Collagen supplements

Anyone using them? Collagen v. Collagen peptides? I’m new to the concept of using them to help blood flow and elasticity in my fingers and small tendons. Thanks for sharing your knowledge. 

I just got foot surgery so I added them to my morning coffee.

I got the peptide version.

My guess is that they don't do anything. They are a slight protein supplement. Tons of collagen but I'm not sure what that's really going to do.

The idea is that it's good for skin and connective tissue. Some even say it's good on joints. Here's my thoughts on it, it's harmless additional protein, it might work, and through Amazon it isn't too expensive (holy cow it's pricey at GNC or the grocery store). I hope it does everything it claims to.

It claims to be flavorless. In water it's a nauseating beef flavor (not in a good way). In coffee, I barely taste it. I actually mix collagen peptides and creatine in my first cup of coffee. My second cup, just regular, tastes much better.

I take these: https://www.costco.com/kirkland-signature-triple-action-joint-health,-110-coated-tablets.product.100293064.html and it's prob just flushing $ down the toilet (though there are positive researches on undenatured type II collagen). For fingers, I think it's much more important to massage & stretch your forearm (& upper arm) after hard training (and also on rest days). The effects on the finger joints are readily noticeable.

I have taken powered collagen in my coffee daily for about a year - it adds no flavor. My hands can get achey/arthritic and I find that this helps quite a bit (could be placebo but whatever). It also makes my hair and nails grow like crazy.

I just started taking Horst's brand of "supercharged" collagen about a week ago in an attempt to help facilitate the rehabilitation of a nagging finger injury (a recurring pain/swelling/grinding sensation emanating from the MCP joint of my R index finger). I've been doing the prehab routine he recommends in the morning as well. At first I thought I was noticing a difference, and my finger definitely started to feel a lot better. Then I spent yesterday moving and unpacking boxes in my garage and installing my hangboard in my new house - at the end of the day I hung from the jugs of the hangboard just to test it out and immediately afterwards my finger felt worse than the day I injured it. I took the collagen and did the prehab routine this morning and it seemed to help subdue the symptoms to a degree, but my finger is definitely not nearly as healed as I thought (hoped) it was. Not that that is in any way the collagen's fault. The research seems promising, so I plan on sticking with it. I'll give an update on this thread in a week or two. I would also be curious to experiment with the prehab routine sans collagen - it definitely seems to have an immediate positive effect on the injured area, but I wonder whether it is the combo of the collagen and the exercise or whether it is just the exercise that is helping. 

Collagen supplement would take a while to have any noticeable effects. You can't base your study off of a week of use. 

I started taking "supercharged collagen" when I decided that I need to get serious about finger strength training 1.5 months ago. I have had a chronic synovitis issue with both of my middle finger joints so I had to be extra cautious. I gained about 40 lb in both of my half-crimp and 3-finger drag strength since then. I feel that the collagen supplement helped my fingers recover faster from a max hang session. It's hard to tell whether it's placebo effect, but there was one week when I was out of supply and I felt that the aches in my fingers lingered around for longer after workouts. One thing that surprised me was that my elbow pain went away completely since I started taking collagen.

I'm normally a 5.9 climber... after 2 weeks of taking collagen supplements, I increased my onsight grade to 5.13b. Really amazing stuff. 

grog m wrote: Collagen supplement would take a while to have any noticeable effects. You can't base your study off of a week of use. 

I'm not preforming a study, just trying it out. The promising research I referred to is the legit academic research that's already been done. I realize I can't determine whether it works or not after a week, I was just sharing my experience so far (and taking an opportunity to bitch about my finger...). 

No worries - wasn't trying to come off as aggressive or personal attack. It was mostly rhetorical. I just recommend to anyone that if they are going to do it, that it would be best to commit to at least 3 months of it.

It has been great for my hands/joints. 

Has it helped anyone with dry, flakey, or cracked skin. I've got some old man hands and feet, this is really what I hope these supplements help.

I've been using it 45-60 minutes before hangboarding and many of my climbing sessions at a crimp heavy crag since last spring when Horst blew up his advertising campaign and I did more research. Looking at the studies from Keith Baar you can easily find that you just need to combine vitamin C with collagen powder, there's no need to pay so much for Horst's stuff.

A good write up here: climbingnutrition.com/diet/…

Chandler, if your problem is from the MCP joint itself I don't know that hanging will help, since it's not a pulley issue and the MCP joint doesn't have any flexion in normal hangs. Maybe do more of the weighted finger rolls where you're actually curling the finger up will help. 

I would love to hear how people feel about Collagen helping/not helping recovery. My finger extensor tendons are irritated where they pass over my wrist (darn gym slopers!), and I'm considering giving collagen a try to help repair and strengthen my tendons. I'll just follow along here, unless someone has links to other good forums where people are sharing experiences.

Also, a question to consider, Sunwarrior makes a "collagen building" mix, which doesn't use any animal products, but supposedly supplies everything your body uses to make collagen. I wonder what differences people would see in recovery and strengthening between consuming collagen directly vs. this kind of building blocks mix?

Matt B wrote: , but supposedly supplies everything your body uses to make collagen.

Collagen is made from non-essential amino acids - there's nothing outside of a normal diet you will need to eat in order to produce "collagen". Collagen is the same material that your skin, and many other body parts are made from. Most of the protein in your body is probably made with collagen. If your body can't correctly produce collagen, there's a big problem, and you're most likely going to soon die.

I have yet been explained why additional intake of collagen into the body will increase repair of damaged joints.

My guess is that getting food-grade collagen in bulk isn't all that expensive, and you can resell it for a large profit.

Edit: Removed, "hair, nails, etc", since those are NOT made of collagen.

Isn't additional collagen one of the purported benefits of consuming bone broth?

bernard wolfe wrote: Isn't additional collagen one of the purported benefits of consuming bone broth?

Yes. I think the argument for supplements is simply that the dosage is controlled.

Long Ranger wrote:

Collagen is made from non-essential amino acids - there's nothing outside of a normal diet you will need to eat in order to produce "collagen". Collagen is the same material that your skin, hair, and fingernails, and many other body parts are made from. Most of the protein in your body is probably made with collagen. If your body can't correctly produce collagen, there's a big problem, and you're most likely going to soon die.

I have yet been explained why additional intake of collagen into the body will increase repair of damaged joints.

My guess is that getting food-grade collagen in bulk isn't all that expensive, and you can resell it for a large profit.

The idea with the Sunwarrior blend (from their IG page, not trying to sell their stuff, just curious) is that if you have more of the building blocks of collagen (in addition to the building blocks you get through your normal diet), your body produces more. I have no idea if that's true or not. I don't think they are saying its for people that can't make collagen, just that more building blocks of collagen might trigger your body to produce more. DISCLAIMER: I do not understand human biology and am not trying to sell a product, just genuinely curious.

Matt B wrote:

The idea with the Sunwarrior blend (from their IG page, not trying to sell their stuff, just curious) is that if you have more of the building blocks of collagen (in addition to the building blocks you get through your normal diet), your body produces more.

Well go on: you take in the collagen, and that somehow triggers a response in your body to somehow grow more collagen-based organs? If that were so, we wouldn't have to guess that collagen supplementation is working, as not only would tendons grow, skin - everywhere, would get thicker, etc. But that's not happening, is it? The body is quite good at homeostasis.  I don't know if a surplus of non-essential amino acids - which is what the collagen is broken down into once we digest it, does anything, really. I'm happy to be proved wrong (and I'm asking for an honest theory that's more than: Eat more, grow more), but eating meat doesn't directly make me muscular, eating human brain matter (you heard me) hasn't made me smarter, and drinking virgin's blood isn't keeping me immortal. 

Removed, "hair, nails, etc", since those are NOT made of collagen.

Wait a second, virgins are immortal?

Long Ranger wrote: I have yet been explained why additional intake of collagen into the body will increase repair of damaged joints.

Keith Baar isn't trying to make money off of you

Basically they ran three test groups. Placebo, small amount of collagen, and larger amount with vitamin C. They skipped ropes, and plasma was taken. It was used to feed in vitro tendon, which was then load systematically (damn hard to accurately test this on a human from my understanding). The meat of it:

At the end of the 6-d treatment, constructs were tensile-tested as described previously (27). Briefly, the length and cross-sectional area (CSA) of the ligaments were determined by using digital calipers. The anchors were then placed into grips attached to a stepper motor and a force transducer. The ligaments were stretched by using a custom LabView program (National Instrument) at a rate of 0.4 mm/s until failure without preconditioning, and the resulting force-deformation data were used to calculate maximal tensile load (MTL). By using the initial length and CSA, stress and strain were calculated, and from this information the ultimate tensile stress and modulus (stiffness) of the ligaments were established. After tensile testing, constructs were dried and weighed before determining hydroxyproline content 

After 6 d of treatment, ligaments engineered with increasing doses of gelatin showed a corresponding increase in collagen content (Figure 3A) and the collagen percent of dry mass (Figure 3B) without a change in engineered tissue CSA, meaning that the packing density of collagen within this developmental tissue model increased. This indicates that the serum from the subjects who had previously consumed increasing amounts of gelatin supported more collagen synthesis and that this effect was dependent on the amount of gelatin within the supplement. 

Long Ranger - your ideas aren't wrong, but you did make one wrong assumption.  Those collagen-using cells can be selectively activated.  The ones making your toenails don't need to be active at the same time as the ones regenerating the tendons in your fingers.

Cells respond to the stimuli your body produces.  If you're excercising, the hormonal signals produced by your body tend to only affect the cells that have to do with the excercise and recovery.  When you're tendon producing cells realize that they need to produce collagen, they're going to produce as much as they can until they're limited by the material required to make the collagen or until the 'make collagen' signals stop circulating in your blood.

The Baar paper up there shows a ~50% increase in tendon growth over a 6 day period if you dose at 15g 1 hour before working out.  That implies that our tendon recovery is limited by the amount of collagen building blocks that these cells have available.  

Unfortunately, they didn't measure the subject's toenail growth.