In today’s skincare guide, you will learn about natural ways to increase collagen in your skin and also find out the secrets of increasing collagen in your skin.
You will also learn about what sort of skincare you should use to increase collagen, and do collagen supplements actually work, or is it a waste of money? In this particular guide, we’ll be sharing how to increase collagen in your skin.
Natural Ways to Increase Collagen In Your Skin
What is Collagen?
To maintain a youthful looking skin throughout time, you need collagen, and that is actually one of the most important structures in your skin.
Collagen is a form of protein, and what it does is it holds up your entire skin structure, giving you that nice youthful look.
Children and teenagers have plenty of collagen in their skin, and what happens is, after the age of 24, you lose 1% of your collagen every year. Yes, you heard it right, the ageing of your skin starts at the age of 24.
However, there are a couple of ways to delay the ageing process, aka to increase the amount of collagen in your skin, and to reduce the degradation of collagen.
So in this guide, we’ll be breaking it down to three parts.
- Natural ways of increasing collagen in your skin.
- What can you actually apply in your skin to increase collagen?
- What can you take orally to naturally increase collagen?
Natural Way to Increase your Skin’s Collagen
Now before you spend a single dollar on collagen skincare or collagen supplements, your lifestyle actually makes a huge impact on how much collagen your skin has.
So here are some lifestyle habits that helps maintain the collagen in your skin.
Regular Sleep
You should sleep anywhere between 6 to 8 hours every day uninterrupted, because during the sleeping cycle, a hormone known as growth hormone is released. And growth hormone is important because it stimulates collagen growth.
However, when you have interrupted sleep, the amount of growth hormone reduces, it means the amount of collagen being produced is much lesser.
Sun Protection
Sunscreen isn’t just about avoiding skin cancer, it is about protecting your sun against excessive UV rays. UV rays, especially UVB, penetrates the deep parts of your skin, disrupting collagen growth and killing off collagen prematurely.
You Need the Right Exercise
Exercise, especially resistance training, means using weights, using dumbbells, actually increases the blood circulation in your skin, increasing the rate of collagen growth.
Lifestyle that Harms Collagen Growth
However, there are lifestyle habits that actually harms collagen growth and here they are.
Smoking or Vaping
Smoking and vaping reduces the blood circulation to your skin and this causes premature aging and reduction in collagen synthesis.
Taking Excessive Processed Food and Sugars
When you take excessive sugars, there is a process known as collagen glycation.
What it does is, the sugars attach themselves to your collagen structures, making your collagen brittle and it shatters easily.
Think of it as converting collagen from this elastic structure to a glass-like structure.
Chronic Stress
Chronic stress increases a stress hormone known as cortisol and cortisol weakens collagen over time. So if you want more collagen being produced in your skin, you need to have sufficient sleep, eat well, use sunscreen and reduce stress.
Skincare that Help Boost Collagen Growth
There are certain active topical ingredients that help trigger collagen growth indirectly.
Retinoids aka vitamin A Derivatives
They are anything like retinol, tretinoin or edepalin, whereby they trigger fibroblast activity. Now fibroblasts are tiny cells in your skin that create collagen.
So over time, what it does is, it thickens the dermis, hence more collagen.
Antioxidants
And to maintain collagen over time, you also need antioxidants. So using something like a vitamin C serum or cream is a great way to neutralize free radicals coming from UV rays, extending the lifespan of your collagen.
So once you have sufficient collagen in your skin, the antioxidants will help protect and increase the lifespan of the collagen.
Peptides
Peptides are tiny amino acids that once are absorbed by your skin, they signal your skin to produce more collagen.
Niacinamide
Niacinamide is not as powerful as retinoid or peptides to trigger collagen growth, but it does a couple of other things as well. It protects the deep parts of your skin by maintaining a healthy skin barrier.
So the skin barrier is like a filter or a shield around your collagen.
Collagen Boosting Diet
Do you know there’s certain diets that you can take to increase the amount of collagen in your skin? So eating the right food is important.
So what is the right food? Here it is;
Taking more vitamin C
You can find this in citrus, bell peppers, and even berries. And just like vitamin C on your skin, taking oral vitamin C does increase the shelf life of collagen.
Zinc
Zinc also helps increase the shelf life of your collagen and they’re highly available in things like oysters, shellfish, and nuts.
Increase Consumption in Proline and Glycine
These are amino acids that support the growth of collagen and these are highly available in egg whites, bone broth, and chicken skin.
Increase the amount of antioxidants that your body has.
You should take more leafy green vegetables. Now I’m going to cycle back to bone broth.
Do you know that in a lot of Asian cultures, they regularly drink bone broth soup? And it’s because bone broth soup contains a lot of healthy fats, healthy collagen, and a lot of minerals as well. Maybe there’s a secret to healthy Asian skin.
Do Oral Collagen Supplements Actually Work?
You can walk to any drugstore or even open your phone app and you realize that there are thousands and thousands of different brands of oral collagen supplements. Most of them do not work.
The reason being, collagen is a large protein and when you take them orally, your stomach acid actually breaks the collagen down into very fine amino acids.
So if oral collagen supplements do not work, why are there so many? That’s because there is a small fraction of oral collagen supplements that actually do work.
Hydrolyzed Collagen Peptides
Hydrolyzed collagen peptides are typically made up of two ingredients. They can be derived from marine, aka fish, or they can be bovine, aka from a cow.
Marine collagen is of better quality and is definitely better because it has higher bioavailability, means it’s better absorbed by your body.
However, it is a little bit more pricey when compared to bovine collagen.
How Hydrolyzed Collagen Peptide Work?
These peptides are very small amino acids and when absorbed by your body, triggers natural collagen growth. Think of them as Lego blocks or building blocks for collagen.
However, one of the downsides of taking oral hydrolyzed collagen is you cannot dictate it to go to your skin.
Your body will utilize the hydrolyzed oral collagen in places where it requires more collagen growth and they can occur anywhere in your joints, hair, nails, and lastly your skin.
And to boost the effectiveness of oral hydrolyzed collagen, you should always take it with vitamin C, zinc, and magnesium.
Skin Care Scam Around Collagen
Before we approach the end of this guide, do you know that there is a skincare scam around collagen? Anyone that’s selling you collagen creams are just selling you hope.
That is because collagen protein is so large, it is unable to be absorbed by your skin. So if you see anyone selling collagen creams, please save your money and just avoid them.
Conclusion
Can you boost your skin’s collagen naturally? Answer is yes.You lead a healthy lifestyle, you sleep early, and you take the right food, and definitely you can give your skin an extra boost by using the right skincare and oral hydrolyzed collagen supplements.
