Is Lack of Collagen Accelerating Your Aging? | Ask Dr. Gundry

Unless things turn around, I'm going to be the longest living generation that existed. There are no evidence that physical activity wears out joints. And if collagen was doing what it was supposed to do, we should have all been Arnold Schwarzenegger. Well, collagen is one of the major building blocks, or what I like to call rebar, in our body. Rebar, for those who don't know, are the kind of metal rods in concrete that holds the concrete together that gives it actually stiffness. And you can pour concrete, but it's not very stable, but rebar stabilizes everything. So collagen really underlies almost everything that's important in the structures of our body. It's in our skin, it's in our hair, it's in our nails, it's in our bones, it's in the tendons of our muscles. So it's rather important in the structure of our body. Your hair is a great deal of collagen, but just consuming collagen doesn't make your hair grow. Collagen is in your skin, but what most people don't know is that your skin looks older because of the breaks in collagen. With smiling or expressions, the collagen, those rebars actually break. And it's that break of the collagen that needs to get knit back together. You could take all the collagen in the world, but it's not going to knit the collagen breaks back together. You actually have to have vitamin C to do that. Fun fact, we know that smokers in general have far more wrinkles than nonsmokers. They look aged in their skin. And that's not because they're not eating jello every day. It's because the smoking, the oxidative stress, uses up all the vitamin C in their body. And so they don't knit the breaks of collagen back together. That's why they get wrinkles. So it's actually the vitamin C, not the collagen, that makes the difference. Well, since we make collagen constantly, it doesn't necessarily make you weaker or stronger. It is part of what holds things together. But you don't feel stronger by eating collagen. Boy, that's a loaded question. There's so many parts of this. My research and others have suggested that the main reason we feel weaker is that the wall of our gut becomes more and more porous or permeable, setting up inflammation. And it's the inflammation that actually causes the weakness. Well, collagen per se is constantly being built and constantly wearing out. We tend to produce less collagen as we age. So getting more production of collagen is, in my opinion, very important as we age. The problem is you could take collagen supplements, but that doesn't mean that you'll actually make collagen once they're absorbed on the other side of your gut wall. And that's one of the biggest misnomers. We don't have any instruction manual that senses, oh, I just ate collagen. And when I absorb it, we don't absorb it as collagen. We absorb it as amino acids. There's no instruction manual that says you just ate collagen. And now that it's absorbed, you should manufacture collagen again. You just absorbed amino acids. Now, could you make collagen out of it? Yes. But you actually have to tell that collagen to be knit together with vitamin C. And that's one of the big missing factors in most collagen supplements. Are collagen supplements effective without vitamin C? If collagen was as important as people now advertise it to be, then everyone in the 1950s and 60s should have been so muscular and buff because every day we were eating collagen in the form of jello. And I got news for you. There weren't a lot of buff, strong people in the 50s and 60s. And if collagen was doing what it was supposed to do, we should have all been Arnold Schwarzenegger. Are millennials aging faster? Yeah, millennials are absolutely aging faster. But it's not because they're not getting collagen in their diet. It's actually because they don't have a decent gut microbiome or gut wall. We've destroyed it for them. What can millennials do right now about aging? Well, they've got to restore their gut health. One of the things I think that's important is getting collagen in, but getting it made in the right way. We know the amino acids that make up collagen. And we know that you have to have vitamin C to support those amino acids being made into collagen. And then once the collagen is made, you've got to knit that collagen to itself in rebar. And again, that's where vitamin C is important. What most people don't realize is that we are one of the few animals that don't manufacture vitamin C. So we have to get it from supplements or diet. How can millennials get more vitamin C? Well, one of the easiest ways that I tell people is to take timed-release vitamin C or eat vitamin C-containing foods. Now, that doesn't mean have a glass of orange juice. The problem with orange juice is that it's basically pure sugar. And we know that humans who are given orange juice suppress their immune system for about six hours after a glass of orange juice. Plus, since vitamin C is what's called a water-soluble vitamin, you'd have to have a glass of orange juice every six hours, which would completely blunt your immune system 24 hours a day. So that's not a practical way of doing it. It's far easier to take timed-release vitamin C. Is grapefruit a good source of vitamin C? Same with grapefruit juice. Grapefruit juice is one of, well, not the juice, but grapefruit are one of the safer sources of vitamin C because it has less sugar. What's unique about Generation X? Really, for the last 50 years, all of these generations have been exposed to broad-spectrum antibiotics to round up in almost all the food they eat and all their playgrounds, soccer fields, and to ultra-processed foods that have been devoid of any fiber. So if you wanted to create the perfect storm for bad health, the current generations were doomed from the start. Can being too active cause joint issues? There are no evidence that physical activity wears out joints. The wear-and-tear theory of joint issues has long been dispelled. It's inflammation that occurs in the joints that's actually coming directly from the lack of good gut bacteria and the lack of a good gut wall. You fix those things and the inflammation goes away. What should Gen Xers be doing for themselves? Well, Gen Xers need to realize that most of what they've been told to eat is the wrong foods. Number two, they need to realize that you can repair your gut microbiome, you can repair your gut wall, and a lot of that starts with, number one, getting a lot of vitamin D in your body, a lot of vitamin C in your body, getting precursors for collagen production, but not just drinking a bunch of bone broth. What's the problem with bone broth? Again, the problem with bone broth, most bone broth is from beef, and beef has a sugar molecule called NU5GC. We have a sugar molecule in our bodies called NU5AC. They're virtually identical except for one molecule of oxygen. But sadly, if you or I consume NU5GC and it's in bone broth, we absorb it and we instantly make an antibody to it as if it was a foreign substance, and that causes inflammation. So, if you're drinking bone broth to prevent inflammation, the one of the components of bone broth is actually producing inflammation and damaging your gut. Now, on the other hand, I have nothing against chicken bone broth, because chicken are NU5AC, like us. So, if you're going to have bone broth, then you want to have pastured chicken bone broth, which is actually a little difficult to find, but not bone broth from cows. Is chicken bone broth a good source of collagen? It's not so much the collagen production that you're looking for. Like I said, if swallowing collagen was a miracle that it's supposed to be, then everybody eating jello should have miracles every day. And that didn't happen. Which generation is the healthiest? Well, sadly, baby boomers, at least the way it's going, baby boomers will be the longest living generation, which is really sad. Because unless things turn around, I'm going to be the longest living generation that existed. That's pretty sad. Because with all of our advancements in medicine, each year now, life expectancy has been declining. Every year now for five years. So we know that something is intrinsically wrong that's happened in the last 50 years. And that it all ties down really to what's going on in our microbiome and what's going on in the wall of our gut. We've got to fix that. And that's part of my mission. I take care of lots of young people. And young people are some of the sickest people that come to my clinic. What foods are good for mobility? It's not the foods I tell you to eat that are going to make the difference. It's the foods I tell you not to eat that makes the difference. Getting the foods that cause inflammation out of your diet is the key. Not saying, oh, you should eat these anti-inflammatory foods. And that's a big difference. It's taking away the foods that are causing the issue in the first place. What foods should we avoid for mobility? What's amazing is there's some of the most popular foods that Gen Xers eat. Pizza may be one of the most awful foods for mobility that was ever invented. Why? Because it has wheat, which is one of the worst lectin-containing foods there is. It has tomato sauce, which is a really nasty lectin-containing food. And it has cheeses that are made from what are called A1 cow's milk. And if you put some pepperoni on it as well and green peppers, you've once again added another layer of lectin-containing foods. And interestingly enough, a study done at Indiana State University for a doctoral thesis that I've talked about showed that the two main contributions to overweight illness in young people from 1900 to the year 2000, only two foods contributed to that. One of them was pizza. You want to guess the other one? Chicken, which is loaded with collagen. Why? Because chicken is no longer a chicken. You are what you eat, but you are what the thing you're eating ate. Chicken is fed corn and soybeans. They're just an ear of corn with feathers. And they're an incredibly inflammatory food. And so the two things that this study showed, it wasn't sugar, it wasn't soda pop, it wasn't any of those things. It was pizza and chicken consumption. Yeah, the chicken pizza would be really bad. Why is bone broth so popular right now? Advertising does wonders. I think people realize that there's a problem. And when someone comes up with what sounds like a very good solution, then you will go for that solution. Again, without realizing that the baby boomer generation grew up with collagen. Again, we had literally jello every day of our lives. So we were constantly eating collagen. And people should realize that jello gelatin is just collagen. And yet that didn't do anything miraculous for us. And to think that we'll just repeat that cycle, but call it something new, like bone broth. Sorry, been there, done that. Does bone broth have arsenic? Yeah, unfortunately, bones have lots of arsenic. And when you boil bones, the arsenic is leached out. And so if you want to have a bowl of arsenic, go ahead and have some bone broth.