Amino Acids Vs. Collagen Powder

June 29, 2023 Ashley 0 Comments

I’d had it with the lies.

Collagen powders were a big granulated vat of dishonesty.

(Kinda.)

As we just learned, collagen doesn’t go into your system and immediately find your joints to make tomorrow’s weight loss workout better. It gets to your belly, disintegrates in a flood of hydrogen ions, and then your body does what it can with the dismembered remnants. Sure, maybe some of it’s used to make collagen. Or maybe you just wasted your time and should buy something else to cut out the middle man. Because I was half looking into collagen rebuilding for weight loss and half for vanity, I decided to do my research. And, what I found was that – while collagen gets murdered by your body in its full form, there is something that doesn’t: the amino acids that make up collagen: proline, glycine, and hyroxyproline. You also need vitamin C, zinc, copper, and manganese – which explains why some of the powders, capsules, and pills I’d tried along the way were “helpful”. Many were chocked full of that other stuff. So, while I was getting nada from the collagen – those other guys were helping slightly. Discovering this, I decided to try a little experiment. I hit up Amazon, bought some supplements that had aforementioned amino acids, and went to work – taking just those.

(Don’t be thrown by the fact that they’re vegan….)

Within two weeks, I noticed a massive difference.

I went with this brand because the reviews were lit and it had all the aminos I wanted shoved into the same tiny health missile. Mind you, I already do in office aesthetic procedures and follow a nightly retinol treatment. But, this started with the skin that lives on the front of my head (less sag, more plump) and ended with my joints feeling a bit less worse for wear – even after a night of Muay Thai followed by combat submission wrestling. Soon enough, I’ll start a vanity site here where I can rave to you about all the wonders this imparted on an aesthetic level.

But, for now, I can say that when you’re making enough collagen, you finally want to do your workouts. Feeling less inflamed means I can recover from afternoon workout enough to do next day workout with less complaining and more intensity. Less struggling. Less resistance. It also means that, afterward, my recovery is better. Half of what makes a next day workout feel so hard, is the fact that you haven’t recovered from the last one. There’s a lot that goes into muscle recovery. But having the right amino acids to rebuild yourself is of utmost importance. Without the building blocks, you’ve got no brawny tower for your bones to support. And I felt this on a real level, within a very short time.

The stupid part of all this? These things are so friggin cheap.

I say it’s stupid because I spent an arm, leg, and spinal cord on those stupid tubs of nothingness, while I could’ve been doing this all along. Dumb indeed. Now, I’m literally paying fractions of what I would for those overpriced collagen powders. And I wondered why do people do this? Why do they pay so much? Half of it, I think, is ignorance. Most people don’t understand that collagen just breaks down in your stomach. You don’t readily absorb it whole. So it’s easier to lie to them about the collagen being responsible, when it’s really some other important nutrients that are to credit for it. That would be (maybe) fine, except for the fact that if their body was actually making collagen, they’d be feeling a whole lot better (like I do, now that I’m taking amino acids my body can actually absorb and use). The other part is that I think people don’t believe in stuff unless they pay for it. It’s called investment bias. If something doesn’t cost much, they reason it must not work. It’s the same way that my friends will all come to me, asking how to get fit – and when I tell them how they can do it easily and for free, they say, “I think I’m just gonna start Weight Watchers”. Like, I’m literally giving you the keys to the weight loss kingdom for free – and you’re choosing to try and pick the lock with an unraveled paper clip you spent hundreds of dollars for instead? Whatever. Anyway, I digress with my rant, but the bottom line is that you can make collagen, but your body doesn’t use collagen in the form collagen powders offer it.

Some powders do offer benefits; it’s just those benefits aren’t what they say they are.

Get you some amino acids instead.