Collagen is a protein, the most abundant protein in the human body. It is the protein that provides tensile and flexible strength to tendons and ligaments, is a major component of the dermal layer of skin, the cartilage in joints, an important structural protein in all the body’s organs. But, if you are like most of us, you have been living a collagen-deficient lifestyle. While your body can manufacture collagen, you are also meant to obtain significant amounts of collagen in your diet. The astounding blunders of the last 50-year low-fat era has caused most people to avoid collagen-rich foods, namely organ meats. Many have gone to the opposite extreme, for instance consuming foods like boneless skinless chicken breast in which most of the collagen content has been discarded.
In this episode of the Defiant Health podcast, I am going to argue that dietary collagen intake plays a major role in maintaining the characteristics of youthfulness. Let’s discuss how and why collagen has virtually disappeared from modern habits and how you can bring it back with benefits for health and youthfulness. We demystify the process of glycation in which collagen becomes brittle, disorganized, and irreversibly damaged. Discover how to counteract this breakdown with increased collagen intake, and engage in the ongoing debate on the best form of collagen. We'll also guide you on how to ensure that collagen gets to the parts of the body that need it the most. Stay tuned as we discuss the importance of collagen in an anti-aging regimen and how it can help maintain youthfulness. Who knew that the fountain of youth could be as simple as upping your collagen intake? Let's uncover this protein powerhouse together.
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Collagen is a protein, the most abundant protein in the human body. It's the protein that provides tensile and flexible strength to tendons and ligaments and is a major component of the dermal layer of skin, the cartilagin bones, an important structural protein in all the body's organs. But if you're like most of us, you've been living a collagen deficient lifestyle. While your body can manufacture collagen, you are also meant to obtain significant amounts of collagen in your diet. The astounding blunders of the last 50 year low fat era has caused most people to avoid collagen rich foods, namely organ meats. Many have gone to the opposite extreme, for instance, consuming foods like boneless, skinless chicken breast, in which most of the collagen content has been discarded. In this episode of the Defiant Health Podcast, i'm going to argue that dietary collagen intake plays a major role in maintaining the characteristics of youthfulness. Let's discuss how and why collagen has virtually disappeared from modern habits and how you can bring it back, with benefits for health and youthfulness. Later in the podcast, let's talk about Defiant Health's sponsors that include Paleo Valley, who provides fermented grass-fed beef sticks, bone broth, protein rich in collagen, organic super grains and low carb super food bars, and now 100% grass-fed and finished pastured meats. And our newest sponsor, biodquest, who provides unique probiotics such as sugar shift to support healthy blood sugars, and simple slumber to assist in obtaining healthy sleep That's crafted with the unique property of combining synergistic microbes. Collagen is the most abundant protein in the human body as well as other creatures. It is a structural protein that provides tensile strength and flexibility. Of course, your body produces a large quantity of collagen, but as we age, signs of inadequate collagen production begin to appear, such as thinning of a dermis the dermal layer of skin that yields thin, crepey skin the deterioration in joint cartilage, because joint cartilage is about 70% collagen and of course, cartilage wears down over time and you get arthritis and pain. Bone tissue has a lot of collagen also, and as collagen is depleted with aging, you get bone thinning and increased risk for osteoporotic fractures. So failure to produce adequate amounts of collagen is a part of the aging process.
William Davis, MD:
Now we're also meant to obtain collagen lots of collagen from our diets, but the last 50 years or so of this huge blunder of the low fat era cut your saturated fat, cut total fat cause most modern people to reject foods like organ meats, like consuming brain or heart or tongue or bone marrow or skin And those are all rich sources of collagen. So the modern diet is deficient in collagen because very few people eat organ meats anymore and don't consume things like bone marrow. Don't make broths or soups from the carcass, the remnants of an animal that you consumed, that is, you consume the muscle and the organs and you have the bones and ligaments and other odds and ends remaining, and making soup out of it. That mobilized more collagen. You can get some collagen by consuming meat, but many people choose the easier to consume, easier to chew tender cuts of meat that have less collagen and avoid the tougher cuts. So not only do we get inadequate quantities of collagen in our diet that adds to the aging effect of diminishing collagen production but collagen proteins are also very prone to glycation, that is, glucose modification of the collagen protein structure. So every time blood glucose rises above 100 milligrams per deciliter, it glycates collagen.
William Davis, MD:
When collagen becomes glycated, it breaks down, it becomes brittle and if it's in your skin, for instance, it will accelerate the appearance of aging. If it's in your joints, it will accelerate the breakdown of joint cartilage. If it's in your arteries, it will make the arteries stiff. If it's in your bones, it will accelerate the breakdown of bone, that is, osteopenia and osteoporosis. As it becomes more brittle, the collagen also becomes disorganized and no longer is flexible and supportive, and this process is irreversible. That is, once collagen is glycated, you cannot undo that effect. So if you've caused accelerated skin aging or joint aging, you cannot undo that effect. But thankfully, collagen is one area in which you can improve on the existing mess you may have created with glycation and the poor intake of collagen. You can do so by increasing your intake of collagen. You can actually deposit new collagen on top of the disorganized old glycated collagen. So by adding back certain foods like organ meats, or supplementing collagen, you can add collagen to joints, to skin and to bone.
William Davis, MD:
Now, before we go on to talk about how to replace or add collagen to your lifestyle, let's first talk about our two Defiant Health Podcast sponsors. The Defiant Health Podcast is sponsored by Paleo Valley makers of delicious grass-fed beef sticks, healthy snack bars and other products. We are very picky around here and insist that any product we consider has no junk ingredients like maltodextrin, carrageenan, carboxymethylcellulose, superlose and, of course, no-edged sugars. And all Paleo Valley products contain no gluten nor grains. In fact, i find Paleo Valley products among the cleanest of any in their category and they're truly delicious.
William Davis, MD:
One of the habits I urge everyone to get into is to include a fermented food product at least once, if not several times, per day in their lifestyles. Unlike nearly all other beef sticks available, the Paleo Valley grass-fed beef sticks are all naturally fermented, meaning they contain probiotic bacterial species. And now Paleo Valley is expanding their Wild Pastures program that provides 100% grass-fed, grass-finished, pastured beef and pastured chicken and pork raised without herbicides or pesticides and raised in the USA. And they've just added wild-caught seafood caught from the waters of Bristol Bay, Alaska. They're now offering a 20% lifetime discount in every order for a limited time. I'll post the web address in the Defiant Health Show notes. Shipping for Paleo Valley products is free for orders of $75 or more. To order, just go to paleovalley. com/ Defiant Health. No coupon code required. The 15% discount will be automatically applied. And be sure to take a look at their other products, such as their organic super greens rich with phytonutrients, and their super food bars that come in dark chocolate chip, apple cinnamon and lemon meringue. They're low carb, of course, with 8 grams net carbs per bar.
William Davis, MD:
The folks at Paleo Valley have lately been busy, recently adding some interesting new products including pasture. Raised fermented pork sticks. Chocolate flavor, grass-fed bone broth protein, grass-fed organ complex in capsule form, pumpkin spice super food bars with grass-fed bone broth protein and new essential electrolytes in powder form to add to the potassium and magnesium intake of your lifestyle, available in orange, lemon and melon flavors. Go to paleovalleycom/ Defiant Health to receive your 15% discount. No discount code is required. I'd also like to welcome Defiant Health's newest sponsor, BiotiQuest.
William Davis, MD:
I've had numerous conversations with BiotiQuest founders Martha Carlin, and academic microbiologist, Dr Raul Cano. They have formulated unique synergistic probiotic products that incorporate what are called collaborative or guild effects, that is, groups of microbes that collaborate with each other via specific metabolites, potentially providing synergistic benefits. They have designed their Sugar Shift probiotic to support healthy blood sugars. Simple Slumber to support sleep. Ideal Immunity to support a healthy immune response. Heart Centered that supports several aspects of heart health. And Antibiotic Andodote designed to support recovery of your gastrointestinal microbiome after a course of antibiotics. BiotiQuest probiotics are, i believe, among the most effective among all probiotic choices for specific health effects. Enter the discount code UNDOC15 for a 15% discount for Defiant Health listeners.
William Davis, MD:
Now let's get back to our discussion. Now. If you go online, you'll see discussions about which form of collagen is best. What they're referring to is there's about 30 different types of collagen type 1, type 3, etc.
William Davis, MD:
I want you to ignore those conversations because I don't believe they make any difference at all, because one of the things to understand is that the most recent science tells us that when you ingest, when you consume collagen, your digestive enzymes break it down into either single amino acids, like glycine, or small fragments, di- or tri-peptides, that is, 2 or 3 amino acid long peptides, and these are the active components of collagen. That is, you ingest collagen, regardless of what type right, and you break it down into both single amino acids, especially like glycine. Collagen is very rich in that one amino acid, glycine, as well as these di- and tri-peptides such as gly-pro-hyp, glycine, proline, hydroxyproline, and those di- and tri-peptides make it intact to the dermal layer of skin or the joint cartilage, or to bone or to artery walls, and those di- and tri-peptides stimulate production of collagen in the skin, for instance, or in joints. So don't be confused by these debates about what type of collagen is best. Now there is a difference among collagen, though, and that is there's emerging science coming out of Japan and South Korea and some other places that suggest that marine-sourced collagen, that is, collagen that comes from fish of various types, may be more concentrated in those di- and tri-peptides and may therefore be effective at lower doses. So the dose is typically used for bovine, that is, cow sourced, or porcine, pig sourced. Those sources typically work at a dose of 10 to 20 grams per day, with marine sourced, depending on the type of marine creature it was obtained from, whether it was bony, whether it was cartilaginous, like a skate or shark. There are only a few marine-sourced collagen products on the market And when I've tried to contact them to find out where they obtained their product from because there's only a handful of manufacturers who make the collagen, such as Nitta Wellnex in Japan or Newtree in South Korea when I've called the retailers and asked them where did they source their marine collagen, they won't say. It's a privacy issue. And so right now, if you buy marine-sourced collagen, we don't know if that's a form that's effective at a lower dose until we can make the connection of where did that marine collagen come from, what manufacturer, what kind of collagen, what's the content of dye and tripeptide. So until we have that information, i would stick with a 10 to 20 gram dose of any source of collagen.
William Davis, MD:
Now you don't have to take a supplement. Of course, you could go back to the old way of getting collagen right. You could just add back organ meats like tongue and heart and liver, and boil the carcass to make soups or broths. But many modern people either don't like to do that because they're queasy about adding back organ meats, or they just don't have the time to do it that way. So we have these supplement forms of collagen that you can get, and there are many good brands.
William Davis, MD:
Now, for those of you who've been following my conversations who've added the lactobacillus rotari yogurt, you have a secret weapon because that yogurt provokes release of oxytocin. The hormone oxytocin and the oxytocin boost you get increases deposition of collagen dramatically. So what you're doing, i think of it like a brick layer and bricks and mortar. So I think of the collagen you're ingesting, you're consuming, you're supplementing as the bricks and mortar and I think of the oxytocin as the brick layer. So you've got both. Now You've got the stimulated collagen production from oxytocin and you have the substrate or the additive effect of the collagen dientripeptides. So what can you expect from this combination of lactobacillus rotari slash oxytocin combined with supplementation of collagen, either from food or from your supplement, well, you'll have smoother skin, reduction of wrinkles and increased thickness of the dermal layer. That's the major determinant of skin health and appearance.
William Davis, MD:
You can add to joint cartilage and you can actually reduce arthritis pain. These strategies, by the way, are most effective in the earlier phases of arthritis, not so effective when you get the bone-on-bone. So the key here is do this early, before you get to bone-on-bone arthritis. You add bone density into your bones and protect yourself from osteopenia, osteoporosis and fractures. Blood pressure is reduced by supplementing collagen. Insulin resistance is reduced and thereby helping you reduce factors such as blood pressure, triglycerides, small LDL particles that cause heart disease. So there's an improvement in the insulin response. There's also a shift in body composition.
William Davis, MD:
It's not quite clear how this develops, but it has been documented several times that when you ingest collagen, especially in the presence of lactobacillus, rhodoride and oxytocin, you lose abdominal visceral fat. That's the fat depot responsible for nearly all the problems associated with overweight and obesity Insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, increased cardiovascular risk, increased risk for dementia, increased risk for breast cancer. All that originates with abdominal visceral fat. Well, these strategies we're talking about lactobacillus, rhodoride, oxytocin and collagen peptide supplementation reduces abdominal visceral fat and increases lean muscle mass. So put this all together smoother skin, better joint health, better arterial health, lower blood pressure, improved insulin resistance, improved body composition.
William Davis, MD:
I think you can see why I'm arguing that collagen is part of an anti-aging program. It's a major component of your effort to maintain youthfulness. Now, if you've learned something from this episode of the Defiant Health podcast, i invite you to subscribe. View your favorite podcast directory. Post a review. Post a comment. Tell your friends, because I'm trying to share information with you. I think that it's hard to come by other sources and that empowers you in seizing control of your own health and also your efforts to maintain youthfulness. Thanks for listening.