Collagen is a word you have heard plenty about, especially if you have ever googled anything regarding skincare, anti-aging or youthful appearance.
However, in this article, we will take an in-depth look at the plentiful and miraculous role collagen plays in your everyday life outside of skin and antiaging.
As we learn about its consistent appearances in our eyes, bones and joints, you will discover its plentiful benefits for your hair health and hair growth.
Index
What Is Collagen?
Collagen is protein molecules made up of amino acids. It is responsible for the formation and stretchability of our skin, hair, bones and ligaments. Collagen provides the support our bodies need to remain functional, protective and provides overall wellness.
Formerly known as a beauty secret for youthful looking skin, collagen has become a popular protein to give your hair growth a stronger and more resilient foundation. While it is not solely responsible it has a large influence on your hair’s thick-looking and resilient appearance.
What Are The 5 Types Of Collagen?
Technically there are 28 types of collagen in existence or at least that’s how many has been discovered, science is ever evolving, we typically recognize five that are more common and found in the OTC supplements we add to our beauty routine. Let’s take a look at the most common types of collagen.
Type I Collagen
Type I collagen is the most abundant in our bodies. It helps to form our skin, bones, tendons, corneas, blood vessels and connective tissue. It is also the strongest collagen.
Type I collagen can be found in supplements with bovine or fish collagen. Though eggs and eggshells contain some Type I collagen, they also carry a trace of Type X collagen.
Type I collagen will bring an overall thicker hair type while supporting increased hair growth and reducing hair breakage.
Type II Collagen
Type II collagen is found in our cartilage and connective tissue. It protects the ends of our bones and joints.
Type II collagen is found in chicken bone broth. It can bring a lot of benefits to your hair's overall strength ddue to its plentiful micronutrients like magnesium, calcium and protein.
When supplementing chicken bone broth collagen, you will also notice a beautiful shine along with thicker and stronger hair.
Type III Collagen
Type III Collagen accounts for the majority when we reference our skin and our organs. This type of collagen is found through Bovine.
Due to the source, it will help your body form hair protein giving you healthier and stronger hair.
In addition to the hair’s internal structure, bovine will help strengthen your scalp health that will help with overall hair follicle strength.
Type IV Collagen
Type IV collagen is found in our eyes as well as in your mom [before you were born]! That’s right. One of the main responsibilities is to ensure all babies are kept safe in the placenta.
Type IV collagen can be found in natural sources like eggs. Thus, It is an essential collagen for our sight.
Hence, it is important to take a sufficient amount of this nutrient.
Type X Collagen
Type X collagen is found in our bones and joints and plays a key role in ensuring they stay strong and healthy.
While type X doesn’t always get the attention, it is because of more common places it can be found like chicken and egg.
Collagen Benefits
Increases Elasticity
Keratin is a protein produced by hair follicle cells to strengthen and promote hair growth.
This protein is produced by several amino acids found in collagen. As such, collagen helps to improve the quality of hair by increasing its elasticity and strength.
Moreso, it comes with added benefits of Omegas 3 and 6, which are just perfect for hydrating, and leaving your hair moisturized.
Promotes Hair Growth
Due to the damaging effect of factors like the sun, alcohol, excess sugar, and many others, collagen production reduces with time, and the structure starts to break down.
This natural slowdown of collagen production can be a burden on the body. This is because collagen is essential to the strength and elasticity of your dermis.
Over time, due to aging and other listed factors, your body becomes less efficient at replenishing your dermis, thereby breaking the structure of the skin, nails, and hair.
Similarly, iron deficiency, auto-immune diseases, low thyroids and hormonal imbalance can contribute to hair loss. Collagen supplement helps in promoting hair growth and health by reducing skin aging and improving elasticity.
Regenerate The Follicle
As a natural antioxidant, collagen helps mop off free radicals that destroy hair follicles. Free radicals are a product of metabolic processes. These compounds develop in the body variously due to poor dietary choices, stress, air pollutants, smoking, alcohol, amongst many others.
What collagen does is fight off these free radicals, protect your hair follicle from damage, and ultimately promote healthy and strong hair.
Moisturizes
Collagen also improves protein absorption by supporting the digestive tract and healing the gut lining, as maximum protein absorption is essential for healthy hair growth.
In combination with other components like hyaluronic acids, collagen rebuilds, moisturizes, and promotes healthy dermis and follicle environments. It also supports the diffusion of nutrients to the follicle, moisturizing the hair.
Is Collagen Good For Hair?
Collagen is great for hair. It helps to support a strong immune system while feeding essential nutrients to your hair follicle.
Your hair health and longevity are predetermined before it grows out from your head, so you need to ensure the developmental and growth process is balanced so you can then focus on taking care of the length of your strands.
Not only through promoting healthy hair growth but esthetically, it may bring more shine and a youthful hair appearance.
How Much Collagen Should You Take Per Day For Hair Growth?
While it would be hard to overdose collagen, we recommend taking approx. 1,300 mg of combined collagen types. This includes marine (fish), Chicken bone broth, eggshell, and bovine collagen.
Is Too Much Collagen Bad For Your Hair?
Too much collagen will not negatively affect your hair, i.e., hair loss. With this, too much collagen may create a dermal issue with your skin called scleroderma.
Scleroderma is a rare occurrence that involves the hardening and tightening of your skin and connective tissues.
Biotin vs. Collagen For Hair
Biotin vs. collagen can be simplified to say that you wouldn’t have hair benefit from biotin without collagen. Now that there is a foundation laid out and assuming we have hair concerns or hair goals we’d like to achieve, it is important to note that a well-balanced approach to having both biotin and collagen will benefit your journey.
Collagen will support hair growth (before we see it grown through our scalp) and ensure a good foundation of amino acids, proteins, and thickness to our hair. In addition to this, we will also have a healthy hair follicle to keep us from premature hair loss.
Biotin supports healthier hair and helps to strengthen weak and brittle hair. It may help aid in the hair follicles' strength to keep us from losing hair prematurely. As you can see, both play an important role in our hair and scalp's overall health and wellness
What Is Better For Thinning Hair, Biotin Or Collagen?
Collagen has been proven to nourish your hair follicle, help your new hair growth, and increase your hair growth rate and retention. While this does wonders internally to prevent hair thinning, it can also assist in expanding your hair’s overall thickness.
While both play imperative roles in overall hair health, they can be used in combination to ensure you get the results you are looking for.
Is It Okay To Take Biotin And Collagen Together?
Yes, you can take biotin and collagen together. Both of the supplements serve different purposes for your hair growth and health yet compliment each other's roles within.
