What Is Collagen and How Can It Help with Joints and Skin?

The information provided in this podcast is educational and not intended to diagnose or treat medical conditions. Dr. Donnie Wilson struggled for decades to solve her numerous health issues and heal her body. But with focused determination, she healed herself. And in doing so, she discovered the Dr. Donnie stress recovery Protocol. On this show, you're going to hear from doctors, nutritionists and Experts along with Dr. Donnie, who will give practical advice and wisdom to help heal your body. This is how humans heal.

Hey, guys.

This episode is from one of Dr. Donnie's live Facebook streams where she answered listeners questions live on Facebook.

So today I would like to cover and talk about collagen, because I get a lot of questions about collagen, and I think it's something that's pretty popular. A lot of people are hearing about it and trying it or wondering if they should try it. And so I wanted to just think through with you and think through whether, you know, it's something to consider for you as well. So if that sounds good to you. Collagen relates to skin health, for one, but collagen is also going to relate to joint health as well as bones and muscles and really our whole body. So if you have any, you know, if your health concern has to do with joint pain or any other kind of health conditions inside your body or on your skin, then you might be interested in this conversation. So let's see. When I think about collagen, actually, when I was just thinking about this conversation, I was reminded of one of the first times I learned about collagen, which was, I think, probably even the first week of naturopathic medical school. So this is back, I don't know, I think 25 years ago. And I had taken a lot of science classes before that. I have degrees in general science and nutrition science. And so I had done a lot of biochemistry and biology and so on, but I really hadn't totally understood collagen until I got to naturopathic medical school. And I just remember that class. Maybe it was because I was so early in naturopathic medical school, but I was like, wow, this is so amazing to learn about collagen and the structure of collagen and how important it is to our bodies. And this was way back then. And I have to say I didn't. I can't even. I wasn't even thinking about it all that much for many years. I was paying attention to the immune system and the digestion and hormones and then come back to collagen and realized, oh, my gosh, this is so important for us to Understand? So let's talk about it. I want to make sure you are thinking about your collagen, because the thing is, it's actually our bodies are a lot made of collagen. Like, if you think about it, there's collagen in our skin, in our bones, in our muscles, in our eyes, in our teeth.

Collagen is what actually kind of holds us together. It creates structure, and it kind of holds our organs in place and holds our organs together. So collagen is like a lot of what we're made of. We're made of cells, and then we're made of collagen. That puts ourselves into the right position. And there's different types of collagen, too. Collagen. We talk about collagen as if it's one thing, but actually collagen is many things. There's. I think that we know of at least 16 different types of collagen in our bodies. The majority of collagen, like, 90% of the collagen. Hi, Kylie. Thanks for joining me. You're a perfect person to be talking about collagen with because Kylie's a physical therapist. So please join in, Kylie, if you have any comments or additions to this conversation. But 90% of the collagen in our bodies is called type 1 collagen, which, you know, that's kind of the basic. Let's start with type one. Right. And type one is what makes up most of what the collagen that we experience on our skin and our joints. Like, think of, like, the ligaments, the tendons, even the cartilage in your joints.

And also in your skin. In the skin. Think of. Well, usually we're mostly thinking of wrinkles with age. We know that when we get older, we're more likely to have wrinkles on our skin. And that's because as we get older, our bodies don't do as good of a job at making healthy collagen. And so the skin gets lines and wrinkles. It comes back to how our body makes collagen. And I think the important point there to emphasize is collagen is a constant process of being created. It's not like you had collagen that you were born with and it lasts your whole life. No, your body's constantly making collagen. It knows how to make collagen. It's just a substance our body makes from nutrients. Again, this is where nutrition becomes so interesting, is because our nutrients. Sorry, that was a phone call coming in. Our nutrients are important for making so many things in our body. Including collagen. So collagen is made from amino acids. So if you think about it like, collagen is actually a protein. And so we get collagen from, from protein in our diet because we need the amino acids, two amino acids in particular, to make collagen ourselves. We need proline and glycine. And if you have a diet where you're getting some protein, like animal protein from turkey and chicken and fish, or say you have your protein from maybe dairy products or eggs, or even plant based protein products like tofu and lentils, they have these amino acids that we need for making collage, which is an important reason to have protein in your diet. Not that you're going to have only protein or you don't need too much protein, but you need some protein in your diet in order for you to have the right nutrients to make collagen. And then our body also needs vitamin C to make collagen, which is pretty interesting, isn't it? Like, you wouldn't think of vitamin C having to do anything with collagen, but it's actually a major piece of our body being able to make collagen is having enough vitamin C. And then also copper is involved. But copper we can usually get from also the same animal protein sources in our diet. Or one of my favorite sources of copper is from cocoa powder. But also if you happen to be low in copper, that might be an issue. And so it's important to know that or test for that and address it. If you take too much zinc, you can become too low in copper and that could have effects on your collagen production in your body. So this is to just really show you like collagen is made in our bodies from our foods. Now, yes, you can also eat collagen itself. Like say if you make soup from chicken skin and chicken bones make bone broth, that collagen from the animals bones and skin will get into the bone broth and then you're consuming it as actual collagen. And for a while we were questioning, is that even possible? Can you consume collagen as collagen and have it actually integrate into our bodies? And so far the research seems like it can. There's research even really recent, within the past year or two, research that shows that, that we can access the collagen from say, bone broth or animal, you know, like chicken skin, for example, that goes into a soup, we can access that collagen. And so you'll start to see products available that are also collagen powders. Like, and some of them are beef derived, could be poultry derived, could be even seafood derived collagen, that's, you know, again, taken from the animals, collagen. And then we can consume it and have it be beneficial. The studies relate to joint health, like arthritis. Right. Because this collagen can get into our joints and our bones and help with what leads us to experience joint pain or inflammation. It's also been shown to help with skin and preventing lines and wrinkles on the skin when you consume it. Right, so you're consuming collagen and the nutrients that support collagen that actually has a benefit on the skin. You can also find collagen in skincare products. So you could put it directly on your skin and that you may be noticing as well. And then I have a. Oh my gosh. One of my good friends from Nature pathway medical school, Dr. Bader, she started a company a few years ago and her company has a beverage like a. I wish I had one here. But it's a beverage like a tea that you drink that has collagen in it already. And that's a really innovative concept. I think her product is called skin tea, like S K I N and then T E. And it's available more and more in stores and online. So if you look up skin tea, if you're wanting to have a yummy drink that has collagen in it, skin tea is a good option. So those are some of the options I'm thinking of. Like collagen powder.

It actually has protein in it. So like in a scoop of collagen powder, you probably get 5 grams of protein. So you can actually use it as a protein shake or protein source. You wouldn't want to do. I think you would want to limit it at 10 grams of protein per day from collagen source just because you also don't want to overdo the amino acids from collagen. But that's a nice hypoallergenic protein source. Like, so if you're getting your protein from a collagen, then that would be instead of getting it from say a whey or dairy protein or even a pea protein that, you know, for some people might be causing other issues in their body. They could just use a collagen protein. It's very common. We'll turn to that when someone has pretty severe leaky gut because the collagen protein I find is less likely to trigger the leaky gut symptoms. Is there a test to see if you're low on collagen? I wish there Was. I haven't seen one. I haven't seen a test that shows you're low on collagen. So I would go somewhat based on symptoms, like if you're noticing on your skin that it feels less. Less elastic or more wrinkly, or if you notice in your joints that you're having pain, or if, you know, you have bone density loss, you know, so you start to start to see it in other ways. In our body, and you can kind of assume, again, with age, we have less collagen production or not as healthy collagen production. And so it can be something you may want to think about as you. As you gain years on this planet.

And so here's the thing that I also want to mention, is that our genetics play a role in collagen. You know how much I love to talk about genetics. And the thing is, is that, you know, we've been so far talking about collagen as, like, as if we all have the same, right? We all have this type 1 collagen that's 90% of our bodies, and it's throughout our bodies. And we know how important it is, and we know our body can make it. But what I want to emphasize is that each of us makes a slightly different collagen based on our genetic influence. And there's a bunch of genes that influence collagen production, and we can test for those to see if you may have some variations in how your body produces collagen. This is something that I figured out about myself a few years back when I was researching genetics and helping patients with various health issues. We started to put together, oh, my gosh, their health issues matched up with collagen issues. And that's when I realized I have collagen genetics that influence my health. And I have something called Ehlers Danlos syndrome, which is also in a spectrum of hypermobility syndromes. And Ehlers Danlos is essentially a genetically associated condition where collagen is too stretchy, it's too flexible. So people who have this have more flexible joints. So if you kind of want to see, if you're curious, hey, do I have stretchy collagen? You could see, does your skin. Is your skin extra stretchy? Like, if you can pull your skin up off of your hand, Some people, you know, you can kind of see how much does it pull up, would be stretchy collagen. Also, how stretchy are your joints? So if you, like, when. If you can bend your fingers backwards, I'm an example of stretchy collagen. By the way, so my joints bend more than probably some people's joints. Or like say if you put your elbow out, your arm out, if you have your arm, your elbow stretching kind of backwards, then that's an over. It's over. Flexible. Like if some of you thought of yourself as flexible or maybe you were active with gymnastics and dance and always, you know, you always knew you could bend yourself more. Like in yoga class, you could bend yourself more than other people.

And so then you may have a hypermobility or even Ehlers Danlo collagen, genetically determined stretchy collagen syndrome. Collagen, by the way, is also in our blood vessels. So it can affect how stretchy are your blood vessels. And that's part of the Ehlers Danlo is tending to have more stretchy blood vessels also. And that can lead to potentially other symptoms like even varicose veins. For example, the veins, the collagen is more stretchy, so the blood vessel stretches a little bit more. For me, the Ehlers Danlos shows up mostly as my joints, especially my ribs, are always moving out of place. You'll see here this, my clavicle shifts out of place with my ribs.

And that can trigger a lot of neck pain and headaches for me. For a long time I didn't understand why was it that I constantly had to keep on managing my tight neck muscles and my headaches. But I realized that it's because if I'm in a certain posture for too long, like if I'm sitting too long at a desk or driving, then my, my joints go out of place and I start getting into pain. So if you can relate to that, like if maybe some of you have find that you're more likely to have joint pain or headaches based on ways you're sitting or just in general, if you notice your joints pop out of place easily, even knees, ankles twist easily.

Then you may have, you know, more stretchy collagen and actually.

You can. I'm happy to share more about Ehlers Danlos syndrome so you could read more about it. But there's not really that much treatment in conventional medical. Like a lot of things, right, you get a name for it, but they don't really have much treatment except for helping with the pain. So what I like to do is really help, you know, what I've learned about, you know, things we can do to help with collagen. And this again would benefit for anyone even if you don't have hypermobility, because we all have less healthy collagen as we age. And so this is where I find that taking collagen can potentially help with these various joint pains, whether with Ehlers Danlo or otherwise, even just arthritis from a past injury or arthritis from age and overuse, collagen could be helpful. The studies show that it could be helpful. I see your question, Krista, about could collagen help with joint pain related to autoimmune disease? Yes. So, like, say someone has now an autoimmune joint disease would be like rheumatoid arthritis. There's other autoimmune conditions that result in joint pain. There's also fibromyalgia, which is now considered more like an autoimmune condition that has a lot of tissue and muscle pain. And I think it could benefit from collagen as well, because, again, collagen is such an important part of our joints and our muscles. And if you're having pain, whether it's caused from autoimmunity or overuse or hypermobility or no matter the cause, the collagen could help because it's going to help stabilize the joint. And I think that's where Kylie, another physical therapist, would join in and say, yes, it's all about how to keep our joints stable, because it's when the joint is getting in odd or awkward positions that we're more likely to trigger muscle spasms and pain. And so we want to help our joints stay in the healthy position. And the thing that often keeps our joints in a healthy position is the ligaments and tendons. But if the ligaments and tendons have been injured or they're hypermobile, then we're counting on our muscles to keep the joints in a healthy position. And sometimes the muscles, if they're weak, they're not able to do that. So part of also helping with any kind of pain syndrome in the body, I think, is working with someone who can really help you with the right kind of strength training for your body. It's tempting to want to just jump in and overdo it. We're like, okay, I got to get strong. I'm going to go longer, lift more. But actually, if you're having joint pain and inflammation for any reason, it's important to take it slowly and to work with someone like a physical therapist who specializes in this, because not all physical therapists specialize in this, or a chiropractor who specializes in this, like my friend Dr. Emily Kybert, who, by the way, I just interviewed her on my podcast, so watch for that episode. Also, because she's amazing at Helping us understand how to strengthen our body in a healthy way in a way that doesn't cause more pain, that actually helps you prevent pain by having your muscles, helping you to keep your joints in place even if you have laxity in the joint because of collagen issues. Dr. Kybert especially specializes in Hashimoto's hypothyroidism because she finds that people with collagen, Hashimoto's have more of an issue with ligament laxity, which again comes back to collagen. So it's, you know, it's. Collagen is an important thing to consider so we can, you know, basically what you're hearing me say is collagen is something to consider. It's also relatively safe. You know, as much as they've researched it, there's, they haven't come across big contraindications. Although I mentioned I wouldn't want to overdo it either. Like most things, there's a good amount to use that can be helpful, but you also don't want to overdo it and you want to match what's right for your body. You know, some people prefer to get their collagen from bone broth, for example, but other people, either they don't like bone broth or some people, if you have a histamine intolerance, you might react to bone broth. So in that case then using a collagen powder might be easier. And so, you know, just finding a way that's going to work better for you.

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Let'S see.

Oh, I see. Yes, you have stretchy collagen. Okay, I love. Thank you for sharing that can you improve your collagen if you started to supplement at over 50 years old? Yes, you can.

You know, that's the thing is our body is constantly making new collagen. So it's not. It's kind of think of your skin, right? Our bodies are always making new skin. So our body's always making new collagen. And so no matter your age, you still have a chance. Don't give up, don't give up. There's still a lot you can do to help with your collagen at any age, I would say. And again, this could relate for some of you. Maybe your main interest is on your skin. I have a lot of women who. It's kind of interesting. Recently, a lot of women are asking me about skin and what they can do to keep their skin healthy and looking amazing as they get older. And I would say this is one of the key things you could do, is support your collagen, because collagen is an integral part of our skin. And it's what kind of keeps your skin in position. If the collagen is stretchy, then we start to get more like sagging skin or wrinkling skin. And so you can, you can do something about that. It's a. It's something that you can improve. I think, at any age now there may be that you find that it's, you know, better. You know, you're like, the sooner the better, basically, because, you know, as wrinkles start to develop, it's a little harder to get to them to reverse. But I do think it's possible. And that reminds me, I have some, also some friends who specialize in that. I'll ask them and maybe I can get you some even more pointers. I love getting to share information from my colleagues and people who specialize in areas of the body who can really say, hey, yeah, this is. What can you do at this point to help your body? I say help your body heal, but really help your body age. Well, what can we do to support our skin and our bones and our joints so that we can be feeling our best for as long as possible? Which also reminds me of bones, because I also help a lot of patients who have, say, osteopenia or osteoporosis, where they're over age 50, finding that they are having decrease in bone density. And they're saying to me, what else can I do besides medications? What else can I do to help my bone density? And we know that this muscle strength, they call it, we usually refer to it as weight Bearing exercise. But as you'll hear in my conversation with my friend Dr. Kaibird, it's not just about taking a walk. We want to do specific strength training to help signal to our muscles, but also to our bones. Helps with bones. And your bones can. Your bone density can improve.

By doing that. I see it in my patients all the time. It's super exciting. But collagen can also help with bones. That's another consideration. If you're having bone density issues, you may want to think about collagen also. And the other thing I was going to mention is peptide therapy, because peptides, and a lot of times you hear the word peptide, by the way, with collagen, like they'll call them collagen peptides. So let me just explain peptides for a second. Peptides are really little small proteins. If you think about it like proteins are made up of little amino acids all together. Almost like a think of like a beaded necklace. Like each amino acid is a bead on a necklace. And if it's a really lot of beads, a long necklace, that's a protein. But if it's a short set of amino acids, it's called a peptide. So when we think about a collagen peptide, we're talking about collagen protein in a form that we can consume in a supplement. But there's other kinds of peptides. And in particular there's these peptides that Dr. Cavinson researches and has been researching for about 50 years. And these peptides are again, small proteins basically, or small chains of amino acids. But they have a super duper specific purpose. They signal, they're signaling molecules and they can signal to the tissue to reset the tissue function after stress exposure. So say we know, of course we're all exposed to stress and we know the very stresses, by the way, affect our collagen. Like if you think of the more stress we're under, the more likely we are to have joint pain, to have wrinkles. It's just this emotional physical stress exposure that affects collagen production. But also stresses like cigarette smoke and over sun exposure also is a stress on your collagen. So that's why when people are smoking cigarettes or have a high amount of UV sunlight exposure, they also, you see it on the skin, right, because it's affecting the collagen. And so we want to think about it as how can we reset the effect of stress? How can we actually help our body to not have to function and carry this load of stress forever? Like, how could we reset that stress Exposure and have our tissue go back to healthy function. And that happens with these Dr. Cavinson's peptides. And there's a specific peptide for collagen. Ligaments, joints, bones. So that's pretty amazing because not only in that situation are we taking in the food and the nutrients to help our body make collagen. Not only are we taking in actual collagen, but then we're taking in a peptide that signals to our body to do a better job of making collagen. So you can actually come at this from several angles. And for someone, you know, like me, if you're having joint pain, if you're having, you know, if you're noticing your skin, you feel like it needs more collagen, you may want to consider all of those different angles for supporting your collagen. Okay, let's see, guys. Have any more questions for me? Let's see. I'm glad to get to talk this through with you, and I think a lot of you, you know, on my website you can find my store, the Dr. Donnie store. So if wondering about high quality products, then just head over to the Dr. Donney store, because you're going to find collagen products there. And when you're looking for collagen products, by the way, first of all, you want to get a high quality product where you're trusting the source of the collagen or the nutrients. Always. Whatever product you're taking, you know, make sure there's a company that's researching and, you know, giving you the right information on the label and that you can trust. And a lot of collagen products, by the way, they put, we talked about how there's different types of collagen. So a lot of collagen products have all the types of collagen in there, like type 1, 2, 3, 4 in the product. And then there's other collagen products that have mostly type 1. And like we talked about, type 1 is mostly what our body, what we're talking about here. We're talking about our type 1 collagen for the most part. And so if you want to support your type 1 collagen, better to take a product that contains type 1 collagen. So that's something to look for when you're looking at collagen products. Is what type of collagen is in there? Is it type one? Is it just a general mix of collagen? And where did they source the collagen? Is it more of a grass fed organic source? If it's, say an animal source or a fish source of collagen. And so, you know, these are some of the things to consider when you're looking at products. And you'll find some products that I have taken myself and patients have recommended. And, you know, when you look in the Dr. Donney store, so. And feel free to ask me, ask us questions, you know, feel free to reach out to my office by email, by phone, message us. And we're happy to help you. Whether that means just giving you a quick answer or helping to direct you where you can get more information or even, you know, if I can work, you know, set up time to help you specifically with your healthy health issue, I'm happy to do that. Of course, that's what I love to do. I love to just solve health puzzles. So if you even have a complex case where you're like, oh, my gosh, it feels like I've got all these different things going on, how am I ever going to figure out where to begin? That's what I love to do, is helping people figure out, okay, let's look how everything is interrelated, right? Like, even in just this conversation about collagen, we're looking at, how is it all interrelated? And how can we find the tools that can help you have the biggest ripple effect. Like if helping support collagen could help with your bones, your joints, your skin, help solve with pain and headaches and many parts of your body. To me, that's a lot of positive ripple effect. That's what I love to do. Because then you're using minimal effort for big results.

And to me, that, at least for me, that's what I find for my health, I love to do. Because then you can actually get somewhere without having to take a million different products. You want to take the things that are gonna, you know, get you where you're trying to go with the, you know, the most strategically way to do it and the most efficient way to do it. Okay, let's see. She says yes, like if you have pots, EDS and mast cell. Yes. So EDS is Ehlers Danlos syndrome we were talking about. And Ehlers Danlos often is associated with mast cell syndrome, which you could also have separately. Mast cell is the histamine type reactions and histamine syndrome and then pots. I don't know if some of you have heard of that. POTS is really a few people who have a lot of issues with low blood pressure. So, you know, a lot of times they feel dizzy or especially changing posture from laying to standing will feel Dizzy or may have fainting episodes, which I've experienced some of that earlier in my life before I knew I had Ehlers Danlos syndrome. But sometimes it helps to. Just because these are not often diagnosed. Like, you might have gone to a bunch of doctors and never heard any of these names, because it's not commonly something that doctors are thinking of immediately. But once you understand it and you understand kind of your genetic tendency toward these issues, then to me, it's this. Always I come back to this puzzle of what's the genetic predisposition? And then, plus, what is your stress exposure, your life experience, your toxin exposure, your diet that now is influencing and making those genetic predispositions come to life in your body and your health? And by looking at that equation, then we can solve. We can start to solve that equation by looking at your genetics. We can go, hey, what about this genetic tendency? Can we. How can we support your body so that genetic tendency isn't such a major player? How can we even use different therapies to help reset that genetic expression? How can we address your stress? How can we help you decrease your stress exposure and help your body recover from stress? So now that part of the equation is less of an issue. And as we solve that, then what we're solving for is better health. And so that's how I look at things. And so no matter the diagnosis, to me, it's really about solving your genetics, plus your stress exposure to help you improve your health over the long term. Yes. POTS stands for Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome. So it's got a really long name, but it has to do with. If you're wondering if you have it, you might notice that you. Your blood, your. You feel dizzy when you stand up, or you'll feel dizzy out of nowhere, or you might faint out of nowhere. And it's important, too, and it actually could be related to the collagen, because remember how we talked about how the blood vessels are kind of stretchy? When your blood vessels are a little bit stretchy, it makes it harder for your body to get the blood where you need it. So say you were sitting or laying down, and then you go to standing. Now your body has to get the blood to your head, and if your blood vessels are not as good at making that happen, you're going to experience this postural orthostatic hypertension.

And maybe feel a little faint or woozy. That tells you that might be what's going on. But it really comes back to, how do we you might have to get up a little more slowly, knowing that your body isn't going to be able to move your blood to different postures as quickly. Another symptom, by the way, this reminds me, another one that I get is when you're say you're laying in bed or sitting on the couch, if your hands or feet start to go to sleep, especially if your hands in kind of like a little bit odd position. Like for me, if I'm sleeping a little bit cattywampus with my wrist under my head or even with my legs in an odd position, I'll wake up in pain or wake up with numbness and tingling. That can also be a collagen related issue because the collagen is making it so that you're. When your joints are in odd positions, it's pressing on the nerves and then you get these neurological symptoms. I find for myself, for example, I have to basically sleep, prop myself up on pillows and help make sure that my joints are in a nice position. Even my neck is in a good position when I'm sleeping so that I don't get into those wake up with those symptoms.

She's asking, is there a potential benefit of taking collagen for this pots and I would say potentially, I don't think they've researched that specifically, but I would say it's worth trying because you could say you support your collagen or you take collagen and it helps your blood vessels to be a little bit healthier and responsive. It could help with the pot symptoms as well as the other symptoms associated with Ehlers Danlo. And that's what I found that I think it does help.

Make a difference because that's the thing is it's, you know, when we have these, you know, stretchy collagen type conditions, it's like we're constantly having to manage and it's, it's hard to explain for someone who isn't in that body type. But it's like we're constantly have to be aware of am I changing positions? Where's my arms and my legs? How am I standing? Like, so this is all the things I'm thinking as I'm standing here. By the way, this is why I stand. I use a standing desk and I stand because this way I can always adjust my position and make sure that my joints are in the right place if I sit. If I was sitting right now, I would probably feel terrible by the time we finish this. So I've just learned that I have to really be Constantly aware of body position and maybe some of you can relate to that.

Oh good. She's saying that she's found a vital protein collagen creamer. So yeah they actually you can use collagen like in a tea or coffee as a creamer and that might be a nice replacement. If some of you are avoiding dairy, casein and whey then you could use these collagen creamers and that's great feedback to know that you like it as a way to have a non dairy something in your. I'm assuming it's in your tea or coffee. Let's see. Any more questions? These are such great questions and I'm hoping they'll do more research on this. Again there's some research.

And so we can look to that I'm going to post, I can post the references for you if you want to read the research. There's some research on it and I think we're going to see more and more research because so many people are trying collagen and getting really interested in how we can support with this. Of course if we can do anything that doesn't have side effects that helps decrease pain, that's a good thing, right? Because otherwise we're in pain and we're turning toward anti inflammatories and pain medications which we know have negative repercussions and we don't really want to have to take these pain medications. So better when we can use other approaches that help without help keep you out of pain. And let's see, as a teen they only have reactive hypoglycemia. They knew nothing about. Oh yeah, I know because. So she's saying that when you know, when she was younger they didn't understand what was going on and they called it, they notice the hypoglycemia. So some people have also blood sugar fluctuations that happen and.

The thing is is that when you think about it, the genetic project, the gene project, human genome project really only completed, I don't know, it's more than 10 years ago now but it's pretty recent that we even understood our genes at all, let alone she's mentioning a gene called mthfr which I also have and love to talk about. Maybe that's another good conversation. I'll put that on my topic list for those of you who tell me if you're interested in hearing more about MTHFR and methylation because that's another gene.

And that MTHFR is another gene that they. We've only recently been able to research and find health associations with it. So we'll talk about that more another day. But it's true, like, a lot of times people will have health issues, and it's not necessarily, you know, you could be going to the doctor and getting blood tests and not know why you're in pain or why you might be having frequent injuries or feeling dizzy or feeling numb or even again, with this interest on skin, why maybe your skin, you're noticing changes on your skin and you're like, I don't know why. And the doctor might not be really having many answers for you, but if you're like, no, I'd rather do something about it, then this is when we come back to thinking about how our diet has an influence, how our stress exposure has an influence, the various toxins in our diet, in our environment, which to me is just another stress and what we can do to counteract that. And so I think collagen is an example of that, something we can do.

Even just through dietary sources that can make a difference in our health. All right, so I think you guys got the story there. Oh, hair collagen. I think it can also help with hair. Yes, thank you for asking that, Kalina.

Collagen can help also with hair, preventing hair growth and helping with hair growth. So if you're having issues with hair, hair falling out or hair growth, wanting to grow more hair, I should say, then collagen may also be something for you to consider. All right, well, thanks for joining me. I hope you have a great rest of the day. I look forward to seeing you again soon. Thank you. Bye, everybody.

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