies and even restore excessive loss.

1. Eat A Diet Full Of Vitamin C, Zinc & Copper

In addition to needing a high supply of amino acids and a diet high in a few other nutrients, including vitamin C, zinc & copper. Don’t take this lightly.

We’re sure you’ve heard of scurvy and automatically thought of pirates. Well, scurvy is caused by a lack of vitamin C, one mechanism being the inability to produce collagen⁸. Now, you’re not going to get scurvy, but it’s a dramatic illustration of how important it is to get all of your micronutrients and the relationship between vitamin C and collagen.

2. Eat Plenty Of Protein

As we mentioned above, eating collagen ultimately supplies your body with amino acids. We have also mentioned that we haven’t seen any studies that show amino acids from collagen have any inheritance benefit over the amino acids from whey or other proteins. All this means is that you should maintain adequate protein in your diet.

Increasing protein intake will supply the amino acids needed for natural collagen production. Aim for 1.4-2.2 grams of protein per kilogram of bodyweight.

3. Hydrate!!!