Collagen or hydrolyzed collagen supplements are one of the most common and it may have reached your ears that, to you, who do a lot of sports, they can come from fable for your joints . What is true in this recommendation? Do they really help if a knee or wrist hurts or can they prevent future joint problems?
To begin with, collagen has a very prominent function in our body. It is a protein that is responsible for forming fibers in the epidermis, muscles, bones, cartilage … It is the most abundant protein in the human body , representing a third of our total protein content. Among its components are three amino acids: glycine, proline and lysine.
As Julia Jiménez, dietitian-nutritionist and director of the I Don’t Know What to Have Dinner Psyconutrition Consultation explains, there are several ways to obtain collagen. The first would be ingesting it through diet, with foods of animal origin such as skin, bones, cartilage, broths, gelatin … the second by means of supplements (of animal origin) and the third by synthesizing it endogenously from other proteins (in the case of those who follow diets of plant origin).
“When we take an ‘external’ supplement, our body separates the amino acids and saves each one of them to do what it considers best. And no, it’s almost never collagen again. A high amount of collagen will increase the amino acids in the body ”, explains the pharmacist and food safety expert Gemma del Caño in her book We no longer eat like we used to, and thank goodness! (Paidos). And it recommends, in any case, to consume meat or fish .
“Ingesting collagen through diet or supplementation does not imply, in any way, that this collagen will be used to alleviate that discomfort in your right wrist joint. What’s more, perhaps the body uses the amino acids in that collagen (glycine, proline and lysine) to form other proteins such as insulin, elastin or keratin, for example. However, what is certain is that the body will not be able to synthesize collagen correctly without an adequate supply of the amino acids that compose it, ”says Jiménez.
Related to the consumption of hydrolyzed collagen and its supposed benefits in the maintenance of the joints, in 2011 the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA) published a study in which it was concluded that a cause-effect relationship could not be established between the consumption of collagen hydrolyzate and joint maintenance.
“It is fine if you take a supplement to correct a deficit, as long as this intake of magic pills is prescribed by a doctor, for example, a vitamin B12 deficiency due to following a vegan diet. But the essential idea is that you can acquire vitamins, minerals and other substances thanks to a healthy and varied diet full of good habits, such as exercising, resting and eating fruits, vegetables, nuts, eggs, whole grains, etc. ”, says Del Spout. “We worry about having a pantry full of supplements, but we forget that the most simple thing is the key: eating food .
