Collagen: The secret to healthy skin, joints, and hair
How Collagen may be the secret to healing your body and slowing aging.
Book Recommendation:
The Body Electric explores new pathways in our understanding of evolution, acupuncture, psychic phenomena, and healing. Robert O. Becker, a pioneer in the filed of regeneration and its relationship to electrical currents in living things, challenges the established mechanistic understanding of the body.
Get it here: The Body Electric: Electromagnetism And The Foundation Of Life
Research Articles of the Week:
“Microplastics smaller than 20 µm should be able to penetrate organs, and those with a size of about 10 µm should be able to access all organs, cross cell membranes, cross the blood-brain barrier...”
“Data report that (Honey) exhibits strong wound healing, antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, antifungal, antiviral, and antidiabetic effects. It also retains immunomodulatory, estrogenic regulatory, antimutagenic, anticancer, and numerous other vigor effects..”
“Organically cultivated Baechu cabbage and functional recipe in kimchi preparation play an important role in the anticancer efficacy of kimchi, which has been shown to promote induction of apoptosis.”
Kimchi markedly induces apoptosis in HT-29 human colon carcinoma cells
What makes Collagen Special?
Collagen is the most abundant protein in the human body that has many multi-functions and it helps to maintain the structure, stability, and strength of the dermal layers aka your skin. The loss or defect of collagen can cause skin aging and many other diseases.
Collagen is the most abundant component of your extracellular matrix (constituting 75%) and is the decisive protein that determines skin physiology, by maintaining the skin structure and enabling its numerous functions to take place.
Collagen is reminiscent of a rope; 3 chains wind around each other forming a collagen triple helix. These building blocks combine to form collagen fibrils of enormous strength and tensile force. Collagen has a high concentration of 3 amino acids in particular—glycine, proline, and hydroxyproline, which create its characteristic triple-helix structure.
As we age, Collagen decreases. Many different factors exacerbate the aging process of the skin, including intrinsic ageing, consumption of a non-balanced diet, and stress-related deficiencies in micronutrients leading to an age-dependent collagen loss. As elasticity is diminishes, lines and wrinkles emerge and skin grows increasingly thinner and drier.
However, studies have shown that age-dependent reduction in collagen synthesis can be reversed by oral administration of specific bioactive collagen peptides (either through diet or supplementation) that improve skin elasticity, turgor, and hydration and reduce skin wrinkling and roughness.
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