So, what's the deal with collagen?

[jakexb]

Just an anecdote, but I started collagen hoping it would help my hair and skin. It hasn’t at all. But my knees have never felt better! Joint pain has vanished, even the day after leg day.

[Davin8r]

Very convincing that standard collagen peptides aren’t useful for joints, but he barely talks about the skin studies. Either way, it sounds like industry-sponsorship of studies is a major problem:

Does collagen live up to the hype? [New research 2025]

[dicarlo2]

He makes a lot of good points about the confounders for increased collagen synthesis in joints and the mechanistic rationale makes sense - tl;dr vitamin C is likely the main driver along with sufficient protein intake. With that said, if I were having surgery where post-op I want increased collagen synthesis, I would follow the protocol in the RCT since it’s the best and only evidence we have for improved collagen synthesis in joints.

[LukeMV]

New video from Stanfield about the subject. Very good breakdown.

“No Evidence to Support the Use of Collagen Supplements”

[A_User]

Shitposting here wouldn’t be as fun if it didn’t cause a blip on the radar for longevity influencers a few days later.

So the protein equated RCT for skin health was only for treating burns and we don’t know how generalizable that is to other skin health.

Brad did well with the criticism of meta-analytic reviews, that was simple and to the point.

[Olafurpall]

@A_User

I was just thinking it would be a huge blunder if the collagen skin studies were confounded by protein intake, at least for the advocates.

While this is important to mention and ideally the control groups would get equivalent amounts of protein, I don’t think this is a big problem. The increase in protein intake by addition of collagen supplements is hardly significant in most studies. I strongly doubt that benefits would be explained by 5 g of extra protein.

@LukeMV

New video from Stanfield about the subject. Very good breakdown.

I’ve read a lot of studies on collagen and I agree that his take is very good.

[jnorm]

@Olafurpall

While this is important to mention and ideally the control groups would get equivalent amounts of protein, I don’t think this is a big problem. The increase in protein intake by addition of collagen supplements is hardly significant in most studies. I strongly doubt that benefits would be explained by 5 g of extra protein.

I don’t know how the study was set up but the amino acid ratios between collagen and say, whey protein, are so different that x amount of protein is not a good control for x amount of collagen. If completely hydrolyzed collagen was given as a control, at least you could differentiate between peptide-derived and amino acid-derived effects.

[Olafurpall]

I agree. That would be a good control to have in collagen studies.