In this educational YouTube monologue, nutrition expert and bestselling author JJ Virgin demystifies collagen supplements, explaining what collagen actually is, who can benefit, and how to use it effectively. She clarifies that collagen is an abundant but incomplete protein that should be viewed as a support nutrient rather than a primary protein source. Drawing on multiple randomized controlled trials and meta‑analyses, she presents evidence that hydrolyzed collagen improves skin elasticity, hydration, and reduces wrinkles; reduces activity‑related joint pain in athletes; enhances tendon and ligament remodeling when paired with vitamin C before exercise; and increases bone mineral density in postmenopausal women. She describes the underlying mechanism—collagen peptides act as signaling molecules that stimulate fibroblasts to produce endogenous collagen. Practical recommendations include dosing (2.5–15 g/day, typical 10 g pre‑workout), combining with vitamin C, and using specific patented forms (Verisol for skin, Fortigel for bone). Throughout, she stresses that collagen is a supplemental aid that works best when layered onto a foundation of adequate total protein, resistance training, and overall muscle‑building fundamentals. The video ends with a call to subscribe for more science‑backed health guidance.
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Have you ever wondered whether collagen actually works or if it's just an expensive and incomplete protein powder? Collagen is one of the most talked about supplements on the planet. And the reality is most people are using it wrong. Now, if you're over 30 and taking collagen, hoping that it's going to magically fix those wrinkles, your joints, and your bone health, you need to hear this. Hey, I'm JJ Virgin, 4-time New York Times bestselling author and nutrition expert. And I've been studying connective tissue, muscle, and aging physiology for decades. And in this video, I'm going to break down what collagen actually does, which the research actually shows, and exactly how to use it for skin, joints, and bone without falling for all the hype. Because collagen isn't magic, but when used correctly, it can be powerful. Spoiler alert, it is something I take every single day. So what about you? Who should take collagen? Well, collagen makes sense for you if you are 30 plus, If you're lifting weights, and if you're not, get on it. If you've got any kind of joint discomfort and joint pain, if you're perimenopausal or postmenopausal, if you wanna support better skin elasticity, if you care about your bone health, then this is something that you're gonna want to look at. Now, this doesn't make sense if you are using it as a high-quality protein source. Or if you are under eating total protein and you think this is gonna save you, think of it as a support supplement. Again, as I said before, collagen is not a miracle. It's a support supplement and it best works when it's layered in with other things as part of your muscle first strategy. So let's talk about what collagen actually is. Collagen is the most abundant protein in your body. It actually makes up about 30% of your total protein mass. It forms the structure for your skin, for your tendons, for your ligaments, for your cartilage, for your bone. So yeah, it's that important. Now I said who's it for, and one of the things I said was if you're 30 plus. Why? Because after age 30, collagen production starts to naturally decline about 1% per year. And then in women, this thing, of course, like everything, it seems to accelerate during perimenopause and menopause. Why? Because estrogen plays a major role in collagen synthesis. There was a study published in the Dermatoendocrinology journal that showed that estrogen deficiency significantly reduces collagen content in skin. Estrogen plays a major role in maintaining skin structure and function. Now, after menopause, estrogen deficiency accelerates all that visible skin aging. So that's why you've seen a lot of us, me included, using estradiol skin creams, because lower estrogen levels lead to thinner skin, and a lot of that's due to reduced collagen content. So what is estrogen doing? Well, estrogen influences your fibroblasts. Your fibroblasts are the cells that are responsible for producing collagen. This declining estrogen is associated as well with decreased skin elasticity, and increased wrinkling. So this is why skin elasticity drops and joints feel stiffer and recovery just takes longer as we age. It's not vanity, it's not cosmetic, it's actually structural aging. Sorry about that. So here's the big thing though, and the big myth, because you'll hear collagen, it's a protein, but it's not a complete protein. And this is where people mess everything up. So collagen is not a complete protein because because it's actually missing completely the essential amino acid tryptophan, but it's also low in other essential amino acids, especially the super duper important one for muscle, leucine. Because leucine— this is Dr. Donald Layman's work— show— is shown to be the primary trigger for muscle protein synthesis. Research published in Frontiers in Nutrition showed that leucine is the key amino acid that activates the mTOR pathway to trigger muscle protein synthesis, and collagen doesn't provide enough leucine to do that. So if If you're replacing your whey protein or your whole food protein with collagen thinking, I got what I need to build muscle, you don't. I love the whey protein or the other protein with collagen, but don't take collagen on its own. Collagen's there to support connective tissue. Whey, eggs, meat, fish, my plant-based protein powder, my paleo-inspired protein powder, those can build muscle, but they're not interchangeable. Okay, super important. Now, what about skin? Does collagen improve your skin? And let's talk about wrinkles. There have been now multiple randomized controlled studies looking at collagen peptides and skin health. I'm going to talk about one that was published in the Journal of Drugs and Dermatology that found that oral collagen supplementation improves skin elasticity, skin hydration, and dermal collagen density when compared to placebo. And this was cool because it was looking at 11 other randomized placebo-controlled human trials of oral collagen supplementation, and a total of 800— over 800 participants across all of these different trials. And they dosed anywhere from 2.5 grams to 10 grams per day, and the innovation— the intervention periods were anywhere from a month to 2 years. Wild that they would do a study for that long, but I guess it's not like doing an exercise study where it's hard to get compliance. Now, Here's the thing with collagen. It's totally safe. There's not going to be an issue with it. There's no adverse events from it. It's just a matter of spending, you know, the money on it. Now, there was another study that came out in 2021. This was another meta-analysis in the International Journal of Dermatology. What they found was that hydrolyzed collagen significantly improves skin elasticity and reduced wrinkles after just 8 to 12 weeks. Now, this was a 2021 systematic review and meta-analysis, and it looked at 19 19 randomized double-blind controlled trials with over 1,000 participants from aging anywhere from 20— I mean, 20 to 70 years old. 95% of these people were women. Not sure why they would look at 20-year-olds. I mean, come on. Anyhow, this meta-analysis found statistically significant improvements in skin elasticity as compared to a placebo. It also found significant reductions in wrinkles, improvements in hydration, and Again, these trials were anywhere from a couple of weeks to 90 days, and they found that— and this is what the authors concluded— that the ingestion of hydrolyzed collagen reduced wrinkles and improved skin elasticity and hydration. So what do you get from all this, from all these different randomized control studies and comparison trials? Collagen improves your skin. But here's where I think people get confused and misunderstand it. It is not like you take collagen, it goes traveling to, oh, there's your wrinkles, and goes and fills it in. It's not like, you know, like an internal filler. You eat collagen, you take it, it digests into amino acids and small bioactive peptides, which are these tiny protein fragments that can act like signals. And what these researchers think is happening here is that these peptides are acting as signaling molecules that stimulate these fibroblasts, and those are those cells that are responsible for producing collagen in your skin. So when you think about it, These signals are a stimulus. So I want you to think of collagen as a signal, as a stimulus, not as like, you know, ingestible filler. Okay. Which is tempting to do, right? So I think very exciting for skin. That was initially, I will say full disclosure as to why I was so excited about it, but I will tell you why I'm even more excited about it. And it is for the joint side of things. And if you know me at all, you know, I was a really dumb young athlete and I have a lot of joint kryptonite because of that. So I think this is where collagen really shines. There was a randomized controlled trial published in Current Medical Research and Opinion that showed that athletes supplementing with collagen hydrolysate experienced significantly reduced joint pain compared to placebo. Again, this was a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial. Those are like the gold standard trials. It had 147 athletes that enrolled, 97 included in the final statistical analysis. Of this. And what they found with it was that— oh, and again, these people were physically active athletes and they had activity-related joint pain, no joint disease. So it wasn't people with osteoarthritis, that type of stuff. It was just like people who were doing athletic stuff and their joints ached. And what they found was the collagen group experienced statistically significant reductions in joint pain compared to the people with the placebo. They took 10 grams a day, they did it for 24 weeks, and the pain reduction reduction was observed both at rest and during movement, during walking, during standing, during lifting, carrying objects. And again, it was especially pronounced— this is important to me with my knee issues— in those athletes with knee pain. So that is a very exciting one. And then there was another one. Okay, so this is a study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that showed that taking a collagen-derived protein with vitamin C before exercise increased markers of collagen Synthesis linked to tendon and ligament remodeling. And again, another randomized double-blind placebo-controlled crossover trial where they had a very small, uh, subject group, 8 healthy male participants, and they use 5 grams or 15 grams of a vitamin C enriched gelatin, or they used a placebo, and they took it an hour before they did exercise. They did jumping exercises. What they found was increase in the circulating amino acids that were used for collagen formation. The 15-gram dose doubled a blood marker of collagen synthesis versus the placebo, and the findings suggested that pairing a collagen-derived protein and vitamin C with exercise supports tendon and ligament remodeling. This is important because— why vitamin C? Vitamin C is required to help your body turn those collagen building blocks into strong, stable collagen. One of the things that we know with collagen, when you add in mechanical loading, meaning you do some type of resistance training, it helps increase connective tissue remodeling. So if you're lifting weights and you're taking collagen with vitamin C, you may improve tendon strength and resilience. And that matters as we age, because when you look at what happens as we start to lift weights as we're older, the injuries are not happening in the muscle. They're happening where the muscle and the tendon connect, or the tendon and the bone connect. It's the connective tissue that's the issue. And this is why I take my collagen plus vitamin C before I work out. Anyhow, let's talk bones. Remember, bone is not just calcium. Bone is a collagen matrix that gets mineralized with calcium. So there was a randomized controlled trial published in 2018 in Nutrients that showed the postmenopausal women who supplemented with collagen peptides for 12 months had significant improvements in bone mineral density compared to placebo. Man, is that super super duper important. Think about that, because part of what happens with— after menopause is bone mineral density falls off a cliff. We can lose 2 to 5% a year for the first couple years. This was 131 women who were enrolled, and again, it was 12 months where they got either the specific collagen peptides or they got a placebo. The bone formation markers increased in the collagen group, while markers of bone breakdown increased in the placebo group. And so the authors concluded that specific collagen peptides improve bone mineral density and support bone formation in perimenopausal women. I mean, this is a super duper big deal because in menopause, remember, estrogen's going down, progesterone's going down, testosterone's going down, and bone loss is accelerating. So, you know, if you want strong bones, you gotta load 'em. You've gotta have good vitamin D. You gotta make sure you're taking in protein, but then collagen too, especially after 40. And a very specific form of collagen that's been studied here something called Fortigel. Um, I created a collagen that has Verisol, which is the one studied for skin, Fortigel, which is what's studied for bone, and vitamin C to help with making your collagen. And I have been taking 10 grams now before I go and work out when I have more blood flow to the joints. So that's my little secret sauce. And a lot of times if I'm fasting, I'll just throw that into my coffee. It just dissolves. It's easy. And if not, You know, then I throw it into my smoothie or into my yogurt. So I just use my, um, Reignite Wellness collagen peptides like that. Easy peasy. Now, if you've been following me for any amount of time, you know that muscle is the priority. Muscle drives your metabolism. Muscle protects your bone. Muscle determines how you age and can, can make sure that you age powerfully. And collagen here again is a support nutrient. It's not magic. It's a great support nutrient though. Get the fundamentals right, build your muscle, eat your protein, challenge your muscles, and then use collagen strategically for that connective tissue support and that skin support and that bone support. Now, if you want more straight science-backed breakdowns without the fluff, hit subscribe. I'm here every week cutting through the noise so that you can train smarter and age more powerfully because understanding how your body actually works changes everything.
