It seems nowadays the word collagen is synonymous with healthier hair, skin, and nails but can collagen actually help your hair grow? Read on!
All About Collagen
To better understand how collagen affects hair growth, let’s first do a quick crash course on collagen in general. Collagen is the most abundant protein in our bodies, but as we get older our bodies naturally make less and less of it. Collagen is one of the major building blocks of bones, skin, muscles, tendons, and ligaments, so as you can imagine as the body starts to make less, you can see and feel the effects in your skin, bones, and joints.
When collagen is taken as an ingestible, it is quickly absorbed into the bloodstream, helping replenish your body with collagen more effectively than topical beauty products. Our collagen peptides are also "hydrolyzed", which means that they have been broken down through a particular type of water synthesis to allow them to be absorbed much quicker than non-hydrolyzed collagen or gelatin (you can read more about the absorption of Collagen For Her here). Hydrolyzed collagen then provides amino acids that are needed by the body to build connective tissue and help regenerate cell growth.
Okay, but what about hair?
Hair is primarily made up of the protein keratin. Our bodies use amino acids to build keratin. Since collagen is rich in amino acids, it can aid your body in the production of keratin and in turn, help to strengthen hair. The amino acid proline is the main component of hair therefore, consuming proline-rich supplements like collagen can help provide your body with the building blocks it needs to create hair.
In addition to its benefits for hair growth, proline can also help repair skin damage, heal the gut lining, repair joints, regenerate cartilage, and form connective tissue. This is one powerful amino acid that has so many benefits for overall health - hair growth is just an added bonus!
What about biotin?
Biotin is widely known as a supplement that helps with hair growth. Biotin, also known as Vitamin H, is one of eight B vitamins. Biotin plays a number of important roles in the body such as helping the body convert food into energy and maintaining healthy hair, skin, and nails. Biotin is found in food sources such as egg yolks, legumes, nuts, seeds, and nutritional yeast but can also be obtained from supplements like our Marine Collagen Beauty Blend, which contains 100% daily value of biotin. You can read more about biotin here.
To summarize, collagen is made up of 18 amino acids. Our hair is primarily made up of the protein keratin and in order for our bodies to produce keratin, it uses amino acids such as proline. By taking a collagen supplement that is rich in amino acids, it can promote hair growth in addition to other benefits for overall health.
Interested in the other benefits of collagen?
- Read more about collagen and skin here.
- Read more about collagen and joint pain here.
- Read more about collagen and digestion/gut health here.
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