If you have lots of ambitious plans for the future.

I've got a whole series of new books I want to write thousands of more videos to script,

but guess what? None of us may be able to do any of the things we want to do if

we don't have our health. Welcome to the Nutrition Facts Podcast. I'm your host

Dr. Michael Greger. Today we explore the effect of

collagen on the body and we start with a story about collagen supplements.

Collagen supplements have become quite the trendy treatment for aging skin, available

on a array of pills, powders, and products from bars and gummies to collagen coffee and beer. Social media is said to be inundated with paid

ads marketing unsubstantiated claims. What claims, if any, can be substantiated?

The word collagen comes from the Greek

cola meaning gum and gin meaning producing. Its jelling nature is exemplified by

jello, gelatin, which is basically just cooked collagen.

It is our most abundant protein in the main structural component of most of the tissues in our body.

For example, up to three quarters of our skin by weight, maybe pure collagen.

There are actually dozens of different types, but they all share a characteristic

triple helix configuration of coiled subunits.

What happens when we eat it? If someone would have asked me for my

educated guess about taking college and before I took a deep dive for my book,

how not to age, I would have dismissed it as which

Doctory Wew-Wew. I mean, eating skin for your face would seem to make as much

sense as eating brains to make yourself smarter or eyeballs to improve your vision.

After all, when you eat proteins, they're broken down into their constituent amino acids,

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