#341 Why Everyone Needs Collagen and Glycine - Dr James DiNicolantonio

James DiNicolantonio (0:00)

100% studies have shown that supplementing with collagen increases your own endogenous collagen synthesis. Randomized studies in humans showing that collagen can benefit anywhere from bone health, blood pressure, even muscle mass and strength.

Siim Land (0:13)

Welcome to the Siim Land Podcast. I'm your host Siim Land, and our guest today is Dr. James DiNicolantonio. Dr. James and I have finished another book together called The Collagen Cure, The Forgotten Role of Glycine and Collagen in Optimal Health and Longevity. You can get the book from Amazon.

James, welcome back to the show.

James DiNicolantonio (0:32)

Siim, thanks for having me.

Siim Land (0:33)

Yeah, I think it's like our sixth book together now, The Collagen Cure. And yeah, I'm actually pretty excited about it. It was like very surprising for me when writing it about like how impactful and how important collagen and like, you know, this connective tissue actually is to overall health.

James DiNicolantonio (0:53)

Yeah, it's a really interesting topic because it seems to be that most people are not just like ingesting a suboptimal intake of glycine and collagen, but even potentially not enough to support just basic metabolic functions. So that's, and there's really not a whole lot of nutrients that you can really say that for.

So from that aspect, in addition, the fact that actually supplementing with fairly high doses of collagen and glycine can also provide a lot of benefits to even healthy people, but certainly people with different health issues makes it really an appealing book for a lot of people.

Siim Land (1:33)

Yeah, I think that's one of the few compounds that pretty much everyone actually could benefit from, because everyone ages, everyone will experience some aspects of collagen degeneration, skin degeneration, and joint degeneration. So yeah, it's pretty much for everyone, for all ages, pretty much that would be needed.

James DiNicolantonio (1:54)

Yeah, exactly.

Siim Land (1:56)

Yeah, but what about, let's say, collagen is considered, at least like many years ago, I was thinking that collagen is like this kind of scheme that doesn't have any effect. So what is the actual research showing the effects of collagen?

I will start with collagen, like the effects of collagen on what they say that it helps with.

James DiNicolantonio (2:17)

Right. So essentially, that sort of thinking, inaccurate thinking, can also be applied to glycine. And the fact that a lot of people don't believe that collagen is beneficial because our own cells can synthesize collagen. Right. And in the same line of thinking, we can synthesize glycine. So it's a non-essential amino acid. So from both those perspectives, you can say, or you can, you know, inaccurately think that there's no benefit to actually taking exact sources of collagen or glycine because our body can make each. Right.

But the problem with that is the fact that in order for our cells to actually make collagen, they need to have certain amino acid precursors to do that. And you really don't get high amounts of those in the diet, particularly glycine, but also proline and hydroxyproline. So by taking a collagen supplement, you're getting more of the building blocks that your body needs to synthesize collagen. So in other words, 100% studies have shown that supplementing with collagen increases your own endogenous collagen synthesis, the thickness of tendons and ligaments, the strength of those, the improvements in skin health, obviously, as well. So there's numerous randomized studies in humans showing that collagen can benefit anywhere from bone health, blood pressure, even muscle mass and strength, because collagen is obviously important not just for tendons and ligaments, but also muscle health as well.

So from the perspective of not just the fact that it's inaccurate to say that your body makes collagen so it doesn't need it, but also we have studies to support the benefits of that. So the second reason why it's kind of inaccurate to think, okay, taking collagen isn't going to be beneficial because my body can make it, is the fact that when you actually ingest collagen peptides, you ingest a lot of those peptides intact, not just the amino acids, but the actual dipeptides. And those can actually stimulate receptors, they can get into the joints, and they can stimulate and increase the synthesis of your body's own endogenous collagen production. So from those two perspectives, ingesting collagen will benefit collagen health, and then we also are at a huge glycine deficit, so adding glycine to collagen is going to be beneficial, even though about one out of every three amino acids in collagen is made up of glycine.

On a net scale of how much you're getting per 10 grams, let's say you get two and a half of glycine, that's still probably not an optimal amount. So adding in five to 10 grams of glycine would actually help not just collagen synthesis, but many aspects of health.