What is Vegan Collagen? Know the Benefits and How to Get It
By: Cosmic King
Tags: Collagen, Vegetarian, Vegan Collagen, Allergies, Vegan

Collagen is a protein that naturally occurs in the body. It contains amino acids. Moreover, it is also a supplement that is added to the body. Collagen is divided into two that is, vegan collagen and animal derivatives. Therefore, if you are vegan, you should go for vegan collagen.

There are so many factors you need to know about collagen and its derivatives of vegan collagen.

Here are some of the facts you need to know;

Understanding Collagen Itself

The body has a process known as collagen syntheses. As a result of the collagen synthesis, the body acquires its collagen. However, this process cannot occur on its own. It requires amino acids to take place. The amino acids involved are proline, glycine and hydroxyproline.

Collagen is present at a young age. As you grow old, your body will not make as much collagen as before. Thus you will need to get other sources of collagen externally.

Alternatives of Collagen

As mentioned earlier, you will require to get external sources of collagen as you age. Well, there are various collagen sources. You can get marine collagen from fish and other marine creatures found in the sea, such a jellyfish. Marine collagen is highly recommended because of having a high quantity of collagen. Moreover, the body quickly absorbs the collagen. The other advantage is being eco-friendly and has high sustainability compared to other collagen sources.

Protein Powders and supplements

Vegans also get their collagen from protein powders and supplements. (Martini, 385) These supplements contain protein collagen, which has the broken form of amino acid to form collagen peptides. Peptides stimulate the production of collagen in the body. With time, it results in tangible and visible effects of collagen in the body.

Vegetarian collagen enhances the synthesis of the collagen process in the body. Some of the vegetarian collagen contents to look out for are that it should have astaxanthin and vitamin C, which helps maintain the appearance of the skin.

How Artificial Vegan Collagen Is Formed

Vegan collagen can be artificially sourced from genetically modified bacteria and yeast. Bacteria P.pastoris is the most recommendable vegan collagen. It is mostly used for genetically engineering collagen that is of high quality.

It helps in structuring the building blocks of collagen molecules with the human collagen. After completing the process, the vegan collagen is formed.

Importance of Vegan Collagen

Collagen processed from microbes has potential benefits to the body. Some of the benefits include being affordable. Using bacteria or yeast for collagen production is cheap and can be highly scaled in a laboratory environment. Moreover, it has not been widely used.

Therefore there is no mass production, lowering the demand and lowering the price, making it available for either a supplement or medical treatment.

Risk of Allergies

It also has a minimum risk of allergies. Animal sourced collagen may cause allergies that are transformed from the animal itself. It thus makes vegan collagen recommendable because there are no transformed allergies or diseases.

Collagen from microbes is produced from a controlled environment. It, therefore, reduces the risk of allergies.

Safety

Vegan collagen is safe because of the laboratory safety profile. Lab-controlled products are safe because the manufacturers have the responsibility to improve their profile. Another benefit has potential medical benefits. Collagen is not only essential for supplements, therefore making the technology safer.

Vegan collagen is beneficial for promoting the healing of wounds, stimulating skin growth and sutures dermatology. (Brewer, 2015) It is also essential for some tumor treatments.

Beauty Purposes

Vegan collagen is also beneficial for the beauty purposes of vegans. Most of the collagen products are found in the market. They are thus making it impossible for vegans to access. With the help of vegan processed collagen, they can reduce wrinkles, among other skin factors. (Shioya, 2015) It also stimulates the body to produce more collagen content.

Conclusion

Collagen is essential for the body. The best part about this is that it doesn’t necessarily have to come from the body. You can now go for other vegan source alternatives. Vegans can now get collagen that is not from animal products.

References

Martini, N. Collagen supplements. Journal of Primary Health Care, 11(4), 385–386.

Mei, F., Liu, J., Wu, J., Duan, Z., Chen, M., Meng, K., … & Zhao, M. (2020). Collagen peptides isolated from salmo salar and tilapia nilotica skin accelerate wound healing by altering cutaneous microbiome colonization via upregulated NOD2 and BD14. Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, 68(6), 1621–1633.

Sibilla, S., Godfrey, M., Brewer, S., Budh-Raja, A., & Genovese, L. (2015). An overview of the beneficial effects of hydrolysed collagen as a nutraceutical on skin properties: Scientific background and clinical studies. The Open Nutraceuticals Journal, 8(1).

Asserin, J., Lati, E., Shioya, T., & Prawitt, J. (2015). The effect of oral collagen peptide supplementation on skin moisture and the dermal collagen network: evidence from an ex vivo model and randomized, placebo‐controlled clinical trials. Journal of cosmetic dermatology, 14(4), 291–301.