It seems people are concerned about their skin in this isolation period and not being able to have skin treatments. I have had multiple texts and messages me asking about collagen powders, so I thought I had better lay down the facts.

We all know collagen (and its main constituent hyaluronic acid - HA) is the essence of youth. And that as we age we lose it (plus many more things) and wrinkles develop. So how do we replace it? Well skin treatments such as micro needling cause minor injuries to the skin that encourages the skin to heal thereby producing new collagen. But we aren’t allowed to do those at the moment as we all know. So how else can collagen get in the skin? Well some people try to get in via skin care. But Collagen (predominantly HA) in skin-care products are good water-binding agents, but the HA molecule is too large to penetrate into the skin. Even when made small enough to be absorbed it cannot bind with the collagen existing in skin. Therefore it has no lasting effect on wrinkles.

The other way to get it to the skin is to inject that - and that works! But …sigh. We also cannot do that either at the moment.

So this leaves us with the final way…ingesting collagen. I like to base my recommendations on science, and the honest truth is the science ain’t that good! I’ve read some studies and the best studied (albeit limited) agent is marine collagen.

Marine collagen is made from controlled hydrolysis of native collagen in fish “marine collagen”. In vivo test testing detected collagen fragments in blood a few hours after consumption. Marine collagen appears to be:

• Highly digestible
• Easily absorbed (up to 95% within first 12 hours)
• Well-distributed, especially to dermis, and remained elevated up to 14 days post consumption

And the effects in the skin?

• Increase in skin hydration and resilience in just 2 months
• Reduced skin dryness and scaling in 12 weeks
• Decrease in periocular wrinkling, visual and tactile roughness
• Improvement in pigmentation and skin redness
• Extra radiance and skin tone

And the best part of all? Collagen increased by 40-60%!

So the question is how robust are these studies and which product is best? The best product I know that contains marine collagen is Proplenish.

The Other brands a lot of people ask me about is the Beauty Chef Collagen Inner Beauty Boost. Despite what the name suggests this actually does NOT contain collagen. But it does contains HEAPS of good antioxidants, which in the right quantities can help protect against free radicals that can break down collagen. So infact this is not a collage powder, but a collagen preserving powder.

So the conclusion? At this stage there is limited evidence to suggest the effectiveness of beauty supplements. You are best off consuming a diet rich in antioxidants and if you find that difficult then consider supplements (coq10, vitamin E and maybe powders). If you want to give something a go and cannot do established proven treatments, then go for a marine collagen but be aware the benefits may be marginal and short lived.