This post may contain affiliate links. Please read the disclaimer for more information.

I’ve been really interested in collagen lately. Collagen, if you’re wondering, is the main protein found in the body’s connective tissue. It is also the most abundant protein in the body, making up at least a quarter of the whole-body protein content.

As a life-long athlete who now needs to be a little more diligent of how he takes care of his body, collagen has struck me as what looks like an undervalued superfood.

I have recently started playing soccer more competitively and started introducing more resistance training (light weightlifting) and the intensity has been hard on my body thus far. I haven’t been running hard for a couple years now at this point and physically competing with others is tough.

It’s also become more apparent to me that I should be easing myself into the process more, however, it’s hard to stick with that plan when I’m having so much fun and just want to be involved in the game. This has been an issue while playing soccer so far, as my feet, ankles, toes, quads, hamstrings, hips, and even my back have been feeling it.

I’ve been much smarter with the weightlifting part of my routine, but that’s because I don’t enjoy it nearly as much, so it’s easy to call it quits when appropriate.

The amount of general soreness and small injuries that I’ve experienced while re-acclimating to this level of activity has been enough to alert me that I’m going to need to bring in outside help if I want to maintain a lifestyle like this.

This is where my first step, collagen, comes into play. I have been “supplementing” with collagen almost daily by putting some of it (in the form of peptides) in my coffee each morning. Here are the reasons why I’ve been doing this:

Muscle Recovery

I think it’s pretty common knowledge now that in order to build more muscle, you have to partially tear the existing muscle you have through challenging exercise. These tears would be considered micro-tears as they are not the same as tearing a muscle to the point that it is badly injured. This is where soreness comes from.

If you feel sore after exercise, it basically means your muscles have not been adapted to work that hard yet, they’re still acclimating to that new level of conditioning. 

One of the claims you’ll see from time to time with collagen is that it can help you recover better. This is what initially drew me in with interest as I’ve mentioned how sore I’ve been from exercising.

A study was done on the effects of collagen peptides on muscle damage, inflammation, and bone turnover following exercise and looked at 24 recreationally active males before and after they did 150 drop jumps. The test subjects were either given 20 grams of collagen peptides or a placebo each day.

What they found was that 48 hours after exercise, there was less muscle soreness and their jumping height had recovered quicker in the collagen peptide group than the placebo group. This would indicate the collagen noticeably helped the athletes recover better than their counterparts. 

Soreness or stiffness can often be what keeps us away from doing more exercise, so if there is a way to minimize the damage done after an intense physical bout, this could be the difference between you exercising again shortly after or sitting at home.

In addition, the study showed that performance recovered along with the soreness. This basically shows the entire recovery process the collagen group underwent was accelerated compared to the placebo group.

Not only will you feel better physically, but top performance will return quicker too.

Sleep

The quantity and quality of sleep is one of the most important pillars of human health. It should be taken as serious, if not, more serious than your diet and exercise routine.

Luckily for us, collagen is proposed to help us with sleep.

Collagen is made up of about 33% glycine, a potent amino acid for promoting better sleep. According to this study, glycine was able to enable deeper sleep and lower core body temperature in an experiment with rats.

“In acute sleep disturbance, oral administration of glycine-induced non-rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and shortened NREM sleep latency with a simultaneous decrease in core temperature.”

REM sleep is the deepest, most restful, and most restorative sleep we can get so being able to achieve this state more easily is of our utmost interest.

In addition, lowering core body temperature is necessary for us to get to sleep and stay asleep. So this is yet another very attractive benefit to collagen when it comes to optimizing sleep. 

It is very common for adults to struggle with either falling asleep or sleeping soundly through the night, which makes a therapeutic dose of collagen before bed all the more attractive. If it enables you to get more and better sleep, that is a better recovery from the day’s activities and better preparation for what the next day has for us.

Joints

Joint health becomes increasingly important as you start to get older.

I would go as far to say that almost half of the middle-aged adults I know would claim to have some sort of arthritis and have to get treatment and/or medication for it regularly. I would consider that to be serious.

Not to mention, how many people do you know who have knee pain, lower back pain, achy hips, or elbows that can’t take much pressure? Do you personally have any of those problems? It feels like everyone but we’ll just say quite a few people struggle with these joint-related issues. 

Fortunately, collagen supplementation looks to be a promising pain manager when it comes to osteoarthritis.

A study looked at the effects collagen would have on osteoarthritis-related symptoms. Subjects were either given 2 grams of collagen or a placebo for 70 days.

The collagen group had a significant reduction in pain and a significant improvement in physical activities by the end of the experiment. The researchers deemed this type of collagen to be effective at treating osteoarthritis-associated symptoms and would recommend it to be used as a complement to osteoarthritis therapies.

Joint pain and lack of joint function are more things to add to the list that steer us away from exercising more. If you supplemented your diet on a consistent basis with a collagen like the one used in this study, it could very well be the difference that facilitates a more active lifestyle for you overall.

This experiment only tested subjects with 2 grams of collagen, which I think by all accounts would be considered a low dosage. I personally take about 10 grams of Vital Proteins Original Collagen Peptides every day in my coffee and that’s only half of their serving size.

I find this to be the best available option on the market as Vital Proteins sources from grass-fed, pasture-raised bovine, there’s hyaluronic acid present for skin benefits, Vitamin C present for absorption benefits, and is otherwise completely free of unwanted additives which makes it a very clean product.

Another thing I will do to get collagen into my diet is, if my dinner recipe permits it, I’ll add some bone broth to the meal. I always use Kettle and Fire’s Bone Broth because I find them to be the cleanest and most health-conscious brand out of the bunch.

Kettle and Fire sources healthy animals, uses organic vegetables and spices, and avoids using unnecessary additives or unhealthy practices in their products.