Why Collagen is an important supplement for joint health

Our joints are key for movement and staying mobile, which for most individuals is a key goal for longevity and optimising quality of life, therefore we want to keep our joints as healthy as possible!

When developing the PhD Life range, movement was highlighted as a key target area for life optimisation, leading to the development of the MOVE capsules. To help you understand why MOVE is a collagen-based supplement, lets delve into the science behind MOVE.

What factors can affect our joint health?

Many factors can affect our joint health over our lifespan, factors such as age, body weight, overuse, medical conditions and previous injury to name a few, will all influence our joint health.

The positive effect of exercise and physical activity on joint health (in healthy individuals) is related to the strengthening of your muscles and ligaments. These are essentially your joints support network, helping to stabilise your knees, hip and other joints.

Even in individuals with joint conditions such as osteoarthritis, it seems clinicians are moving in the direction of encouraging physical activity and exercise therapy as first-line recommendations for treatment. Actively exercising muscles and ligaments around your joints will aid strengthening your joints, thereby aiding in quality of life.

On the other hand, athletes and physically active individuals who lift weights are often loading the joints quite heavily, which can add stress and pressure onto your joints and associated muscles. Without looking after our joints effectively, we can end up increasing the likelihood of experiencing an injury.

Our diet can prove vital for ensuring we keep our joints healthy and minimise our risk of injury. However, most individuals lead fast-paced lives, working 9-5 whilst maintain a fitness and social routine can be difficult and sometimes means getting the right nutrients in our diet can fall behind.

Dietary supplements can provide an alternative to this, enabling us to boost your intake of key nutrients that will aid with movement! One key dietary supplement that can aid with joint health, is collagen.

What is Collagen?

Collagen is a naturally occurring protein within our bodies that has an essential role in providing structure, strength and support to various tissues such as our skin, cartilage, bones and connective tissues. It assists our tissues in being strong and resilient, essentially it is our bodies mechanical backbone of our connective tissues!

Collagen is the most abundant protein within our bodies, though, naturally as we age, our bodies collagen production decreases. Other lifestyle factors that will naturally decrease your bodies collagen production include excess sun exposure, lack of sleep and exercise, excess alcohol and smoking.

With lower collagen production, our ligaments and muscles can become less elastic and our recovery from exercise is negatively impacted. Alongside trying to minimise lifestyle factors that will naturally cause our collagen production to decrease, we can try and boost our bodies natural collagen production.

Diet is one way of achieving this. High-protein foods containing the amino acids, glycine, proline and hydroxyproline are thought to nurture natural collagen production but nutrients such as vitamin C should also be considered alongside this.

The role of Collagen as a joint supplement in athletes

Reading this, you probably already exercise and want to ensure you’re looking after your joints to prevent injury and keep performing at your best. At the end of the day, we all want to move as efficiently as possible and maximise our time training whilst minimising our time out due to injury or aches and pains!

To date, most research into collagen supplementation has focused around individuals with osteoarthritis. The research in this population has evidently shown reductions in pain perception as well improvements in clinical responses.

Sport nutrition strategies aiming to enhance joint health and aid in injury prevention have become more prevalent over recent years and with that collagen supplementation in athletic individuals has become popular.

When considering collagen supplementation in athletic populations, a 24-week intervention study has evidenced collagen can reduce reports of pain in athletes with activity-related joint pain. Further to this, in vitro research has shown promising effects of collagen supplementation on reducing inflammation markers.

There is also evidence that prolonged collagen supplementation alongside resistance training can positively influence body composition in recreationally active men.

PhD MOVE solution

Here at PhD we respect you wanting to optimise your joint health and perform at your best which is why, as part of the PhD Life range, we created the MOVE capsules.

The MOVE capsules provide an easy to consume solution delivering a unique combination of collagen alongside vitamin C, vitamin D and magnesium, all of which will aid in supporting collagen formation, cartilage function and connective tissues.

Ingredients of the MOVE capsules can be seen below:

Why these ingredients?

As discussed above, collagen is proven to be a nutritional supplement with great potential to enhance joint health. Therefore, collagen is a key ingredient in our MOVE supplement containing 40 mg of UC-II® Undenatured Type II Collagen. A patented form of collagen with undenatured type II collagen that works with the immune system to support healthy joints.

Vitamin D is known to help regulate the amount of calcium and phosphate within the body, key nutrients needed to keep your bones, teeth and muscles healthy! Individuals who don’t consume enough vitamin D may end up deficient which can lead to joint pain particularly in your knees, legs and hips.

Vitamin C is also key in collagen supplementation as it is known to play an important role is activating key enzymes that allow key-collagen building amino acids to be used in the formation of collagen. Therefore, it is vital to ensure your collagen source also contains vitamin C.

Magnesium can also help strengthen your bones whilst also maintaining nerve and muscle function and helping maintain healthy joint cartilage, making it another key ingredient in our MOVE solution.

Take home messages

The positive effect of exercise and physical activity on joint health is related to the strengthening of your muscles and ligaments. Though athletes and physically active individuals are often loading the joints quite heavily, which can add stress and pressure onto your joints and associated muscles. Without looking after our joints effectively, we can end up increasing the likelihood of experiencing an injury.

Collagen is an important nutritional supplement to consider when looking to optimise joint health and remain injury free. In athletic individual’s collagen supplementation has been shown to reduce reports of activity-related joint pain and inflammatory markers, alongside evidence that it can positively influence body composition alongside resistance training.

The PhD MOVE capsules as part of the Life range provide an easy to consume solution delivering a unique combination of collagen alongside vitamin C, vitamin D and magnesium, all of which will aid in supporting collagen formation, cartilage function and connective tissues.

Our MOVE capsules are perfect for anyone looking to support their joint health, so don’t let aches and pains hold you back, shop MOVE from the PhD life range and feel your best everyday!

Written by Dr Emily Jevons - PhD in Exercise Physiology & Nutrition, Clean Sport Advisor

Emily has worked with Science in Sport since 2021. With a PhD in Exercise Physiology & Nutrition, she currently provides nutritional advice for endurance athletes. Emily not only understands the science behind performance nutrition solutions, but also the physiological and psychological demands of sport after competing competitively in swimming and triathlon for a number of years.