Do You Need Collagen Supplements?
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Welcome back to Food Psych Weekly, the newsletter where I answer your questions about intuitive eating, disordered-eating recovery, and how to navigate diet and wellness culture without falling into their traps.
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This week’s question is from a reader named Pat, who writes:
I am a 74-year-old female. I have heard and read many articles about adding collagen to my diet to help with wrinkles, sagging skin, etc. Are these articles and advertisements just bogus, or does adding collagen really help? How in the world would I know which one to try, since there do not seem to be any rules or regulations around this type of product?
Thanks, Pat, for that great question. Before I answer, just my standard disclaimer:
These answers are for informational and educational purposes only, aren’t a substitute for individual medical or mental health advice, and don’t constitute a provider-patient relationship.
I’ll be giving fairly quick and unpolished answers here for the foreseeable future because I’m trying to juggle work and caring for a new baby, but hopefully this will be a helpful start.
Collagen is trendy right now in wellness culture, so it’s no surprise you’re seeing lots of articles and ads for it. Though pitches for anti-aging products often tend to target women of a certain age, I’ve seen collagen marketed to a wider swath of people with promises of supposed health benefits to various body systems. Despite all the hype around it, though, collagen isn’t what it’s cracked up to be.
First, what is collagen? It’s a protein that acts as a building block for skin, hair, tendons, cartilage, bones, and many other body parts. In fact, collagen is the most abundant protein in our bodies, produced naturally by specialized cells in our connective tissue from the amino acids in protein-rich foods.
Over the years our bodies gradually make less collagen as part of the natural aging process, resulting in less-supple skin. Yet in wellness culture, which is otherwise so obsessed with everything “natural,” the aging process is treated as a problem to be solved or a scourge to be fought. One supposed weapon in that fight is collagen supplementation.
Indeed, a handful of small studies have reported that collagen supplements can lead to minor improvements in outcomes like skin hydration and elasticity, and media outlets have jumped on those results to trumpet the supposed benefits of collagen. But most (if not all) of those studies were funded by supplement companies or authored by researchers with ties to the industry, which likely made the already modest results look more favorable than they really are. The studies are also quite short-term, and the research is preliminary, meaning no one should really be using it to make recommendations to the public (though of course collagen manufacturers and some journalists still do).
What’s potentially even more concerning is the lack of regulation you alluded to, Pat. Like all supplements in the U.S., collagen supplements are largely unregulated—so we don’t know exactly what’s in them or whether they’re safe or effective. It’s actually illegal for the Food and Drug Administration to review supplements for safety or efficacy before they go to market, thanks to a 1994 law called the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act (DSHEA), which was enacted largely because of lobbying by the supplement industry.
This law is why supplements can claim to be effective for all sorts of things with little to no scientific evidence to support those claims. It’s also why supplements containing actual drugs (e.g. steroids, thyroid hormone, amphetamine-like stimulants) can go to market and get sold to unsuspecting consumers for years without any consequence. Even in cases when the FDA has ultimately recalled some of these products, they’ve continued to be sold because the FDA has a very limited budget for enforcement.
If all that isn’t already reason enough to avoid collagen supplements, there’s also the fact that the marketing for collagen preys on people’s (especially women’s) societally conditioned fear of aging. It’s part of our larger patriarchal culture that shames women for showing signs of age and pushes us to purchase anti-aging products that, for the most part, have little to no actual effects.
Of course people are free to buy collagen supplements if they want, but I’d say the reason most of us feel compelled to buy products like this is the overwhelming pressure placed on us by an oppressive culture that wants to keep us chasing after an unattainable standard of beauty instead of embracing the power and wisdom that come with age.
That’s not to shame anyone for using these products, because the reality of living in this culture is that life can be easier if you’re able to escape ageism (or other forms of discrimination) even a little bit. But if we can start to question the marketing for these sorts of products and see the ugly systems behind it, it might help us reclaim some of our power and perhaps start to reduce the influence of this marketing on our day-to-day decisions.
As is often the case in wellness culture, the marketing for collagen supplements also talks about the supposed benefits for other body systems, even though its main focus is cosmetic. I’m not sure if you’ve come across this in the articles and ads you’ve seen, Pat, but I’ve seen supplement companies claim that collagen will give you not only young, dewy skin and strong nails, but also strong bones, pain-free joints, and better digestion. It’s important to know that the evidence for those assertions is even shakier than that for the cosmetic claims—and in some cases there isn’t really any evidence at all.
I think some of the interest in collagen for those non-appearance-related reasons might be driven in part by trying to combat the effects of the disordered eating that wellness culture promotes. Dry skin, brittle nails and bones, digestive issues, and joint pain can all be caused by disordered eating and overexercise—and you don’t have to have an eating-disorder diagnosis to be suffering.
I’ve seen too many people who’ve cut out huge groups of foods and are doing compulsive workouts because they think it’s what they need to do to be “well,” when really it’s making them sicker, and then they’re told supplements are the way to correct those symptoms. (I also was in that boat myself 10-20 years ago, so I very much empathize with that experience.)
If you think you might be turning to collagen supplements (or any other supplement or “superfood”) to try to correct the effects of restrictive eating and overexercise, I’d encourage you to work on healing your relationship with food and movement instead. It’s possible that by eating more food and a wider variety of foods, dropping unnecessary restrictions, and cutting down on exercise, you may be able to re-nourish yourself and heal your symptoms without the use of ineffective and potentially harmful supplements.
More generally, I’d recommend seeking out medical care for things like bone health, joint pain, etc., because those can be serious conditions and might need actual medication—which in many cases is safer than taking supplements, because at least you know what you’re getting and you have someone monitoring the side effects. Wellness culture talks a lot about the problems with “Big Pharma,” but “Big Supplement” is in some ways even more problematic because it’s a barely regulated industry—the Wild West of medications.
I hope that’s helpful in thinking through your response to these pitches for collagen, Pat, and thanks again for the great question.
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On the Podcast
In episode 292 of Food Psych, I answer an audience question about how to challenge wellness-diet rules and find more pleasure in home-cooked meals. If you struggle to enjoy cooking because of diet-culture restrictions, this episode is for you.
Check out the episode right here, and be sure to subscribe to the pod so that you get each new episode of our final season delivered straight to your device.
Thanks so much for reading! This newsletter is made possible by subscribers like you. To show your support, you can forward it to someone who’d like it, make a donation, buy my book or card deck, or join one of my courses.
Got this as a forward? Subscribe here for weekly anti-diet support!
Here’s to avoiding problematic wellness-culture trends,
Christy
P.S. If you’re looking to break free from the diet mindset and heal your relationship with food, check out my newest project, The Making Peace with Food Card Deck. Therapist Judith Matz and I co-created it to help support you in rejecting diet culture, honoring your hunger, practicing self-compassion, and so much more.