16: Is collagen powder the secret to perfect skin & eternal life?

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 Welcome to the Know Wellness Wankery podcast. My name is Jenna D’Apice

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 And I'm Lyndi Cohen. And today, we're going to be answering one of your questions. We love your questions.

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 The question bank is amazing, which shows how much wankery is in the world as well because

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 people are like, what about this?

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 What about this?

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 What about this?

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 It's true.

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 It's overwhelming. Please do keep sending your questions in because I feel like sometimes we lose track of what is wellness wankery and we need your questions to help us because I bet there's heaps of people who are lying in bed at night going, oh my goodness, is that a thing? Should I be listening to it? We'll help solve that problem. Today, we're going to be answering the question from Divine Sophie, who's very lovely. She asked us a question about collagen and supplements. Let's hear.

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 Hi, Lindy. I have a question about expensive powdered supplements. Could you go through them and let us know what's worth buying, what's not, if it's all just marketing hype and whether we should just be eating better food? Thanks. Bye.

0:01:28
 Oh, Sophie, such a good question. I love it. So do we need to buy powdered supplements? And you know what we're talking about right now. We're not talking about things like a vitamin C or a vitamin D or an iron supplement. I think that's those kind of different things. What we're talking about now is this emergence of health and nutrition supplements, things like protein powders and specifically collagen powders that are becoming quite popular at the moment.

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 Collagen powder is a big one. I read that you can even absorb collagen through the stomach.

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 Yes. We're going to get into that because it's very much sold to us as a beauty solution as well, isn't it? So this is Lesley Powder.

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 Collagen powder is the secret to eternal life.

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 And these things are very expensive. I don't know if you've seen, but you can spend like $80 for a bucket of it.

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 And it's not a very big bucket.

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 It's a tiny little bucket. Buckets are a wrong word, I would say. I was recently reading, I think it was Vogue Living, one of those beautiful home magazines. I do love those things. And I saw in the magazine one of the founders of one of these collagen supplement companies was showing her new beautiful renovated home mansion in the house. And I was like, well, of course you can afford to buy this mansion. It was so beautiful. I was like, oh my goodness, maybe I should start a collagen supplement company. I'm not going to. But what a nice way to make money. Slash not a nice way, but it's a way to make money. So let's get into the science about whether or not you should be spending or wasting your money on these things. So collagen is something that we need for our skin texture, especially as we're aging, our body stops making as much collagen. I don't know if you've noticed, but kind of when I got to like 29, 30, I was like, okay, the game has shifted in my skin. It's just not kind of coming back the way it used to be. It's kind of like loses that elastic nature to it. Collagen is also very important for our joint health. You know, we have collagen between all of our joints and it helps make sure that we don't feel sore and then we feel good and it helps with our recovery. And so that's a very important thing. So as our body's producing less collagen, people are all talking about how to get more collagen into your diet. And so here's this idea that if we consume more of this collagen that it's going to be good for us. Now, there's some research into this, okay, luckily. So collagen powders, stuff that we have for our joint health, actually, a really good thing to do. And so if that's purely from that perspective that you wanna take it for your joint health, I think everyone could benefit with some collagen. We're all getting older, everyone's getting older by the fact of it, and so that could be a good thing to be doing. When you look at the research about how is this collagen affecting your skin and a lot of these claims are pretty big like make you look more beautiful, more youthful, you know more radiant and I want to buy into that I'm not gonna lie. Who doesn't like that idea? It's a very alluring proposition. It is very alluring, have the supplement and you'll feel better, look better. There isn't the research to back it up. And maybe there will be in time, but I just feel quite skeptical about it, that I just don't think that it's ever gonna live up to all these hyped up promises. So when it comes to looking after your skin, there certainly are things you can be doing that I think are gonna have a much bigger impact than buying a collagen powder that has zero evidence to show that it's actually useful for your skin health. So what are some things that we can be doing?

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 I would say probably the biggest thing that impacts my skin is making sure I'm drinking enough water and wearing sunscreen.

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 And by the way, pretty affordable to do that. So that is essential. So yes, so if we had to go in the order of priorities, make sure you are drinking enough water and absolutely sunscreen every single day. And if you can, reapply it. I'm now at the age where I reapply my sunscreen and I always wear a hat. And one of the issues is I always have greasy hair because I'm constantly wearing a hat because I'm exercising and that's annoying.

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 But we have to deal with it. That's when dry shampoo comes in. Yeah, you need a hat.

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 Oh, can we just quickly talk about dry shampoo? So I was speaking to my hairdresser and she said, you actually use dry shampoo before your hair gets oily. So you use it preventatively each night. That way your hair doesn't get oily. I thought, you're really putting a lot of faith into my ability to foresee how long I have. I'm very much using it as a band-aid solution right here. Anyway, that's just a side note. Fundamentally though, there are other things. Sleep is going to be critical for your skin. I know how awful I look after I haven't had enough sleep and I don't feel very good. But when it comes to your skin health, I think having enough of vitamin C, vitamin A, which are going to be in your fruits and vegetables. This is it. Is, that is the thing that's really going to make a big difference. They've done some research into this where they looked at people who had different varying amounts of fruits and vegetables in their diet and it was something that was visibly being able to be seen by a whole bunch of people who were looking at these different faces. Just because of their skin. Yeah, because have you ever seen someone and you're like, you just look healthy, I can't put my finger on it. Chances are they're going to be eating a whole bunch of fruits and vegetables and we're going to be going, oh, what powder can I take? Make sure you're eating enough fruit and vegetable. You're probably, 50% of people don't eat enough fruit, 5% don't eat enough vegetables.

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 Are you one of those? 5% don't eat or 5% do eat?

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 Do eat, sorry, do eat. 5% of people do eat enough vegetables.

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 Yeah, that's it.

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 Astounding. So are you one of those 5%? So you know what, if you said to me, I am eating lots of fruit and vegetables, I'm sleeping well, I'm doing the sunscreen, I'm getting enough water, I'm eating things like oily fats, the healthy oily fats, things like salmon and avocados and all the nuts, I'm doing it all and then I want to do the collagen and I enjoy it and it's fun and I can afford it, whatever, who cares? You know, that's grace, go for it. But if you feel like this is just one more thing that you have to do, it feels like a task, it's expensive that you can't afford it, I would say there's not nearly enough research to justify it. I would call it a bit of wellness wankery for now. It's definitely a whole lot of marketing. And do take it for your joints, but don't think that it's going to magically transform your skin.

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 Okay, that's a lot there.

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 And it's like they've really told you that it is, so it's a bit of a waste of time. I think it's very interesting how we're seeing the emergence of all these health products that are selling us beauty And I think it's really murky lines because we've been sold the idea that you can see health and you can't Really see you can't see someone is someone's eating enough fruits and vegetables or whether they look tired or not But that's just like is someone going to be more beautiful. Are they going to be healthier? Yeah, and that's all the subjective thing that really doesn't exist. So there's a lot of foods, fruits, vegetables that we can eat that can improve our skin that's not just collagen. What are some of those? I'm a big fan of tomatoes, big fan, big fan of anything with vitamin C in it, so capsicum, oranges of course, but anything that's kind of that like orangey yellowy kind of color. And remembering that each nutrient is a flavonoid in your fruit and vegetables is a different color, right? This is why we're told to eat the rainbow, because each of those flavonoids have different nutritional properties, so you wanna be eating a whole bunch of them, therefore you're getting the colors of the rainbow that all help your skin in different ways. Okay, good gut health, so you know, eating enough whole grains and not going on one of those crazy low-carb diets, because your gut needs carbohydrates. I'm gonna repeat that as many times as I possibly can.

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 Yeah, we're gonna keep saying that.

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 Your gut needs it, so you need the whole grains, and then having things like yogurt in it. So if you're following one of those clean protocols, sometimes they miss out on some of those foods, but you need the whole variety, the whole spectrum of food in order to be healthy. And I also think, like I don't know about you, but when I am running myself ragged, I'm trying to skip meals, I'm over-exercising, I'm obsessing about how I look, I just don't think that I am my most vibrant, lush self.

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 You're definitely not. You're not coming to the table with your best self.

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 What we're really chasing when we're trying to lose weight and look more beautiful is to feel worthy and accepted and good enough. That's not going to come from a collagen powder. That's not going to come from a collagen powder or it's not going to come from running yourself ragged trying to reach a certain unattainable body. I think it's a decision that we make to go, I am worthy of respect right now. Get aspirations that are bigger than how plump your skin looks and do all the other things but get other aspirations and I feel like we're gonna feel a whole lot better in ourselves when we're doing that. I love that. Like resetting your goals to not just I'm gonna lose weight or I always think like I would do a fun run because if I train for the fun run then I'll lose weight. So every goal doesn't have to come back to that. Sounds like a very un-fun run. It was not a fun round, so I'll do that. Yeah, guys, anyway, that is the A to your Q.

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 And remember, if you have a question, hit up Lindy on Instagram, nude underscore nutritionist. Send a little voice note. If you don't, send a message saying, how do I send a voice note? And we'll let you know, it's very easy. Once you get it, then you'll be sending so many questions. And leave us a review if you can, and we'll chat to you next time.

0:10:20
 Thank you, Sophie, for your awesome question. Big love to you. Do you feel like you know what you should be eating but you feel completely out of control with food? You're either eating perfectly or you're face planting into the fridge. Well, if you've got binge eating or you're struggling with emotional eating, I can help. Check out my program, Keep It Real. I've got lots I can teach you and hey, you don't have to be a binge eater for the rest of your life. You can get 20% off Keep It Real when you use the code PODCAST when you check out via the website. And because I don't want this to be just another failed attempt for you, I'm offering a 30-day money-back guarantee because you know what? You've just got to give these things a go, no risk. Give it a try. Give it a try. Check out Keeper Real.