A look into whether collagen supplements and bone broth are useful tools for your health and fitness pursuits (and the best way to implement them).
You’re probably aware of collagen and its inclusion in various supplements for skin, nail and hair health. You may have also heard about bone broth and its reputation as being a 'health elixir'.
Are they useful for your fitness endeavours though and is there any evidence that they’re effective?
Collagen is a protein found in high amounts within the body. Its main role is in connective tissue health (it’s a major constituent of your tendons, bones, muscles, cartilage etc.) and is also important for your skin functioning (eg. skin elasticity).
Collagen supplements are most often produced using pig skin, cattle hide, pork and cattle bones, but there's also other options like collagen peptides sourced from the skin of fish. Collagen can also be consumed through foods with a good source being bone broth (gelatin in this case – the cooked/broken down form of collagen).
Most of the research conducted on collagen supplementation has been focused on skin health, where it does have its benefits. For example, a review on a number of relevant studies concluded that supplementation can improve and delay signs of skin ageing (2.5-5g daily intake for 90 days). (1)
But how can it help your fitness pursuits?
As mentioned above, one of collagen’s primary roles is in connective tissue health.
For example, collagen makes up 65-80% dry weight of tendons (the connective tissue that attaches muscle to bone) which allows your tendons to handle all the force and impact they’re subjected to. (2)
Connective tissue (formed with collagen) is also found interwoven around and between your muscles, organs, bones, nerve fibers and so on.
All of these connective tissues contribute significantly to how your body adapts to and handles training. Therefore, if there’s a way we can support these structures, it’s going to be beneficial for your fitness pursuits!
When collagen is ingested, you get an increase of beneficial compounds like proline, glycine, hydroxyproline (which make up collagen) in your blood. These compounds go on to increase collagen synthesis in your connective tissues. This process is enhanced further with exercise when these tissues (like your bones, tendons, muscles etc.) are loaded.
Including some vitamin C alongside the collagen is also an important part of enhancing this process. (3)
• If you have joint pain and/or osteoarthritis, supplementation can help reduce pain and improve joint function (4). With less pain and improved joint function, you can train harder and gain better results!
• Increases in connective tissue that’s not related to an increase in muscle size (5). Seeing as though connective tissue adaptations (getting them bigger and stronger) is just as important as getting your muscles bigger and stronger, collagen’s ability to assist this process is going to be helpful for your fitness pursuits!
• Consuming gelatin (dietary form of collagen - its been broken down) with Vitamin C before exercise (1hr beforehand) may be beneficial for injury prevention and tissue repair (3). If you can experience less injuries and bounce back quicker from them, this is obviously going to be a net positive for your results.
• There’s promising evidence that the intake of collagen is good for your bones. The tissue quality of your bones is especially important as you age and your risk of osteoperosis increases. Alongside strength training, calcium and Vit D, it may be useful in ensuring your bones stay in good condition as you age. (6)
Collagen contains a number of compounds like glycine and proline, and smaller amounts of other amino acids like glutamine and arginine. These are some of the compounds that are needed for collagen synthesis (and the benefits mentioned above), but they also play other beneficial roles in the body. For example, lets look at the other benefits of glycine:
• Glycine is an important precursor for things like creatine! (Creatine: Why You Should Consider Taking It), it’s important for your immune system, it plays a role as a neurotransmitter, assists your digestion/the absorption of fats, has anti-inflammatory and anticancer activity and is important for the regulation of your genes (7)
• There’s evidence that it helps your sleep quality (8) (as discussed here: Nine Tips For Better Sleep)
• If you’re eating a lot of muscle meat, you can end up consuming high amounts of an amino acid called ‘methionine’ – this can raise your homocysteine levels (isn’t ideal for health when very high) (9). However! Glycine can balance this ratio out (10). So if you’re consuming lots of muscle meat, there’s benefit to consuming more glycine (eg from collagen).
Overall, collagen is an effective tool to aid in your connective tissue health and the amino acids also have other beneficial roles within your body (like the versatile and important role of glycine).
As briefly mentioned earlier, bone broth can be a great whole food source of collagen (or gelatin in this case).
Bone broth contains small amounts of a number of vitamins and minerals, but where it shines is its gelatin content (dietary from of collagen). This is why good bone broth has that jelly-like consistency and has been associated with a number of health and fitness benefits, often being recognised as a ‘health elixir’.
It depends.
A paper by Alcock et al., 2019 looked at the concentration of the amino acids found in collagen that were present in different bone broths and how they compare to supplement form. Depending on how the bone broth was made and what recipe was used, the amino acid concentration differed. Some of the commercially prepared broths and recipes weren’t as close to what you would get from supplement form, but there were broths prepared (like the ‘cafe chef recipe’: beef bone marrow simmering for 72hrs) that had even higher amounts of amino acids (like glycine and proline) than the supplements. (11)
So, if you want to make sure there’s enough collagen/gelatin in the bone broth, using beef bone marrow and letting it simmer for 72hrs will increase the likelihood!
A couple of issues if you want to reap the collagen benefits from bone broth:
1. It’s time consuming if you’re making it yourself and good bone broth can be expensive/hard to find.
2. You would have to consume a large quantity before exercise.
3. he collagen content will vary with each batch so there is less consistency.
The benefits of getting it from bone broth:
1. There’s usually an advantage to getting it from whole foods as they contain a range of different components that work well together to bring out the best benefits (the ‘food matrix’).
2. Bone broth also contains a number of vitamins and minerals (alongside some other health- and fitness-promoting compounds).
3. It’s hydrating and can help you create a delicious meal!
4. There’s value in history/traditions and bone broth being an integral part of some traditional diets has stood the test of time.
Bone broth is a great source of gelatin/collagen and can be an advantageous addition to your diet.
When it comes to consuming collagen pre-exercise for the benefits of improved connective tissue health, it’s easiest to simply consume 15g of collagen peptides or gelatin alongside some Vitamin C (eg an orange) an hour before your strength training session.
Collagen supplementation and bone broth are rich sources of amino acids that make up collagen and have the potential to aid your connective tissue health. This results in improved joint function and less pain, better physical adaptations and may be a valuable tool for injury reduction and repair. The amino acids present in these sources also have further health- and fitness-promoting benefits so supplementation pre-workout and/or the addition of bone broth into your diet is worthwhile!
1) de Miranda, Roseane B et al. “Effects of hydrolyzed collagen supplementation on skin aging: a systematic review and meta-analysis.” International journal of dermatology vol. 60,12 (2021): 1449-1461. doi:10.1111/ijd.15518
2) Khatri, Mishti et al. “The effects of collagen peptide supplementation on body composition, collagen synthesis, and recovery from joint injury and exercise: a systematic review.” Amino acids vol. 53,10 (2021): 1493-1506. doi:10.1007/s00726-021-03072-x
3) Shaw, Gregory et al. “Vitamin C-enriched gelatin supplementation before intermittent activity augments collagen synthesis.” The American journal of clinical nutrition vol. 105,1 (2017): 136-143. doi:10.3945/ajcn.116.138594
4) Bello AE & Oesser S (2006) Collagen hydrolysate for the treatment of osteoarthritis and other joint disorders: a review of the literature. Curr Med Res Opin 22, 2221–2232.
5) Kirmse, Marius et al. “Prolonged Collagen Peptide Supplementation and Resistance Exercise Training Affects Body Composition in Recreationally Active Men.” Nutrients vol. 11,5 1154. 23 May. 2019, doi:10.3390/nu11051154
6) Daneault, Audrey et al. “Biological effect of hydrolyzed collagen on bone metabolism.” Critical reviews in food science and nutrition vol. 57,9 (2017): 1922-1937. doi:10.1080/10408398.2015.1038377
7) Razak, Meerza Abdul et al. “Multifarious Beneficial Effect of Nonessential Amino Acid, Glycine: A Review.” Oxidative medicine and cellular longevity vol. 2017 (2017): 1716701. doi:10.1155/2017/1716701
8) Kawai, Nobuhiro et al. “The sleep-promoting and hypothermic effects of glycine are mediated by NMDA receptors in the suprachiasmatic nucleus.” Neuropsychopharmacology : official publication of the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology vol. 40,6 (2015): 1405-16. doi:10.1038/npp.2014.326
9) Peter J. Garlick, The Nature of Human Hazards Associated with Excessive Intake of Amino Acids, The Journal of Nutrition, Volume 134, Issue 6, June 2004, Pages 1633S–1639S, https://doi.org/10.1093/jn/134.6.1633S
10) Sugiyama, K et al. “Effect of dietary glycine on methionine metabolism in rats fed a high-methionine diet.” Journal of nutritional science and vitaminology vol. 33,3 (1987): 195-205. doi:10.3177/jnsv.33.195
11) Alcock, Rebekah D et al. “Bone Broth Unlikely to Provide Reliable Concentrations of Collagen Precursors Compared With Supplemental Sources of Collagen Used in Collagen Research.” International journal of sport nutrition and exercise metabolism vol. 29,3 (2019): 265-272. doi:10.1123/ijsnem.2018-0139
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