Collagen before and after one month: what has actually happened?

The day-30 report card: skin, joints, tendons and bone

Collagen before and after one month is the photograph pair the shelf most likes to show and the honest page replaces it with a report card, because day 30 is a date on which something can be said about every tissue collagen is sold for and almost none of it is what the photograph implies. Skin first, in its two layers. The epidermis, the outer living layer, turns over in around four weeks, so on day 30 the skin a reader sees is, for the first time, skin grown entirely since the tub was opened, which sounds like the moment to judge and is the reverse: the epidermis is fed from the dermis beneath it, and the dermis, where the skin's own collagen sits and where the trials' instruments measured, turns over on a clock of months and is a fraction of the way through it, so the new epidermis is more of the same, made by an unchanged dermis, and a reader inspecting it at day 30 is inspecting a control sample. The skin trials took their first reading at eight to twelve weeks, so on day 30 the first honest measurement is still four to eight weeks off, and the few percent in elasticity and hydration the trials found by cutometer and corneometer at that reading would not be visible in a mirror even then; a one-month before-and-after photograph, unless taken in fixed light at a fixed hour with a fixed face, shows the lighting, the hydration and the expression and nothing the collagen did. Joints second: the comfort trials at around ten grams a day took their first questionnaire reading at twelve weeks and their clearer one at twenty-four, so on day 30 a reader on the joint dose is a third of the way to the first reading with no score change expected, and a reader scoring one provoking movement weekly has four data points and a baseline, which is the right amount to have and not enough to read. Tendons third: a reader running the pre-loading protocol, around fifteen grams with vitamin C an hour before each loading session, has done around twelve sessions in a month, the collagen synthesis marker rising in the hour after each as the trial showed, while the tendon itself remodels under the loading on a clock of months and reports nothing at day 30 beyond how the programme is going. Bone fourth: nothing, and nothing expected, since the one collagen bone trial measured density at twelve months.

The report card's other lines: the gut, the habit, and the honest day-30 verdict

Two lines on the report card are about the reader rather than the tissue, and they are the two with results. The gut: a reader who started on a full scoop had fullness, mild bloating and perhaps a looser stool in the first days, twenty grams of protein in a glass being a new load, and by day 30 the gut has adapted, the gastrointestinal adaptation literature's one to two weeks having passed, so the fortnight's discomfort is gone and a reader who still has it is on too large a dose and drops to a dessertspoon; a reader on capsules had nothing to adapt to. The habit: the habit literature places the cliff at around week three, the point at which a behaviour floating on memory lapses and a behaviour anchored to a fixed daily point survives, so by day 30 the reader has passed it one way or the other and knows which, the anchored dose still being taken with the morning coffee or the last glass of water and the floating dose already missed more days than taken, and this is the one line on the report card that can honestly be marked as a result, because every collagen trial's controlled variable was consistency and a reader who reaches day 30 with the habit intact has done the thing the trials required and can now reach their readings. The honest day-30 verdict follows from the card: there is nothing to judge yet in any tissue, so the choice is not whether it worked but whether to continue, and the continuation has two honest forms, at the trial dose to the trial reading, ten grams to week twelve for joints or 2.5 to 10 grams to week twelve for skin with a fixed-light photograph or a scored sheet to read at the end, or at a habit-sized dose for the vitamin C line and the routine, knowing that is what it is; and the stop has one honest form, knowingly, because the month was never going to show anything and the reader has decided the reasons were not theirs, rather than because the mirror at day 30 was disappointing, which it was always going to be. The worked example is the habit-sized dose for month two: two capsules, 1200mg hydrolysed type 1 marine collagen with 12mg vitamin C plus zinc, 120 for £16.99 at 28p a day, sixty days a tub, lab tested and UK made, below the trial doses, taken daily at the anchor that survived the month for vitamin C's collagen formation sentence. Collagen before and after one month: an epidermis renewed by an unchanged dermis, joints a third of the way to a reading, a tendon protocol twelve sessions in, a bone untouched, a gut settled, and a habit that either exists or does not, which is the only before-and-after the month can show.

What to check on the label