How do I know if my body is producing too much collagen?

Overproduction has addresses: the conditions in which the body makes too much collagen, and the first sign of each

How do I know if my body is producing too much collagen is a question that a supplement user asks with the tub in mind, half expecting the answer to be a list of symptoms to watch for while taking it, and the honest answer is more useful than that: the body does sometimes produce too much collagen, the conditions in which it does so are well described, each has an address in the body and a first sign, and none of them has anything to do with a supplement. At a wound, the address is the scar. Normal healing deposits collagen to close a wound and then stops, the scar flattening and fading over a year; in a hypertrophic scar the fibroblasts deposit too much, producing a raised, firm, red scar that stays within the wound's edges and usually settles slowly, and in a keloid they deposit far too much and keep going, producing a raised, firm, often itchy or tender scar that grows beyond the edges of the original wound for months or years, after a cut, a piercing, acne, a burn or surgery, commonest on the chest, shoulders, upper back, earlobes and jaw and in darker skin. The first sign is a scar that is still growing or thickening months after the wound has closed. In the palm, the address is the fascia beneath the skin, and the condition is Dupuytren's contracture: a firm nodule appears in the palm, usually in line with the ring or little finger, often painless, and over months to years extends into a cord that draws the finger toward the palm so that it cannot be fully straightened; it is commoner in men over fifty, in northern European families, and with diabetes and heavy alcohol use, and the first sign is a lump in the palm or a hand that will no longer lie flat on a table, which is the tabletop test. In the shoulder, the address is the joint capsule, and the condition is adhesive capsulitis, frozen shoulder, in which the capsule thickens, contracts and loses its folds, producing pain first and then a progressive loss of movement, with external rotation, reaching behind the head or to a back pocket, lost first and most; it is commoner in women around menopause, in people with diabetes and thyroid disease, and after a period of immobilisation, and the first sign is a shoulder that will not turn outward as far as the other without any injury to explain it. Across the skin and the body, the address is everywhere, and the condition is systemic sclerosis, scleroderma, an autoimmune disease in which the body's fibroblasts are driven to deposit collagen in skin and internal organs. Its early signs are the ones to know: Raynaud's phenomenon, the fingers turning white and then blue in the cold or with stress and red as they rewarm, which many people have harmlessly but which in scleroderma is new, severe or accompanied by the next signs; puffy, sausage-like fingers that over months become tight, shiny and hard to pinch; skin thickening that starts on the fingers and hands and may spread to the face, with a tight mouth and a loss of wrinkles; and heartburn and difficulty swallowing from the gut's involvement. The first signs are new Raynaud's with puffy fingers, and the diagnosis is made by autoantibody blood tests, nailfold capillary examination and a rheumatologist. And in organs, the address is the liver, lung or kidney, where fibrosis is the scarring that follows years of injury from another disease, hepatitis or alcohol in the liver, inflammation or dust in the lung, diabetes or high blood pressure in the kidney, found by imaging, blood tests and biopsy, usually in the course of investigating the disease that caused it rather than by any sign of collagen itself.

What every address shares, why eaten collagen is not a cause of any of them, what to do with a sign and without one, and the worked example

What every one of these addresses shares is the mechanism, and the mechanism is the reason a supplement user can set the tub aside while reading them. In each condition the collagen is deposited by fibroblasts or their activated form, myofibroblasts, in the affected tissue, in response to a signal that tells them to keep making matrix when they should have stopped: the wound signals that keloid fibroblasts over-respond to, the local factors in Dupuytren's fascia and the frozen shoulder's capsule, the autoimmune process that drives systemic sclerosis, the chronic injury that drives organ fibrosis. The overproduction is a signalling problem in a tissue, and a signalling problem is not a supply problem. Eaten collagen, from a capsule, a scoop, a bowl of broth or a piece of fish skin, is digested in the gut to amino acids and short peptides that join the body's general amino acid pool, the same pool that every protein eaten joins, from which every fibroblast in the body already draws all the glycine, proline and hydroxyproline it could use; a fibroblast instructed by a signal to overproduce does so on any diet, and a fibroblast that receives no such instruction does not overproduce however much glycine is on offer, which is why none of these conditions has ever been linked to dietary protein or collagen intake in the literature that describes them, why the scleroderma question is answered the same way on the scleroderma page, and why a supplement user with none of these signs is not producing too much collagen, whatever the tub says or the worry suggests. There is no blood test for collagen production in general, just as there is no test for collagen deficiency, on the collagen deficiency test page: the markers that exist, P1NP for bone collagen formation and the autoantibodies for systemic sclerosis, are tests for specific conditions ordered by a doctor who suspects them, not a dipstick for a supplement user. What to do with a sign is to see a doctor, promptly for new Raynaud's with puffy fingers, since early systemic sclerosis is treated and monitored by a rheumatologist and the organs it may involve are watched from the start; without hurry but without delay for a growing scar, a palm nodule or a shoulder that will not turn, each of which has treatments that work better early, injected steroid or silicone for a keloid, needle release or injection for a Dupuytren's cord before the finger bends far, physiotherapy and injection for a frozen shoulder in its painful phase; and not by stopping a supplement, which has no bearing on any of them, so that stopping it and waiting is a delay rather than a precaution. What to do without a sign is to recognise that the question has been answered: a reader with a flat scar, a palm that lies flat, shoulders that turn, fingers that stay pink and warm and skin that pinches freely is not overproducing collagen anywhere that medicine can find, and the supplement's own signs, fullness, bloating, a taste, loose stools at scoop doses, are the signs of a protein in the gut rather than of collagen in the body, checked against the trial tables on the symptoms of too much collagen page. The worked example is stated on its true terms: two capsules, 1200mg hydrolysed type 1 marine collagen with 12mg vitamin C at 15% of its reference value plus zinc, 120 for £16.99 at 28p a day, lab tested and UK made, a supply of amino acids that signals nothing to any fibroblast, below the 2.5 to 10g skin trials, carrying vitamin C's collagen formation sentence for normal skin function and no claim about collagen production in either direction. How do I know if my body is producing too much collagen: by the addresses and their first signs, a growing scar, a palm cord, a shoulder that will not turn, new Raynaud's with puffy fingers, each a doctor's question, and none of them from a tub.

What to check on the label