167: Collagen Supplements - Beneficial Or A Waste Of Money?

POPP Ep 167 - Collagen Supplements - Beneficial Or A Waste Of Money?

Jarrod: Hey I'm so glad you're here You're just in time Anita and I were just talking about something that really as of late has become kind of a pet peeve of mine. I don't have too many. 

Anita: Just a little bit. 

Just a little bit I don't have too many pet peeves but this honestly has become one of mine lately. 

Anita: I think the things that are our biggest pet peeve though are the things that are out there that seem to be saying in their advertising you've got to have this like all the protein products. We talked about this before. You've gotta have your protein .Where are you gonna get your protein? If you haven't heard to talk about that go back and listen to some of the other episodes We will be jumping on the protein train again, but let's just sum it up by saying- Sister, if you feel like you need your protein, just eat your plants Uh what were you gonna 

Jarrod: Well you, you just kind of stole my thunder actually. We hear so much about protein this, protein that, and it's so pervasive. And we've talked about that on this show before that you don't need animal sources of protein, 

Anita: No. 

Jarrod: because you can get all you need, and great quality protein, from plants. 

Anita: And you don't just have to eat beans to get it either. I'm just gonna throw that out there. It's not just in beans or nuts. It's in all plant products. Well, I shouldn't even say products; it's in all plants.

Jarrod:  Just all plants. I mean your lettuces even, your spinach. Broccoli has a ton of protein in it, but what I'm talking about today is I've seen so many advertisements for collagen. Collagen this, collagen that. It's understandable because collagen makes up the most amount of proteins in her body. Now what does it do? It's what gives our skin strength. It makes our bones and our muscle strong, so I would say it's pretty important stuff. 

Anita: So you're saying it's the most prevalent protein in our body. Is that what you're saying? 

Jarrod: Yes. 

Anita: Okay.  

Jarrod: And so as we get older, we do decrease how much we make. So obviously everybody's wanting to find that fountain of youth And so… 

Anita: Surely it's collagen! 

Jarrod: Well, if you listen to all these advertisements and all these products, you would think so. And so again it's understandable, anything that we could do to boost our health, we want to do sure. But with collagen again there are a couple elements to it that are a pet peeve. 

Anita: One, you used to put it in your coffee 

Jarrod: Well, yes. 

Anita: Because you thought it was a good thing to do.  

Jarrod: Well that wasn't my pet peeve. Now, you're dishing out the dirt on me, honey.

Anita: I'm stirring it up. Listen we're just let's just tell it like it is. We used to think it was great for you. 

Jarrod: I'm not trying to hide it. I just wasn't going there just yet. I do it because yes like everybody else I bought into that. And so what is the only true source of collagen? Well, it's animal products. So if collagen is really needed, then might we need some animal sources of protein or collagen or food. 

Anita: Hmm good question 

Jarrod: Well initially when I started looking at the plant based diet does it provide everything that we need. And obviously I came up with a resounding yes, but 

Anita: Otherwise we wouldn't be doing this right? 

Jarrod: There are a couple simple things... well, yes of course... 

Anita: His mind's spinning a hundred miles an hour right now. 

Jarrod: I’m on a train of thought here now, but a key element with collagen that it's basic science. Many people don't know this and you don't know what you don't know. The big thing with collagen, it is a protein made up of a string of amino acids. 

Anita: Just like every protein 

Jarrod: Just like every other protein.

Anita: Made up of a string of amino acids. 

Jarrod: But in your digestive tract, your body breaks those down into very, very short chains or individual amino acids. When you bring this large protein in, when you eat it, you are going to break it down into 2, 3, 4 little amino acid chains. 

Anita: Mm-hmm just like any protein, when you eat it, it's gonna get broken down into the amino acids. 

Jarrod: If everything's working appropriately, yes. And collagen's much, much larger, so you do not absorb collagen as a whole molecule .You then do not have it circulate around your bloodstream and into your body, into your skin, into your muscle, your bones as a collagen molecule. Your body has to break it down, and then it takes those building blocks and then it uses it wherever it needs it. 

Anita: Whatever way it needs it. So it may not string it back together as collagen. 

Jarrod: Exactly and it may use it in the skin. It may it in the bone. May use it wherever it's needed. Your body was designed perfectly by our Creator. It's smart. It knows what it needs, where it needs it, when it needs For us to spend a bunch of money on collagen products, which the vast majority are animal based. Now you can get some quote unquote vegan collagen ,which all that is, is just made in a Petri dish by bacteria. They've taken the DNA and put it in bacteria, so I suppose it's technically vegan, but still It's a lot of work, a lot of expense for really nothing. 

Anita: You're getting the amino acids you need. There are nine essential amino acids but how many amino acids are there in general. 

Jarrod: There are 20 that we use, nine which you said essential, and what that means is we must get that from food. Our bodies do not make them. 

Anita: And so can you get all nine from plant foods? 

Jarrod: You do. 

Anita: Imagine that!

Jarrod: And interestingly enough 

Anita: The same… Oh I'm sorry I interrupted you, but the same amino acids that you're gonna get when you eat the collagen and your body breaks it down in your digestive tract is the same amino acids that are gonna be there when you eat plant foods. 

Jarrod: Correct And there are essential amino acids that animal must get from plants So like cows, if you eat beef, cows must get essential amino acids plants as well. So those essential amino acids were originally created in plants 

Anita: So if you eat the plants you're cutting out the middle man as with so many other different types of nutrients, you're going to the main source 

Jarrod: You're cutting out the cholesterol, the hormones, saturated fats, the other things that come along with that. 

Anita: Makes total sense. 

Jarrod: So with collagen, it It just doesn't make any sense to me that we spend the time and the expense when our bodies are gonna break them down. And actually a lot of times you get hydrolyzed collagen, which means it's already broken down mechanically, or however they do it. But, it's still the same thing. It's still in its most basic form. Now, you may hear of some studies that tout the benefits, but if Our you go and look, a large majority of those studies were funded by the supplement company. 

Anita: Absolutely! So, if you start looking into studies, you need to look at... there are a couple of things you really need to look at... one is who is backing it with their money. Because usually if you can look at it and track the source and it's coming from the people who are selling that product, it's biased. It's gonna be a biased study. So those findings are not as reliable because they have a vested interest in the fact that they want you to buy the collagen. So for whatever type of diet you're looking at when you're looking at studies you need to look at long term effects Look at who's back in the study and look look at the long term effects on the body Those are the two things you wanna look at. I don't wanna get a soft course here from the collagen but those are really important things. 

Jarrod: Those are important points to know. And, we we say them before, but we're gonna keep saying it again, because they are that important. You need that information. So really with collagen I think I hit my main point there. 

Anita: Yeah 

Jarrod: You cannot get collagen from anything other than an animal source, so there's a lot of stuff that comes with that in eating animal foods because you could get collagen from eating chicken skin or eating a steak or else. Our bodies digest all these things down to its most basic building block. 

Anita: Which in this case is amino acids. 

Jarrod: Amino acids or very short chains of them. I think of pop blocks like when our kids were young and they had the pop blocks. Imagine you're only going to have a chain of 2, 3, 4 pop blocks, not hundreds and hundreds of pop blocks. Your gut just does not have holes big enough for those pop blocks. 

Anita: We hope... we hope your gut doesn't. 

Jarrod: Ideally they should not. And that leads into if your gut's unhealthy then you may have leaky gut and that creates a whole host of other problems. 

Anita: Because then if you have that, the bigger chains of things can get into your body and then your body's immune system goes off and then you can get autoimmune and all kinds of other diseases. We don't want that for you. The thing here is to note that you can get all these same amino acids from whole plant foods, but that's not all you're gonna get If you're getting these amino acid from whole plant foods. So, you take all that money, add up what you're spending every month or could be spending on collagen, and you put that towards the produce section and figuring out how to make some five minute sauces, Sister, and figuring out how to repurpose and reuse the different meals. How to repurpose your leftovers, repurpose your meals, repurpose your single ingredients in a way that's quick and easy to do. And you are on a fast track to health. I must make sure I say the th there but seriously you know you're on the track to getting well and that's what we want for you. Dropping the pounds naturally and you don't have to walk around wondering: "how am I ever gonna feel better again? How am I gonna get rid of this joint pain?" My shoulder was frozen. I don't have that anymore. I thought it was my mattress It was not my mattress. It was because of the foods I was eating. My knees ache. Jarrod ached all the time. He thought it was age. It wasn't age It was all these things. 

Jarrod: It was inflammation. 

Anita: Right .So if you're eating collagen and you're eating these meat based sources or animal based sources of things we know that they're pro-inflammatory and they come with other side effects because you're getting other things that go along with it. But on the flip side, if you take all that money and you put it towards your produce bill and you fill up your cart with good stuff and you learn how to put it together in a way that's quick that tastes good that you absolutely love, so you can do it again and again and again. So you're still in your tacos, your lasagna, your pizza, your banana pudding, your muffins your oh my 

Jarrod: I was thinking muffins. 

Anita: And on brownie batter hummus . You can flip and have almost anything that you still like. You can eat it plant based and have it where it tastes good if you just learn the simple way how. And, that's what we're all about teaching you, those strategies. That's what we do inside Power On Plants Society. So we want you to understand that just fill up your cart with the good stuff. Fill it up! That's what we want you to know here. And when you do that, you're not just getting all those amino acids those same ones that your body needs You're getting them way cheaper And you're getting 'em with all the phytonutrients that only come in plants. You're getting none of the cholesterol that is only found in animal products. There's no cholesterol in plants. There's no there's no phytonutrients in animal products. 

Jarrod: There's also no fiber.

Anita: There's no fiber in an animal product. So you're getting all this added fiber, then all of a sudden your digestive tract is working the way it should. Let me tell you you're just gonna be a much happier camper. The inflammation can start going down. You start getting more energy. You're thinking more clearly. Your A1C is going down seriously It happens. We have a friend who had started doing this for a while. She said my doctor said my A1C is coming down .We have this report all the time. Meds don't do that like plant foods; they don't. And the plant foods come with no side effects except for positive ones. They come with a lot of side effects, but they're all positive. Sister, I want you to know no matter where you find yourself and you find your body, you can do this. It is not hard when you know how. It's time saving. It's money saving, and you will feel amazing very quickly when you learn the simple steps to take. So our whole point here is is collagen necessary? Could you be spending your money more wisely? Jarrod and I will both agree and say yes. 

Jarrod: Absolutely 

Anita: We love having you as a part of our Power On Plants family. We are in your corner always. If you are enjoying this podcast, make sure that you rate and review it because it will help other people to find it and get the help and hope they need too. We cannot wait to hang out with you again next time on Power On Plants.