Considering Collagen?

02.12.09 / Anti-Aging, Beauty / Author: admin

I have recently received a post from one of my clients with a question about skin care products rich with a fish collagen that is extracted by a patented method. She was asking me what I know about collagen and how effective it is to use collagen-rich skin care products (that claimed to make a significant difference on skin because they can reconstruct natural skin collagen)

Collagen – is one of the main skin proteins, which determines its structure forming its skeleton by being composed of fibres. The amount of whole collagen fibres in our skin is in opposite proportion to the amount of wrinkles. Therefore the idea of supporting skin’s ability to have a significant amount of intact collagen fibres is directly linked to idea of anti-aging treatments.  There are several different types of collagen in the skin, whose relationship changes with the age. The process of the renovation of collagen occurs constantly. The time necessary for the formation of new collagen molecules is approximately 15 days (half of the period of the general renovation of the skin). To form a new collagen molecule skin will need an old collagen fibre, specific ferment called collagenase that split old fibres and the cell (fibroblast) that synthesizes new molecules from the split fragments. It was showed that with the age the amount and the activity of last two elements do not change, i.e., our skin has an unlimited ability to synthesize new collagen molecules from old ones. However, it does not occur for several reasons:

1. The free radicals (blame the sun) disrupt the structure of the already prepared collagen

2. Ferment Collagenase which splits collagen fibres cannot recognize the changed collagen

3. In result the cells, which synthesize collagen don’t get the sufficient amount of source material and a quantity “healthy” collagen decreases

4. Disrupted by free radicals collagen fibres posses’ heavy structure and being accumulated make skin looks “heavier” or wrinklier.

 “Revolutionary” anti-aging idea is based on using small fragments of collagen as a source for our skin to produce of the new molecules of collagen. As the result skin must have the same young appearance without visible heavy wrinkles. This idea I think came from earlier usage of native collagen treatments that was mostly offered as “Intense Moisturising”.  Diminished level of inner skin moisture was some time ago one of most spoken reason for skin aging.  It is very easy to explain why collagen treatment was – and is – very effective and indeed still popular. Large molecules of collagen cannot be dissolved in water. However they have the ability to swell in water. Integrated into skin treatments and being moistened during treatments they will take larger volume and spread or straighten existed wrinkles. 

This anti-aging idea is about integrating or adding collagen fragments inside of the skin. This could be done locally via injection directly into deep wrinkles, or some skin care companies claim that their topical skin products have the ability to support skin with small hydrolysed collagen fragments.

Using fragmented collagen (not as express beauty treatments, but on every day basis) and assuming they will actually go through skin barrier subsequently decrease the activity of the collagen- splitting ferment, and as consequence increases the amount of old collagen fibres that still need decomposing. Increase of old and heavy collagen fibres will unfortunately just support the amount and the depth of your wrinkles.

From the other side, using skin care products with bigger collagen molecules (and any other hydrolysed protein molecules) will never make any influence on inner skin structure.   A  Bigger molecule has the ability to interact with moisture and swell, filling and stretching wrinkles and therefore giving skin much smoother appearance. It will be very short effect, lasting only a short time after the application. There is no adverse effect, neither addiction.

In my opinion there is more logic in supporting our own skin collagen metabolism. There will be more sense in looking for ingredients that can assist either in disintegration of broken collagen fibres or stimulate synthesis of new ones from existing fragments. These elements are already known. Amongst them are: Vitamin C, Key amino acids, Copper peptides and Growth factors and hormones.

It is vitally important to understand why collagen fibre changes its structure and becomes unrecognisable for specific ferment. Main role in such change play sun and as a consequence – active radicals that have ability to destroy intact and whole molecular structure. The role of sun screens cannot be under-estimated.