Dear Wendy,
I read this post long ago. Earlier this year it occured to me that it might be helpful for my own elderly mother even though she is not vegetarian.
In the last 5-10 years, she has been taking the maximum amount of paracetamol and some ibuprofen each day for relentless hip and joint pain, as well as occasional cocodamol substituted for paracetamol, and ibuprofen gels for local pain relief. Of course, occasional rest periods from the ibuprofen tablets to avoid stomach problems, but you get the idea. A lot of pain relief.
Still, she was in considerable pain despite this all day, every single day, and had lost almost all her ability to kneel down, stand on ladders, walk at speed and so on, and had difficulty sleeping from the pain.
Additionally, after cancer, the hormone treatment caused her to lose big chunks of her hair. And in general, just the wrinkled look of age, as she had lost much of her appetite in recent years. She was assigned multiple osteoporosis related supplements including high strength calcium and alandronic acid by the doctor.
I persuaded her to try collagen. Marine collagen, after reading that it has a more similar amino balance to human skin, and is more easily absorbed. Not as cheap though.
6 months have passed since then.
Now, regularly, people she has known are walking up to her in the supermarket or street and asking how on earth she is looking so young (the wrinkles have partly smoothed out and her hair is back to normal).
Her hairdresser was desperate to know how on earth she was growing her hair so thick compared to previous visits, and now has an Amazon subscription for collagen too.
The pain in her knees, elbows and hips is essentially gone to the point she has forgotten about it. She takes no painkillers at all now. She is able to do a wide range of physical activities that were basically impossible at the start of the year.
Her bone density has significantly improved in the most recent bone scan to the point she is no longer classed as having osteoporosis but only osteopenia. Though, this may have more to do with the allandronic acid and calcium. It’s incredible that doctors focus so much on calcium and never mention the role of collagen in bones.
She sleeps better, too.
My dad? We started him on collagen to see what would happen. After a few months, I asked if there was any improvement in his everyday life. “None at all”, he replied.
“Ah, that’s a shame”, I said. Then he added “Well, I suppose all the pain is gone, which is nice, but I’m certainly not walking any faster than I used to, so I can’t say it’s any kind of success…”.
My younger brother has had terrible eczema his whole life. He gets rotated between the two or three strongest topical steroids available from the UK health service along with other treatments. The steroids cause thin skin and other problems, but high dose strong steroids are the only thing that works.
It has been this way for him for 30 years.
I thought, well, maybe if his body could heal the skin faster, it might lessen the problem somehow. I asked him to try collagen, and, speculating after a little research, suggested that lecithin might be useful too (a group of natural substances in eggs, sunflowers, chocolate etc, that allow oil and water to mix more easily in the body).
It turns out that if he takes either one of these two supplements, his eczema improves immediately, and if he stops either, it immediately worsens. He has tested this on and off for a week or two at a time to be sure the effect is real. And if he takes both collagen and lecithin together, he hardly needs to use the topical steroids at all! Only on rare days in the month, if there is a sign it is about to flare up.
And myself? Well, it turns out collagen suppresses my sweet tooth for sugary treats, and I have no idea why. It’s certainly useful though, a relief in fact.
So, thank you for writing your interesting posts about health and health treatments. Your awareness-raising about collagen has been of great benefit to my own family. Furthermore, my mum is like a kind of street preacher nowadays for the benefits of collagen, so probably other people will benefit too.
The best part? The price of collagen is dropping like a stone. I paid $45 equivalent for 300g marine collagen 1 year ago. Recently, just $25.
Bovine collagen? $15 for 650g, purchased close to expiry.
We’ve also found that sweetly flavoured pea protein ‘clear isolate’ is very useful for the days when my mother has no appetite at all, but can manage drinks easily enough. It looks and tastes like cordial.
Something we’ve found lately that is maybe worth investigating is ‘beef protein clear isolate’. It is extremely high in bovine collagen as well as the regular proteins you would find in beef, easy and pleasant to drink. Around $35 for 1.8kg, over here.
Anyway, thank you for taking the time to write your posts, and I hope you get some good karma/good fortune from the universe.
