4 Science-Backed Reasons To Drink Collagen for Gut Health
You may know by now that collagen is an excellent supplement to integrate into your diet for improving your skin and joint health. But there is a lot more to the story for collagen. You can also take collagen for gut health - and we have the science to back it up.
There are several reasons why your gut health may not be top notch, such as stress, diet, or preexisting health conditions. You may have leaky gut syndrome or irritable bowel syndrome, or maybe you simply want to have more regular and comfortable digestion.
Whatever the reason, what you eat has a huge impact on your gut health.
And, if you are experiencing stomach issues, there is a good chance that your body does not have enough collagen for gut health.
The correlation between collagen and gut health
No matter the cause of poor gut health, there are distinct correlations between collagen and gut health improvements. To understand this, you must first understand what makes a healthy gut.
A healthy gut has an impermeable mucosal lining, meaning that it is completely sealed. This is where food that you eat breaks down and passes through your intestinal tract.
If for any reason this lining that seals your gut is damaged or has a bacterial imbalance, you can start to experience gut issues. This can cause all sorts of problems like leaky gut syndrome, bloating, inflammation, and more because your body is no longer able to digest and process your food properly.
One influencer of your gut health is the balance of bacteria in your gut. This is why you often are encouraged to include probiotics into your diet.
However, the structure of your intestinal tract and gut in general is also vital to your overall gut health. That’s where collagen for gut health comes into play.
Collagen is the most abundant protein in your body. Collagen is what builds, repairs, and helps maintain elasticity in your connective tissues like skin, cartilage, tendons, etc.
You do produce collagen naturally, but as you age, your natural collagen production rate slows down - and continues to slow down with each passing year. The slow down of collagen synthesis in your body means there is less collagen and amino acids to go to the areas of your body that need them.
When you are producing less collagen, your body is going to intuitively send it to the most important regions of your body (like vital organs and blood vessels) to ensure that you are able to function.
By your mid-twenties, you may start to notice little things like increased joint pain, changes in skin elasticity, or more stomach issues. All of these things are often associated with a drop in collagen production.
4 reasons to drink collagen for gut health
Even with that information, it may not be obvious how exactly collagen and gut health are so connected. That’s why we put together four of the most prevalent reasons why it is a good idea to start taking collagen for gut health.
1. Collagen may help repair intestinal lining
For your body to produce collagen, it needs access to certain amino acid combinations. Collagen supplements, like ProT Gold, essentially provide these necessary amino acids the body needs to repair and heal connective tissues.
Collagen contains two of the primary amino acids we need to repair tissues, which are Glycine and Proline.
When you consume a collagen supplement that is easy to digest and absorb, you are providing your body with the amino acids it needs to start to repair damage in your intestinal lining that may be causing gastrointestinal distress. That’s why ProT Gold is trusted by 3,000+ medical facilities and is frequently used for medical nutrition therapy, especially for healing surgical wounds.
So, once a high-quality collagen supplement is fully consumed by your body, if there is any damage to your intestinal lining or stomach lining, your body will now have the tools to distribute the amino acids and repair areas in need.
What’s more, one of the amino acids that helps your body heal, Glycine, is also what helps you make the antioxidant glutathione. Like many other antioxidants, glutathione helps protect cells.
Taking collagen for gut health then is not only helping produce and repair your cells, but is helping to protect existing cells because of its ability to produce more glutathione in your body.
2. Collagen may curb symptoms of leaky gut syndrome
Two of the things that make leaky gut syndrome so difficult to manage is that there is damage to your intestinal lining and that there is a considerable amount of inflammation as well.
As we know from the last reason collagen and gut health are related, collagen may help repair intestinal and stomach lining damage.
But what about the inflammation? After all, that’s what is causing most of the discomfort when it comes to leaky gut syndrome.
There is a distinct link between collagen and leaky gut syndrome because of collagen’s innate ability to help heal tissues. But there are also benefits of collagen for gut health because one of the key amino acids, Glutamine, helps prevent inflammation of your gut wall.
Glutamine is an amino acid that is linked to reducing and inhibiting inflammation of tight junctions in your intestinal lining. Some research also shows that it reduces overall oxidative stress within the tight junctions.
Intestinal tight junctions are the holes in your intestine that allow your body to absorb nutrients, but they are only supposed to be large enough to allow necessary nutrients to pass through.
When you have leaky gut syndrome, your tight junctions change in size, become inflamed, and allow unwanted particles to enter your bloodstream.
Many people that have leaky gut syndrome have been found to have a decreased level of collagen production, which is correlated to their digestive imbalance. Not only that, but intestinal inflammation is also often associated with inflammatory bowel disease.
Adding collagen for gut health into your diet can help restore balance to your digestive tract and relieve some of the symptoms of leaky gut syndrome.
3. Collagen may help aid in digestion
Consuming a collagen supplement that is easy for your body to absorb and process may help aid in digestion of all nutrients, not just the collagen itself. When using collagen for gut health, you’ll want to make sure that you are looking for collagen that you can easily and quickly process to get the best results, especially in terms of aiding in digestion and nutrient absorption.
The reason why collagen can aid in overall digestion is because it is a hydrophilic molecule that attracts water and acidic molecules.
In short, when collagen enters the digestive tract, it attaches itself to water molecules and stomach acid to aid in the breakdown of food particles.
Not only that, but since collagen is essentially holding water in your gastrointestinal tract, it makes it easier for food to move through.
Struggling to digest food can cause gastrointestinal distress of all kinds, even little things like bloating. So, taking collagen for gut health can be a simple and effective way to relieve some of these symptoms.
Plus, if you are someone that does have leaky gut syndrome, seeking out ways to improve digestion can prevent your body from losing out on important nutrients from the food you eat.
4. Collagen can boost amino acids needed for healthy gut function
As we have already stated, collagen is a protein that is made up of amino acids. These amino acids are the building blocks for your body to produce collagen, and they are also the primary reason why collagen and gut health go hand in hand.
A few of the amino acids that are found in collagen include glutamate, arginine, cysteine, and threonine. While these are not the only amino acids found in collagen protein, these are the ones that are thought to optimize the immune functions of your intestinal tract. Along with glutamine that, as we know, is thought to reduce inflammation.
Collagen protein also contains the amino acids arginine, serine, proline, threonine, and methionine. These amino acids are known to support intestinal mucosal healing which we talked about earlier.
All of the amino acids found in collagen have specific functions beyond simply being able to make new collagen molecules. That’s why the amino acid complex of collagen protein should be seen as one of the primary reasons why it is a good idea to invest in collagen for gut health.
When you take collagen for gut health, you are reaping all the benefits of its many amino acids.
So, now that you know some of the wonderful benefits of collagen for gut health, it’s important to understand the right kind of collagen protein to take.
How to choose the right collagen for gut health
Not all collagen supplements are created equal, and not all collagen supplements are going to be great collagen for gut health.
How can that be after all that we’ve discovered in the four reasons to drink collagen for gut health above?
Well, it comes down to one factor: absorption rate.
If you are using a collagen supplement that does not have a very good absorption rate, you are not going to reap the benefits of collagen for gut health.
When collagen is in the whole form, the individual collagen molecules are far too big to be completely broken down and absorbed by your digestive system.
To ensure that you are using a collagen supplement that is fully absorbable and bioavailable to the human body, look for hydrolyzed or nano hydrolyzed collagen.
When collagen has gone through the process of hydrolysis, it is hydrolyzed. This process uses water to break the molecules down into smaller, more digestible pieces.
Still, after one hydrolysis process, the molecules are still larger than your stomach pores. To get the full benefit of collagen for gut health, look for nano hydrolyzed collagen. Nano hydrolyzed collagen, like ProT Gold, has gone through the process of hydrolysis twice, making it far more absorbable and easier to process.
ProT Gold is one of the leading collagen supplements on the market today. It was formulated by a Stanford biochemist and is trusted by over 3,000 medical facilities. It is a complete, medical-grade protein and is of the best choices when searching for the best collagen for gut health.
