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So, you regret cutting your hair.
The Midwest mugginess envelops you, and as sweat trickles down your neck, you curse yourself for not being able to put it up and consider becoming a hat person. It’s a Slayyyter summer and you have a bad case of hair envy. But those hair scissors called to you from behind the mirrored doors of the medicine cabinet like the Green Goblin’s mask at 2 a.m.
Never fear, it’ll grow back!
Your mom might suggest brushing your hair more over FaceTime while Instagram ads harp about supplements and powders, and all the while your friend is insistent on hair oiling. Before your head bursts open — we’re trying to protect the hair, right? — with the overwhelming opinions and options, let’s unpack the veracity and efficacy of the best marketed remedy: collagen supplements.
You can find them all over TikTok Shop, in Amazon ads and on CVS shelves. But while the public assumes whatever’s for sale in the pharmacy aisle must be safe, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration doesn’t vet these products before they hit the shelves. That scrutiny is up to the manufacturing companies.
“In fact, most products can be lawfully brought to the market without FDA even knowing,” Dr. Cara Welch, director of FDA’s Office of Dietary Supplement Programs in the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, said on the Q&A with FDA Podcast.
However, that doesn’t mean the contents of these jars and vials are just a total free-for-all. The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 rendered these manufacturers responsible for ensuring their products are safe and labeled with evidenced claims.
So, does that mean your options at Kroger are safe and provide accurate information? Probably, but when the supplement industry has a history of improper regulation, inaccurate labeling and contamination, is it really a surprise to learn that collagen supplements likely won’t help your hair, skin and nails?
Sure, a few studies have shown improvements to skin elasticity, moisture and collagen density after taking collagen supplements for months. However, they were generally small, non-randomized studies, financially tied to the same companies whose products were being tested.
“I don’t think that I am in a position to pooh-pooh it and say this definitely doesn’t work,” Dr. Diane Berson, associate professor of dermatology at Weill Cornell Medical School, told Alice Callahan for The New York Times. “But as a physician, I would want to see more evidence-backed science.”
To understand why, we must understand what collagen is and how it relates to hair growth.
Collagen is the most abundant protein in your body and its main source of support, structure and strength. It makes up your skin, muscles, bones, tendons and ligaments — even forming the protective coverings for your organs. Thus, it’s a vitally important protein, so it makes sense that people’s diets already provide the amino acids — the building blocks of proteins — needed to produce collagen in-house.
The idea behind collagen supplements is to, well, supplement the collagen in your body, which has been depleted by aging, smoking, ultraviolet light exposure or consumption of excess refined carbs and sugars. The problem is that our bodies can’t absorb collagen as-is, so supplement manufacturers break it down into smaller peptides or amino acids that can be delivered by pills, powders and gummies — just like what your digestive system does daily for whatever proteins you consume.
However, although we can chop collagen up at the molecular level and deliver nicely wrapped component parts into our bodies, we can’t direct these little packages wherever we want. Because our metabolism is so flexible and these peptides are broken fragments, your body could funnel your supplement’s amino acids toward the production of a completely different protein. There’s no telling where your body might send them; they’ll go wherever they’re needed, which might not be your mane.
“That’s because when you take these collagen supplements, they are digested by the GI tract,” Berson said. “And it’s not really enough collagen to get absorbed into the bloodstream and delivered back to your hair, skin, nails and so on.”
But if the easiest so-called solution isn’t supported by research or science, then what? Eschew heat tools as much as possible, or at least use heat protectant, and focus on protein intake. To build healthy hair is to build protein, and you need to eat your full share of essential amino acids to do so.
Your hair is also more susceptible to breakage when dry, so while you count the days until it hits collarbone-, armpit- or waist-length, take proactive precautions like hair oiling with argan or coconut oil, using protective hairstyles at night and trimming split ends to avoid further splitting hair fibers.
Really, walk right past that BOGO offer for collagen supplements and buy a can of beans; you’ll thank me later.
Odessa Lyon (she/her) is a senior studying biology and English, pursuing a minor in European studies.
