Walk into any pharmacy or scroll through social media and collagen is everywhere, in powders, gummies, drinks, and creams, all promising firmer skin, stronger nails, and fewer wrinkles.
So, is collagen really good for you, or has a genuinely important protein been oversold by an industry keen to capitalise on its popularity?
This piece takes a level-headed look at what collagen does throughout the body, what changes as we age, and which claims about supplementation are backed by solid evidence versus which remain unproven.
Collagen's Role Goes Well Beyond Skin
Collagen is often discussed purely in terms of skin and wrinkles, but its role in the body is considerably broader. It forms the structural framework for skin, bones, tendons, ligaments, cartilage, and blood vessel walls. It is, quite literally, one of the building blocks holding connective tissue together.
This wider role is part of why the recent public conversation around collagen supplements, including comments from NHS GP and television doctor Amir Khan, struck a chord.
Speaking on Good Morning Britain, Dr Khan explained that collagen makes up around 30% of the body's total protein and described it as functioning like scaffolding for skin, hair, bones, and ligaments, while raising concerns that supplement marketing oversells the evidence behind specific anti-ageing claims.
How Collagen Changes Across Life Stages
Collagen production is not static. It follows a fairly predictable pattern across a person's lifetime, and understanding that pattern helps separate genuine biology from marketing exaggeration.
In our twenties, collagen production is generally at its peak, and skin tends to be firm and well-supported by a dense dermal network.
From the mid to late twenties onward, production begins a gradual decline, generally estimated at around 1 to 1.5% per year, a figure consistently cited across dermatology literature, including a widely referenced review on skin collagen through the lifestages published in the open-access journal Plastic and Aesthetic Research.
This decline becomes more pronounced at certain life stages. For women, the years immediately following menopause are associated with a notably accelerated drop in skin collagen, linked to falling oestrogen levels, which play a meaningful regulatory role in collagen turnover.
External factors compound this natural decline. Sun exposure, smoking, and chronic oxidative stress all accelerate collagen breakdown by increasing the activity of enzymes called matrix metalloproteinases, which degrade existing collagen fibres faster than the body can replace them.
Why Swallowing Collagen Doesn't Mean It Goes Where You Want It
A point that has come up repeatedly in public discussion of collagen supplements, including among commenters responding to Dr Khan's remarks, is that the body does not have a delivery mechanism that sends swallowed collagen specifically to the skin, joints, or hair.
This is straightforward digestive biology. Collagen, like any other dietary protein, cannot be absorbed in its whole form. It is broken down during digestion into smaller peptides and individual amino acids, which are then absorbed through the intestinal wall and enter general circulation.
From there, your body allocates these building blocks according to its own physiological priorities, not according to which area you were hoping to target when you bought the supplement.
There is research suggesting that certain small collagen-derived peptides, particularly those containing hydroxyproline, may survive digestion largely intact and could play a signalling role that encourages the skin's own fibroblast cells to ramp up their own collagen production, a mechanism examined in a randomised, double-blind crossover study assessing the bioavailability of collagen-derived peptides following oral intake.
This is a more nuanced and indirect mechanism than the marketing language of "feeding your skin collagen" tends to suggest.
What the Research Actually Shows: A Mixed Picture
Here is where a properly balanced answer to "is collagen really good for you" requires looking past headline claims and into how the underlying research was actually conducted.
Several systematic reviews of randomised controlled trials, including one published in Cureus analysing studies from 2017 to 2023, have reported that oral hydrolysed collagen supplementation showed improvements across several measures of skin ageing, including hydration, elasticity, and wrinkle severity, in the trials reviewed.
However, a 2025 systematic review and meta-analysis published in The American Journal of Medicine offers a considerably more cautious picture.
Analysing 23 randomised controlled trials with almost 1,500 total participants, the researchers specifically examined the role of funding source and study quality.
The results were notable: trials funded by companies with a commercial stake in collagen products reported significant benefits, while independently funded trials found no significant effect on skin hydration, elasticity, or wrinkles, and the same null result held when the analysis was restricted to the highest-quality studies alone.
This does not mean collagen supplements are useless, nor does it mean every positive study is flawed.
It does mean that the apparent strength of the evidence shrinks considerably once funding bias and methodological quality are properly accounted for, which is a reasonable, evidence-based basis for the kind of scepticism raised by Dr Khan, rather than outright dismissal of collagen's importance.
The Cofactor Nobody Talks About: Vitamin C
A detail that rarely features in collagen supplement marketing, despite being genuinely important, is that vitamin C is essential for collagen synthesis to occur correctly. It acts as a required cofactor for two specific enzymes, prolyl hydroxylase and lysyl hydroxylase, both of which stabilise the structure of newly formed collagen molecules.
Without adequate vitamin C, this stabilisation step does not happen properly, regardless of how much collagen protein, peptide, or amino acid is circulating in the body.
In practical terms, this means a varied diet containing sufficient vitamin C, alongside other connective tissue nutrients like zinc and copper, may be just as relevant to collagen health as any supplement taken in isolation, a point that is too often left out of the conversation entirely.
Joints Versus Skin: Where the Evidence Differs
Interestingly, public reaction to Dr Khan's comments highlighted a pattern worth noting. Several people reported that while they saw little change in their hair or skin appearance from taking collagen supplements, they noticed a genuine reduction in joint discomfort.
This broadly aligns with the wider evidence landscape, where research into collagen's role in joint and cartilage health tends to show somewhat more consistent findings than research into skin-specific anti-ageing claims, although this remains an evolving area of research rather than a settled conclusion.
A Fair Verdict
So, is collagen really good for you? As a structural protein essential to skin, bones, joints, and connective tissue, the answer is unambiguously yes. As a supplement marketed specifically for visible anti-ageing results, the picture is genuinely mixed: some studies show benefit, the highest-quality and independently funded research generally does not, and the mechanism by which oral collagen might reach the skin at all remains indirect.
This is precisely the kind of nuance that often gets lost in either enthusiastic marketing or dismissive headlines, and it is worth holding onto both halves of that picture rather than picking a side prematurely.
A Different Route to Supporting Skin Collagen
Because oral collagen's path to the skin is indirect and dependent on digestion and absorption, many people also look toward approaches that work on the skin's own collagen-producing cells more directly.
Red and near-infrared LED light therapy is one such approach, supported by a separate and independently growing body of clinical research distinct from collagen supplementation.
Maysama's exploration of how LED light therapy interacts with the skin's collagen-producing fibroblasts explains how red wavelengths are absorbed directly by mitochondria within skin cells, stimulating the cell's own collagen and elastin synthesis at the source, rather than relying on a multi-step digestive pathway with uncertain delivery to the skin.
Maysama's AURA LED Light Therapy Face Mask uses red and near-infrared wavelengths delivered through Maysama's Intelligent Micro-pulsing Technology, designed to work directly at the skin level as part of a broader, considered approach to skin health.
Bringing It Together
If you are deciding whether collagen deserves a place in your routine, the most sensible approach is to treat broad anti-ageing claims with healthy scepticism, pay attention to whether you are getting enough vitamin C and protein generally rather than focusing on collagen alone, and consider that approaches working directly on the skin, such as LED light therapy, operate through an entirely different and separately evidenced mechanism than oral supplementation.
Collagen the protein is genuinely good for you. Collagen the supplement, marketed as a guaranteed route to younger-looking skin, deserves a more measured, evidence-led look than the packaging usually provides.
To explore Maysama's range of LED devices designed to support your skin's own collagen production, visit the Maysama beauty devices collection.
