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What is Collagen?

UPDATED LAST ON

June 12, 2023

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Quick Summary

Collagen is the most abundant protein in our bodies, making up nearly 1/3 of our protein composition. It plays a role in the critical functions of our body including our skeleton, skin, tendons, and ligaments. Unfortunately, the manufacturing of collagen starts to decrease around the age of 25-30.

Hoax or Superfood?

Collagen (in itself) is not a hoax, y’all.

Yea, yea, yea – we sell multi collagen protein supplements so we have to say that.

Collagen, by definition, is actually a protein already found in your body (science anyone?) More on that soon.

So let’s first agree on science.

Now, before you supplement your depleting collagen production (if you’re over 25 years old, yes it’s unfortunately decreasing), first learn about what collagen is, its important functions, and how your body manufactures it!

What is Collagen? (Protein, anyone?)

Collagen in our Bodies Illustration Infographic
Collagen is found nearly everywhere in our bodies!

Collagen is a protein. In fact, it’s the most abundant type of protein found in all mammals, including humans.

It is located in many parts of our bodies including hair, nails, skin, bones, muscles, tendons, our blood vessels, many vital organs including the heart, lungs and our digestive system, most notably the small intestine.

The body produces collagen through fibroblasts (not via an organ) which are cells that live in all of our connective tissues. It’s their job to make collagen for our skin, bone, ligaments, and tendons.

Collagen’s important functions

One of the critical functions of collagen is to simply makeup our skeleton – bones are made of collagen calcium and phosphorus. Collagen also holds our skin in place and allows muscles to be attached to bones and other muscles (tendons and ligaments are made of collagen).

If you had to guess, what do you think your teeth and eyeballs are made of? Yup, collagen. Want a crazy statistic?

Collagen makes up nearly 1/3 of your body’s protein composition.

Many like to call it the “glue” that holds it all together. And actually, for you language and history nerds, collagen comes from the Greek word “kólla”, which literally means glue.

Collagen Greek Word kólla means Glue

Types of Collagen in our body

There are at least 16 types of collagen found throughout your body. Some scientific journals say there could be 28. Maybe there’s 274?

Regardless of how many types there are (as you can see, science is still catching up with collagen’s popularity), just know collagen is everywhere in our bodies and extremely important.

If you didn’t have any collagen in your body, you would be a puddle. And dead. Yikes.

Our body’s manufacturing of Collagen (insert sad face here)

Even as a day old new baby, your body was already manufacturing collagen.

But, then the wheels start to fall off.

Our bodies are really, really good at making collagen itself, until about 25-30 years of age.

This decrease in collagen materializes as wrinkles, aches in our joints, skin issues, digestive problems (that we blame on many different things, but never make the collagen connection), loss of hair, heart problems, and more.

So, collagen is super critical to our bodies but our bodies manufacturing of it decreases as we age.

*Gulp*

What shall we do?

How do we get more Collagen?

  1. Eat more foods rich in collagen.
  2. If you don’t have enough time, money, or the aptitude to continually eat bone broth, organ meats, meat on bone, bone broth, or eggs — this is a big pro to taking collagen supplements! This is why our multi collagen protein supplements exist, we can (and will) come to the rescue.

Even if you’re younger than 25-30, supplementing with collagen can still be extremely beneficial to your health (see: collagen is beneficial for children).

How to start!

If you’re ready to try some collagen supplements, here are two resources:

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This Collagen College™ article created by:

Author

Eric Sharp CMO

Eric Sharp

Eric discovered collagen back in 2019 (thanks to Charlie) and been a believer since. He brings 20+ years of digital marketing experience to the CB Supplements team. As CMO, he's directly responsible for crafting the CB Supplements positioning, content, branding, and overall marketing direction.

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