HOW DOES IT WORK?
How do collagen peptides manage to achieve all of the above? To better understand collagen and how we can reap its benefits, we need to look at it under the microscope as a molecule.
Natural collagen is made up of chains that each contain around 1000 amino acids. These chains wind around each other like a spiral to form a triple helix (19). This solid structure is what makes collagen a strong, secure and flexible protein (19).
Our body naturally produces collagen, but over time, our metabolism becomes weary and collagen production starts to slow down. When we think about skin ageing, many of us think that it happens later in life. However, the process starts much earlier than we think and is well-established by our mid-late 20s (2,21).
After the age of 45, these changes to our skin speed up. A study found that in the first 15-18 years after the menopause, collagen in skin starts to decline by 2.1% a year, while the thickness of our skin can reduce at an average rate of 1.13% per year (28).
Skin ageing, in our faces, is caused by a reduction in skin elasticity. It’s thought that skin elasticity declines by 0.55% per year during our fifties (30), which results in the quality of our skin deteriorating and increased wrinkles.