Medidas correctoras sobre la fauna

Collagens are a family of extra-cellular proteins that give skin its ability to move, stretch, and rebound into shape. Thin wisps of tough, elastic collagen molecules run between adjacent cells in the outermost layer of skin, called the epidermis. And larger bundles of collagen form strips that weave together in a continuous layer beneath the epidermis, in a part of the skin called the dermis.

Collagens aren’t just in skin; they’re everywhere, imparting strength to all your tissues. Just as strands of collagen running between skin cells hold our outermost layer of skin together, collagens unite adjacent cells in all your glands and organs, from your brain to your bones to your liver and lungs. Larger bundles of collagen form strips and sheets in the ligaments and tendons surrounding your joints to hold your skeleton together. Collagen is the most prevalent kind of protein in your body; about 15 percent of your dry weight is pure collagen. Without it, we wouldn’t just fall apart at the

joints; we would literally disintegrate into small piles of individual cells. While it may seem like an obvious connection, doctors are only now beginning to appreciate the relationship between collagen strength and sports and job performance. Research now reveals that people with weak collagen experience more injuries throughout their lives.295,296,297

The reason collagen health is so dependent on a healthy diet has to do with the complexity of the individual collagen molecules. You can get some idea of how hard collagen is to manufacture from the wound healing process. If you’ve ever cut yourself so deep that you needed stitches, you may have noticed how long the scar takes to heal—sometimes a full year. When new collagen is formed in a wound, it’s composed of shorter, less organized strands than the original. By six weeks, the collagen fibers are far more organized and longer, but only back to about 75% of the original strength. As the supporting collagen becomes gradually more organized, the scar on the surface fades. In about a year, the skin strength is just about what was before the injury, though a small scar may remain if the collagen fibers below could never quite iron out smooth.

All collagens are made from chains of amino acids coiled around each other in sets of three to form a triple helix. The longer they are, the more strength they give to the tissue they’re in. But the longest, strongest collagens are also the hardest to make. All collagens carry special molecules called glycosaminoglycans (which we first read about in Chapter 7, in the section on bone stock) attached like bangles on a necklace to the triple helix backbone. Each class of collagen varies in length and amount of attached glycosaminoglycan bangles, allowing for all sorts of variation in strength, flexibility, water retention and lubrication. Once manufactured, collagen molecules get anchored to the exterior of the cell and unfurl throughout the extra-cellular matrix where molecules from adjacent cells can intertwine. The structural biology of collagen is incredibly complex, a masterpiece of extracellular engineering. If you are one of the lucky people to be endowed with good quality collagen, not only will your skin resist wrinkling, you will have a better chance of avoiding joint and circulatory problems down the road.

If any one of the thousands of steps involved in making collagen goes haywire—which is likely to happen if your diet was poor during critical growth periods (low in nutrient-rich foods from the Four Pillars and high in sugar and vegetable oils)—the integrity of the finished product is compromised and may break down prematurely. You might imagine that, with lesser quality collagen holding us together, our tissues would start pulling apart and separating after a certain number of years. That’s exactly what causes wrinkling, arthritis, and even circulatory problems. Unless baby Kyle’s mother starts treating vegetable oil and sugar like the poisons they are, these are the kinds of medical problems that will plague him as he grows older.

No matter the strength of your collagen today, how good you feel tomorrow depends a lot on your diet. People who eat pro-inflammatory foods experience more joint damage on a daily basis because sugar acts like an abrasive in the joints.298 At night, the small frays and tiny breaks in the collagen that formed during the day must be repaired. But inflammation interferes with healing. Instead of waking up feeling recovered, people on bad diets wake up with stiff joints. Their scars and stretch marks will be more obvious, too, because inflammation disorganizes the collagen fibers so that, as tissue heals, it forms irregular lumpy mounds or deep pits, with more disfiguring results.

One of the best ways to help collagen heal is, not surprisingly, to eat some. Eating meat on the bone or using bone broths in soups, stews, and sauces floods your bloodstream with glycosaminoglycans, which head directly to the parts of the body that need collagen most.299 These extraordinary molecules attract enormous amounts of water, up to 1000 times their own weight, which coats your joint tissues in tiny, electrically charged clouds, transforming ordinary water molecules into a protective layer of super-lubricating fluid.300 Glycosaminoglycans will naturally adhere to collagen anywhere in your body, moistening dry skin, helping your tendons and ligaments stay supple, and generally making you look and feel younger.301

Eating homemade bone stock in childhood has fantastic jointstrengthening and collagen- fortifying effects that can last a lifetime. The benefits are so dramatic that it’s astounding to me more people haven’t noticed the connection. My patients who ate traditional cuisine with meaty stocks and rich bone broths on a regular basis tend to enjoy all the hallmarks of well-built bones and connective tissue. They have broad hands with wide knuckles and relatively large feet that are proportionately wide from toe to heel. Their skin is smoother, with tighter pores and smaller hair follicle openings, reflecting greater tensile strength. Because their bodies are so well-built, these are the people who can enjoy their golden years to the fullest, or work past retirement if they so choose.

A lot of people think cellulite comes from being too fat. But extra fat where you don’t want it is only part of the problem. Lumpy, irregular cellulite forms in fat deposits that lack adequate connective tissue struts to support a smooth shape.302 When I see photos of celebrities with terrible cellulite on their thighs, I imagine how their nutritionists are probably telling them to avoid animal products, and how frustrated they’ll be as their cellulite hangs on. To get rid of cellulite, combine exercise with a diet full of healthy, natural fats (including animal fat) and collagen-rich stocks. This will send the message that you want your body to replace the saggy fat pockets with smooth, toned curves.

Now that you know why collagen health is important not just to skin, but to every organ in your body, let’s learn how inflammation affects your collagen day to day and over the years.