Collagen and Longevity: The Culinary Revolution
Key Takeaways
Collagen plays an important role in maintaining healthy joints and connective tissue as we age.
Modern diets may provide less collagen than traditional nose-to-tail diets, making food sources and supplements worth considering.
Collagen may offer benefits beyond joint health, including potential effects on skin, bone density, and vascular health.
Combining collagen with Vitamin C and isometric exercise may help increase its potential benefits.
Supporting healthy aging isn’t about one magic supplement—collagen is just one piece of a broader longevity optimization strategy.
What Valley Forge Has to Do With Collagen
Most of us know the story of George Washington’s punishing winter at Valley Forge as a testament to the grit of the Revolutionary cause. One striking motif from this episode is that of soldiers boiling leather boots to avoid starvation, while battling typhoid, dysentery, and the merciless Pennsylvania winter.
Unbeknownst to Washington’s troops, the grim, gelatinous broth that kept the soldiers alive holds the key to a problem that many of us face eventually. Regardless of whether we are currently involved in casting off the yoke of British tyranny.
Of all the elements of a good life, the ability to sit down in a chair and get up again without feeling like one has performed a feat of Herculean proportions is fairly high up the list.
Why Collagen Matters as We Age
While health in general has improved a lot since the 18th century, our joints are in worse shape, largely thanks to the modern diet. Our forebears were more likely to adopt a ‘nose-to-tail’ culinary approach, which included a fair amount of cartilage and gristle. Understandably, modern methods have eliminated a large part of this.
The result is that our intake of collagen has declined from 20-50g in pre-industrial times to around 5g today. When was the last time you chowed down on a good bone broth, slow-cooked brisket, or pot roast? Not recently? Me neither.
Luckily for us, nutritional scientists are all over it.
What Are the Benefits of Collagen?
The basic message is that upping one’s collagen intake leads to a raft of benefits above and beyond joint health, such as weight loss, skin health (decreased wrinkle depth), bone density, and vascular health.
Better yet, studies show that collagen and/or gelatin (essentially “cooked” collagen) supplements can not only slow down, but actually help reverse the natural effects of age on joints (although the earlier you start, the better).
How to Get More Collagen Through Diet and Supplements
As with most supplements, there’s a knack to getting your money’s worth. Ideally, you should combine the dose with Vitamin C one hour before 10-15 minutes of isometric exercise (think planks, or holding weights steady for 30 seconds at a time).
If this feels like a bridge too far, you can always explore more straightforward options, such as eating skin-on chicken or canned sardines (which come complete with skin and bones).
Can Gelatin Support Better Sleep?
Another neat trick that the research uncovered. Just 9g of gelatin before bedtime can help improve sleep quality, a major pillar of physical and mental health. Unfortunately, store-bought Jell-O is not much help (you’d need to consume several servings for it to work). Adding gelatin powder to an evening tea is an easy alternative, and less likely to induce a diabetic coma.
Sticklers for historical accuracy may choose to prepare Boot Broth in a cast-iron cauldron stirred by bayonet. If you go down this route, please bear in mind that a) consuming 18th-century leather may negate the anti-inflammatory benefits and b) Amazon Prime delivers collagen peptides with significantly lower rates of dysentery.
Collagen as Part of Longevity Optimization
If longevity is about adding more good years to your life, it’s worth paying attention to the things that make those years worth living. Being able to walk, exercise, sleep well, and get out of a chair without negotiating with your knees seems like a reasonable place to start.
Collagen isn’t a magic potion, and you don’t need to start boiling your shoes. But between a collagen-rich diet, a sensible supplement strategy, and regular exercise, there are some fairly painless ways to support the machinery that keeps us moving.
In the next post, we’ll tackle Creatine (the last of the Cs – I promise!). See you there.
Russ Hill is the Executive Chairman of Halbert Hargrove Global Advisors, LLC (“Halbert Hargrove”). This blog and his book have been authored by Mr. Hill in his individual capacity. This blog is provided for general and educational purposes only. Nothing in this blog or his book should be construed as investment advice. All opinions or views reflect the opinions and judgment of the author as of the publication date and are subject to change without notice. Nothing contained herein or his book should be construed as an offer to provide investment advice through Halbert Hargrove.