What does collagen do for your skin?

Fortunately, we all get a little older every day. At Food for Skin we're happy to embrace that, but... we also understand very well that you "want to grow old somewhat nicely" and aren't thrilled by sagging skin on your face. Wrinkles are beautiful and characterful, but ideally with a healthy complexion, supple skin, without blemishes and dry patches.

Collagen and elastin play an important role in maintaining the firmness and elasticity of the skin. So more about that in this blog!

Restoring skin elasticity

The natural ageing process reduces the elasticity of our skin. Around menopause even very quickly. This is of course part of getting older, but how can you firm up your skin so it keeps looking healthy and calm? Fortunately nature offers a number of powerful vitamins that can support the skin fantastically. Read below for more about how collagen works and how you can stimulate its production.

Elastin and collagen

The skin consists of:

• the epidermis; the outer layer of the skin that holds moisture and offers protection against harmful substances
• the dermis: which contains blood vessels, nerves, glands, and collagen and elastin, and holds essential proteins for building and maintaining the structure of the skin.

What is collagen

Collagen is a group of essential proteins that are naturally produced by our body and are usually found in the body's connective tissues, where they give strength and firmness to tissues. Collagen is also known for maintaining tight, flexible, firm skin.

What is elastin?

Elastin is also a protein found in connective tissue, but it's important to understand that it's a different type of protein than collagen. The presence of collagen provides strength and stiffness to connective tissue, while the presence of elastin ensures that tissues in the body return to their original shape after being stretched.

Causes of skin ageing

As the skin ages, the production of these proteins decreases, and the collagen and elastin fibres that help support the skin structure tend to break down, lose their elasticity, thicken, stiffen, and even clump together.

But besides the natural decline, sun, stress, smoking, and poor diet have a major influence on the breakdown of collagen and elastin.

What to do about skin ageing?

In adults, loss of skin elasticity is normally related to the inevitable ageing process, but can also be due to a deficiency of vitamin A, B, C, E, and K. So make sure you both eat and apply vitamins that are good for your skin.

Getting older is a very natural process and at Food for Skin we don't want to counteract that either, but we do want to make the skin itself as strong as possible, so that, among other things, collagen production stays as high as possible, resulting in fresh-looking skin. How do you do that?

Collagen creams

You'll see various creams with collagen on the market. Don't fall for it! Because you can stimulate collagen production, but you can't bring collagen directly into the skin from the outside. It simply isn't possible to penetrate that deep into the skin.

Collagen supplements

To boost your collagen you'll therefore need to stimulate this from the inside. Taking collagen supplements can be a good addition to your skincare, provided they're of the right quality. However, not all researchers agree with each other. There are also studies showing that collagen powders barely, if at all, make it into the skin. So do your own good research into this too. If you want to buy supplements, be sure to pay attention to the following:

• Collagen is made from animals, so not vegan (so you won't find this at Food for Skin).
• Sweeteners, flavourings, or other fillers are often added, so check the ingredients list if you don't want this.
• Plant-based collagen doesn't exist as pure collagen. Collagen is animal-derived. This can partly be mimicked from plants. A plant-based variant therefore contributes to collagen production, but can't replace collagen one-to-one.

Collagen against wrinkles

To boost collagen and firm up your face, we like to work with the beta carotene from the Carrot Cleanser. This is a kind of precursor to Vitamin A, and it stimulates collagen production in the skin. This does take patience, though, because you'll only see the effect after a few months. So no quick fix!

The philosophy of Food for Skin is to make the skin's own functions as strong as possible. We don't want to take over the skin's function with our products, but purely offer support where needed. Because if you influence the skin's own functions too much with all sorts of harsh peels and treatments, the skin can become 'lazy' or 'confused', and you don't want that. What you want is for the skin to get to work itself, in a natural way, so that it's perfectly capable of getting rid of dead skin cells, repairing dry patches, and achieving an even complexion. Then you create a 'strong' skin.

Our tip is therefore really: do as little as possible, but cleanse your skin every day in a very mild way, stimulate the skin naturally with a serum to help address issues, and finish with a thin layer of cream, which can protect the skin against free radicals from outside: air pollution, bacteria, and weather influences. Less is more!