Drinks, coffee, dust, cans, broth, chocolate, protein bars, capsules, gummies or sticks … to take care and fight against the effects of skin aging, collagen floods food supplements, organic stores and rays of parapharmacie.
American actress Jennifer Aniston swears for Collagen in her daily coffee, Léna influencer situations promoted a collagen shake and coffee that offers collagen drinks has even been opened recently in Paris. In pharmacies and pharmacies, “the market has doubled during the past year,” until it achieves a turnover of more than 45 million euros, the National Union of Food Additions indicates on BFMTV.com.
Among the promises of these collagen products: “a 16% decrease in ocular contour wrinkles”, “a 93% flexible skin”, “a 75% drop in recent stretch marks” but also a “significant reduction in the pain in the joints. ” With attractive messages: “He wins ten years in ten weeks.”
“Basic protein” of our body
Collagen, “is the basic protein of our body,” he explains to BFMTV.com Francis Berenbaum, professor of universities-hospital-hospital-hospital, director of an Inserm research team at the Saint-Antoine scientific research center. It is even the most abundant in the human organism.
“It is one of the bricks of our organs, our skin, our bones. It is the framework of all our fabrics, such as the cement of a house.”
Except that with age, our cells lose in quality and quantity of collagen. Could the one of these food supplements represent “the anti -aging ally”, like several articles in the park in subject? Nothing is less safe.
Because the term collagen, used in everyday language, actually represents a large family: there are 28 types of collagen very different from each other for both its composition and its properties, Specifies the insertm (National Institute of Medical Research and Health).
Collagen, there is already at food. Meat, fish but also eggs, dairy products or plants contain them. But once ingested, it is transformed. “All proteins that are swallowed, including collagen, degrade and cut into very small pieces in the stomach,” says Francis Berenbaum, a specialist in joint pathologies associated with metabolic diseases and age. “They are reduced to peptides to amino acids.”
Therefore, the collagen we swallow, either through conventional foods or in a food supplement, is not the one found in our fabrics.
Multiple promises
Certain manufacturers of food supplements in collagen, more frequently, “sailor” collagen, that is, obtained from the skin, scales and edges of fish, they assure, with great photo reinforcements before /after, that “it is equivalent to ingesting collagen directly what is directly that would fail in your body “, but also that the collagen contained in its product is” directly assimilable by the body “or that its complement has” demonstrated effects on the stimulation of natural collagen production. “
As statements that have no scientific sense, Francis Berenbaum warns. “It is not because we eat collagen that we stimulate its production by the organization,” he says. “When you eat a lot of meat and, therefore, a lot of collagen, you have no more collagen in the body,” explains the expert.
What Gabriel Braun, founder and president of the NUTRI & CO contests that offers food supplements to collagen. It has the size of the collagen peptides: those that offer would be so small: “hydrolyzed of 2000 dalts on average, including a fraction of 10% to 300 daltons” (a unit of atomic mass, note of the editor), which would be absorbed .
“Biopéptides (synthetic collagen, editor’s note) also play a messenger role capable of activating cells that manufacture certain types of proteins” and, therefore, collagen, adds for BFMTV.com.
However, insertm is categorical: “Current scientific data, limited already contradictory, do not support statements related to the benefits of collagen in skin health or hair quality.”
“Very questionable studies”
François Turmel, president of the National Union of Aesthetic Physicians, is not convinced either. “I can see that there is an interest in the collagen, but the effectiveness of these products is not extraordinary, we cannot say that it is formidable,” kitchen for BFMTV.com.
“More elastic skin? More hydrated? Is it very subjective. On the other hand, which will surely have as much wrinkles possible is to avoid sun, tobacco and have a healthy lifestyle.”
The Research Institute also requires a measure: “promising results” must be interpreted with caution, especially because they are often used as marketing arguments to sell these products. “Because these studies often suffer methodology problems: number of patients Insufficient in a non -randomized clinical trial, without a placebo or double blind group, unpublished study or a poor exploitation of statistical data.
We have transmitted to Francis Berenbaum six documents in English presented by a collagen products manufacturer as scientific studies that are supposed to demonstrate the efficiency of the product. Among these documents, two represent diagrams that do not cite any source. “These are ads,” sweeps the researcher. A third party cites a study that has not been published. A room presents a study on the anti -inflammatory effect of the product, but was carried out in the mouse and in vitro. “This has no value to the human patient,” he says.
Not to mention that two of these studies were published in a “predatory” review, a review in which we can publish anything, “said the specialist.” There is no evidence. If I were them, I will not boast of that. “
A placebo effect?
Is there no reliable study to attest to the effectiveness of the collagen? Among the promoters of the collagen, there are few to make some reservations. An influential sports and food, followed by almost a million subscribers in Tiktok, which has one of these products, however, recognizes in one of its videos the “bias” of these studies, often carried out by manufacturers, But he adds: “With all the returns we had and the hundreds of messages from people who told me that their lives have changed, for me, it validates the studies.”
For Gabriel Braun, founder and president of Nutri & Co, “the Judge of Peace is the amount of clinical studies” in the collagen. “There is true scientific madness on the subject,” he gets excited.
“I have no doubt that collagen has a real effect on the depth of wrinkles, elasticity and skin hydration,” he said, also convinced of the positive effects of collagen on the pain in the joints “whenever the collagen It takes preventively. “
Because beyond the effects for the skin, certain manufacturers also have collagen as a solution against joint pain. Many of these nutritional supplements announce: “significantly reduces joint pain”, “improves joint mobility”, “protects and supports cartilage.” “Scientifically proven” results. Another praise: “-37% of joint pain”: figures obtained thanks to a study “conducted in a panel of 100 clients”.
“A 37%reduction is approximately the figure we expect with a placebo,” compares Francis Berenbaum, head of the Saint-Antoine hospital in Paris (AP-HP).
“There is no efficiency evidence”
Ingestion of a placebo: a medication that contains any ingredient or active treatment that does not have any action on the disorder that it intends INSERM “Against all expectations, placebos provide a significant benefit in many situations, especially in pain management.”
“The enzymatic hydrolization process of our collagen associated with vitamin C, hyaluronic acid and zinc makes it possible to make it assimilable,” however, guarantees one of the founders of Ecume, a mark of collagen sticks powder. What Francis Berenbaum disputes. “Is the collagen resistant to degradation? It remains to be tested. And nothing guarantees that it effectively reduces wrinkles or joint pain as the product announces.”
The UFC -quisir consumer association denounces the “scientific varnish” of these products. “Sellers do not spare before any improper appropriation of scientific language,” he writes. “Molecular weight less than 2,000 Daultans”, “Hydolization” …
“All these terms exist, but they do not mean much for common people or are empty of meaning,” says the body.
For Francis Berenbaum, of Inserm, “the only justice of the peace is the clinical trial”, provided that it is carried out in form and due. And for the moment, “none has demonstrated the effectiveness of these collagen.” Anses remembers on the other hand that for most of us, with the exception of vitamin D, “the consumption of food supplements is not necessary.”
Source: BFM TV
