Proteins like collagen are used in the human body for a variety of purposes, including joints and tendons, energy production, and breaking down fats. The benefits of taking collagen, then, are apparent when considering how our body uses the substance.
Collagen itself has a unique list of benefits, including:
1. Healthier Hair and Nails
One of the things many people don’t realize about collagen is that it can help with other areas besides just skin. Two of these are hair and nails.
This building block helps strengthen hair and give it that special shine that you notice. It can also protect against split ends and frays, which helps give hair a more youthful look.
Similarly, collagen can strengthen nails and protect against breaks. It can also help restore nails to a more youthful look by repairing nail tissue on the cellular level.
2. Better Digestion
Collagen can also encourage proper gut health and help with digestion by continuing to help your body properly break down food. When you’re not digesting food properly, it can impact your health in a number of ways and can lower the quality of your day-to-day life.
3. Balance Gut Bacteria
In addition to aiding in the breakdown of food, collagen can help strengthen the “good” bacteria that live in your gut. Your digestive system is home to trillions of bacteria, some of them good and some of them bad.
This is perfectly normal, but it’s important to maintain the right balance so that the bad bacteria don’t overtake the good. When that happens, it can lead to negative digestive effects like bloating, gas, weight gain, cramping, and more.
Collagen helps keep your good bacteria strong, so they can fight against the bad bacteria and maintain a proper balance in your gut microbiome.
4. Helps With Weight Loss
Another way that collagen and other proteins benefit the body is by helping the breakdown of fats. This can benefit weight-loss efforts by making it easier to burn fat. When you aren’t getting enough collagen into your body, it can cause some fat to remain in the body longer than you’d like.
This could be why you may notice certain parts of the body have a harder time losing weight than others. Collagen can assist in these efforts by allowing your body to more effectively convert fats into energy.
5. Increases Energy
Speaking of energy, the breaking down of fat, which collagen assists in, benefits your health by increasing your overall energy levels. When fat stores are being broken down into useful energy, it allows you to fight fatigue throughout the day, so you don’t need that mid-afternoon nap.
Thanks to modern technology, collagen supplements have become a popular way to increase your level of collagen and obtain its benefits easily. Because of its increase in popularity, you may have heard of collagen, but you may not understand just how it works or what it can do.
To take some of the mystery out of this rising health trend, and to help you decide if collagen could be right for you, here are four things you can expect to experience if you take collagen supplements regularly:
Connecting with Live Conscious on Facebook @weliveconscious and Instagram @weliveconscious will also provide you with some energy-boosting ideas that can help bring some rejuvenating wellness into your life.
6. Reduced Food Cravings
As noted, collagen can help improve gut health by assisting digestion and improving the balance of your gut bacteria. One of the benefits this can lead to is a reduction in junk food cravings. When bad bacteria outnumber the good bacteria in your gut, it causes you to crave the foods that allow these bad bacteria to thrive.
This is because of the “brain/gut axis,” which is a connection between your digestion and your brain that can impact your cravings. The bad bacteria want you to eat high-sugar, high-carb food because they thrive on these items. Good bacteria, however, thrive on healthy foods that are high in fiber, like leafy green vegetables. These foods are rich in CoQ10, which is why CoQ10 can improve the bacterial balance of your gut microbiome. It strengthens the good bacteria, which causes you to crave better foods. This can reduce your junk food cravings and also make weight loss easier.
7. Improved Joint Function
One of the most important benefits of collagen is its ability to improve your joint function. As joints age, they naturally wear thin, and this can cause increased friction, which is responsible for joint pain and stiffness.
These problems will only get worse the longer you neglect them, and increasing collagen levels can improve your joints’ ability to move smoothly. Collagen is an important building block of joints and tissue, which is why it’s so important to keep your collagen levels up if you want to promote proper joint health.
8. Fewer Trips to the Bathroom
Some users of collagen report fewer trips to the bathroom, as a result of the digestive benefits of collagen. Because collagen can help you break down and digest things better, it causes your system to function more regularly.
This can mean fewer trips to the bathroom, which also can improve your sleeping patterns, as you aren’t being awakened by the urge to use the restroom.
9. Softer Skin
Collagen taken orally can benefit the skin, just as collagen cream can. The skin is made up of proteins, just like tissues and muscles, and collagen is one of the building blocks of skin.
One of the problems with many skincare regimens is that they don’t address the problem on a cellular level. But collagen does exactly that by promoting healthy skin cells and helping them to repair more easily.
Waking Up To Wellness
Because collagen has become so popular lately, there are a lot of different brands when it comes to collagen supplements. If you’re not sure where to start, we recommend Live Conscious' own Collagen Peptides, which has great overall benefits and is very easy to use. It’s a high-quality supplement that provides the benefits of collagen without useless filler ingredients as you might find in some other inferior brands.
Collagen has such a wide range of uses, from joint health to better skin. It’s no wonder this solution is becoming more and more popular. As the research continues to come out, the evidence is only growing for the potential that collagen has for restoring the health of skin, joints, and even digestion.
