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Up One cuts through the noise of health and wellness trends. Hosted by Sawyer Stone and longevity scientist Dr. Bill Andrews, each episode unpacks peer-reviewed research on supplements, therapies, and diagnostics - no fluff, just facts. If you're serious about the science of aging and human performance, it's time to take it Up One.
Sawyer Stone: [00:00:00] Welcome to Up one, the podcast where we take a deep dive into the science behind supplements, therapies, and diagnostics. I'm Sawyer Stone, your Guide through the Maze of Health Claims. Here to ask the big questions.
Dr. Bill Andrews: And I'm Dr. Bill Andrews With decades of experience in medical research, I've dedicated my career to uncovering.
The real science behind disease, aging, and human health. On this podcast, we don't just skin the surface of scientific studies. We conduct a critical meta-analysis separating credible research from misleading conclusions.
Sawyer Stone: There's a lot of noise out there, conflicting studies, bold claims, and endless marketing up.
One is here to cut through it all and bring you science backed insights that you can actually trust.
Dr. Bill Andrews: We're talking prevention, diagnostics, treatments, and the big questions shaping the future of health.
Sawyer Stone: If you're [00:01:00] serious about understanding the science of health and longevity without the fluff, let's take it up one.
All right, Dr. Bill, how are you today?
Dr. Bill Andrews: Oh, very good. Looking forward to another podcast. Great to hear podcast with you.
Sawyer Stone: Yeah, me too. And we have a special guest today, one of your colleagues, Christian Chase.
Christian Chase: Yes sir. How are you
Sawyer Stone: today, Christian?
Christian Chase: I'm well, thank you.
Sawyer Stone: Good to hear. Good to hear. Well, I'm just gonna introduce Christian for our listeners.
He is an entrepreneur with a passion for anti-aging health and fitness, and he's worked alongside you, Dr. Bill at Sierra Sciences for over a decade and is very, very serious about radical human life extension like our Dr. Billis Christian helped. Found the cosmetics company one Truth 8 1 8 that was built on Dr.
Bill's technology. And more recently, he was heavily involved in the development of the Touchstone Essentials product. Tele vital, assuming the role of Chief [00:02:00] Formulator, which is very cool. We've been talking lots about aging on the podcast, Christian, so we've been getting lots of good information about that.
Can you tell us a little bit about, uh, your experience with collagen? That's our subject today.
Christian Chase: I, I became fascinated with collagen when, um, when I got into the topical telomerase inducing skin cream, and we found that applying, um, applying the skin cream in some of our clinical trial, all of our clinical trials induced, um, much more collagen production and elastin production, and had a, had a massive effect on skin smoothness, firmness, elasticity.
Everything we could measure, um, more personally. Um, I'm also a competitive bodybuilder and I'm over 50. So lately when I've been, um, getting in shape, the, the skin on parts of my body doesn't look [00:03:00] quite like it used to when I was in my twenties and thirties. Um, so I've been on a personal level trying to do everything I can around, um.
Uh, collagen supplements, uh, collagen peptides and topical, um, topical creams. To, you know, to try and, um, close that gap between me and the younger guys. And, uh, yeah, hopefully, hopefully we've been getting there so far.
Dr. Bill Andrews: I want to add, 'cause he didn't, uh, he recently competed in the Mr. Universe contest and I'm guess, I'm guessing the reason why he didn't mention that is because he didn't win it.
But I, I think just the ability to be in it is just, I, it's been very exciting working with Christian. It's close to 15 years now, uh, because of every, his knowledge on everything related to skincare and just health in general. And he's, he's in New Zealand. Uh, which, uh, you know, I have to reach pretty far to find somebody of [00:04:00] his caliper.
Sawyer Stone: Yeah. That's awesome. Very cool. Congratulations on that composition. Thanks. Regardless of your winning that Dr. Bill's Right. Like it's, it's very impressive to even compete. I
Christian Chase: thank you.
Sawyer Stone: Well, I think I'm gonna start with our first question, but I'm gonna skip around a little bit. So we talk about collagen and when we talk about collagen.
Sort of everybody knows that there's some sort of animal byproduct in most collagen supplements items, things that have collagen in them, be it topical or be it oral. Is there a way for us to get vegan collagen? Or is it just like a no-go? There's like no way to make it vegan.
Dr. Bill Andrews: Well, Christian, you should go with that.
That's, that's your
Christian Chase: expertise. Yeah. I've been, I've been researching that heavily, um, lately because I, I know a lot of vegans and it's, um, in my opinion, it's a, it's a massive opportunity in the market commercially as [00:05:00] well. And the answer is, um, the short answer is yes. Um, there are many things that stimulate.
Collagen production, and many of them are vegan in the first place. Um, things like vitamin C um, polyphenols, and the only thing that really is in animal collagen that is difficult to find in plant collagen is the tripeptide bond. When you consume the tripeptide bond, it's, um, it's glycine. Um. What are the other two?
Boom, glycine, lene and hydroxyproline and iso glycine. Anyway, when you consume that, um, that tri tip peptide bond, it, it stimulates your body to produce more collagen. But there are other, oh, there are other vegan sources of all three of those, um, amino acids separately. That can be provided as building blocks and also bovine collagen in [00:06:00] particular doesn't have all the amino acids present in human collagen, so it's not perfect to begin with.
So long story short, if you can provide things that stimulate co production, you can avoid doing things that Degradate collagen and you can provide of collagen, which you can do all three of those things. Um, in a vegan way, uh, you can, you can boost collagen production.
Sawyer Stone: That's very cool. So the short answer is yes.
We just gotta figure out how to do it. And it sounds like you're on the right pathway to do that.
Christian Chase: Yeah. There's many, there's many ways, um, to do it. We're researching all of them trying to combine the best of both worlds, but it's, yeah, it's very doable. Um, I looked at synthetic. Peptides as well. Synthetic, um, amino acids, and that's another way to do it.
But a lot of them are not from very, [00:07:00] um, wholesome organic sources. A lot of them come from petrochemicals and things that are quite nasty, so I'm kind of, yeah,
Sawyer Stone: we don't need that. Running
Christian Chase: away from that. But yeah, there's some good organic, vegan, um, ingredients that, um, that are well on their way to being, to be able to do it.
Um, you know,
Dr. Bill Andrews: you know, one, one of the things that I specialize in 'cause of this podcast is 'cause critical meta-analysis of pur reviewed studies. But Christian has done a really excellent job of. The critical meta-analysis of peer review studies on the subject of collagen and, and all the things that can induce production of collagen, uh, and still be vegan.
And that's why I'm impressed with what he is done because there's a lot of, you can find a lot of stuff where people are saying they're trying to develop a vegan collagen or something like that, but nobody comes close to what Christian has put together for this. And I'm looking forward to this product.[00:08:00]
Uh, sometime be someday becoming a product and stuff like that. But I think it's gonna, I think it's gonna happen in, in sometime in the future. Well, that's great. Lemme just add that people, 'cause he was saying that it is inducing collagen production. A lot of people believe that collagen products, and this includes my dermatologist, okay.
He believed and ev lots of other people believe that the collagen products actually contain full length collagen. And then when you drink it,
Sawyer Stone: yeah,
Dr. Bill Andrews: that collagen in that bottle becomes part of the collagen in your, in, in your extra cellular matrix of your cells. Of your tissues. Oh my goodness, my bones and things like that.
And that's not the case at all. It's actually, uh, if you, if you consume straight collagen, you, it is probably, most of it just leaves the body as waste, uh, because it's just poorly absorbed and it takes a lot of energy to, to. Hydrolyze it down or digest it down into [00:09:00] components that would be useful for you.
But Christian's product is, is gonna contain all the best of, of all that stuff. And so it'll work way better than just what people think collagen products are.
Christian Chase: Yeah. Well one, sure. One advantage of doing it in a, in a vegan way is, um, I use a, an analogy to do with Lego bricks. If you were to consume bovine collagen, all the bricks are there.
Well, actually they're not all there. Most of the bricks are there, but they're already assembled. So it's like somebody giving you a structure made out of Legos. You then have to pull all the Legos apart and reassemble them into human collagen. What you can do with, um, with vegan collagen sources is you can just give people a bag of bricks and because the smaller molecules are absorbed better, and then your body will.
We will make them into human collagen, which it has to do anyway, as Bill was saying, it's, it doesn't just [00:10:00] incorporate the bovine collagen, which is a good thing. I don't want, yeah. I don't want, um, bovine skin.
So in, in that, yeah, more efficient. There are, there are pros and cons. Um, the only con I can think of is not providing that tripeptide bond, um, because, not because it forms collagen, but because it stimulates collagen. But as you said, there's many other ways to stimulate collagen production, and I haven't given up on, on finding that tripeptide bond either.
I'm still looking.
Sawyer Stone: That's great. Well, before we get too deep in the weeds here, there are a few of us out here in the world that are thinking like, what the heck is collagen? And why do we, why are we even talking about it? Like, what is it doing for me? How can I make it work for me? How do I put it on my body?
Is it oral? Is it skin? So let's just start with what the heck is collagen?
Dr. Bill Andrews: Collagen is 25% of what we're made of 25% of the proteins [00:11:00] in my goodness. Human body is collagen and there's, there's 28 different types of collagen in our body. Uh, there's two that are the most common. They're, they're type one and type three, which, which make up a lot of like our bones and our skin and things like that.
But collagen is really important just to hold us together. In fact, if we didn't have collagen. Our, we'd be a blob on the ground because collagen's, the main component that gives our bones all the rigid rigidity, uh, all of our skin. The tensile strength in our skin is all due to collagen and collagen decreases as we get older.
And as, uh, Christian alluded to is it's controlled by telomere length, so shorter telomere lengths. The less collagen you produce and the more wrinkles you get, the less hydration in your skin you get. Uh, and then a really good example of how important collagen is is scurvy. Okay? [00:12:00] Scurvy is scur. C Christian mentioned that vitamin C is important.
For producing collagen, you can't produce collagen without vitamin C. And so when sailors, hundreds of years ago would be out at sea and and didn't have any vitamin C, two different types of C there, but they didn't have any vitamin C, they would get scurvy because they wouldn't produce collagen, and as a result, their lips would start bleeding their.
Their joints were, oh my goodness, hurt, hurting, and, and they would die from scurvy. And that was all because of the lack of collagen. But collagen is extremely important component of our body. As I said, it makes up 25% of all the protein in our body. And, uh, it's, it's just essential. But that's what collagen is.
And it, it's important for our eyes, our blood vessels, our bones, our skin, everything. Christian, do you have anything to add to that? You know more about collagen than I do, but, uh.
Christian Chase: No, I mean, it, [00:13:00] it's, it's a complicated subject because it's not just a case of eat more collagen, get more collagen. Um, there are other co-factors.
You need vitamin C as one of them. There's, um, various minerals that you need as well. There's a few, um, amino acids that that can't be. Seven of the eight essential amino acids are involved in collagen production. So you need to eat a broad spectrum of proteins. Uh, and if any one of them is missing, you can't make certain types of collagen.
So it's fascinating. It's not a case of a silver bullet here, take collagen. It doesn't quite work that way.
Sawyer Stone: So you're sort of saying that our diet is impacting the ability for us to absorb and then create. Collagen absorb it if we take it and then create it ourselves based on the supplementation of it and or our natural production?
Christian Chase: Well, usually, usually no. If your [00:14:00] diet's good.
Sawyer Stone: Okay. But,
Christian Chase: um,
Sawyer Stone: ah,
Christian Chase: but in cases where people have, um, terrible, I hear watched a documentary the other night where, um, Sam Altman, the, um, the Cee o of Open AI open morning. He got scurvy. Yeah, he got scurvy because of a terrible diet when he was studying.
Sawyer Stone: Oh my goodness.
Christian Chase: So it's, yeah, if everything's there, it's fine. If even one component is missing, um, it's not fine. And as you age, your body is less compelled to make collagen as well. So it needs, it needs more of the building blocks. It needs more, more of the co-factors. It just needs more, I dunno, more of a, uh, reason to make collagen.
It's not as enthusiastic about it.
Sawyer Stone: Yeah. I know. Our bodies just, we get, we get towards the tail end of our ride tickets and our bodies start just slowing down and breaking apart on us, and we're just trying to keep it together. [00:15:00] But as Dr. Bill has said, you know, the life expectancy is once you're done rearing your children, you gotta go.
Yeah,
Christian Chase: well look, every, every single um, lifestyle advice piece of lifestyle advice that we would give to somebody regarding keeping telomeres long or, or keeping your cells young also applies to cold. Yeah. Stay hydrated. Don't smoke, don't drink excess alcohol. Stay out of the sun. All of those things apply to both equally.
Dr. Bill Andrews: Yeah. And, and eating well. That makes sense. Eating, eating. Collagen rich foods like steaks and things like that, that is not gonna come close to the benefits that, that collagen uh, solutions have. The col uh, like the peptides and stuff like that, that are found in the, the products that we can take as supplements.
Uh, and, uh, uh, but it, so, so it's, it diet doesn't interfere pretty much with collagen production [00:16:00] unless you have a really terrible diet. But it, it's not gonna help produce collagen as much as the supplements do.
Sawyer Stone: Okay. Well, and so you bring up an interesting point because you are a vegan and we know that most collagens come from animal byproducts, like a steak or something like that.
And so. You know, you don't have to expose yourself about whether or not you're a true vegan if you're taking a collagen supplement. But that is an interesting query is like if someone is a vegan, are they just super, super short on collagen? Is there, like, what are some, so what are some vegan ways to get collagen in your body, I guess is what I'm asking?
Dr. Bill Andrews: Well, just keep your vitamin C up, keep your hydration. Christian can, can talk a lot about that, but yeah, I, I'm a vegan but I'm not. A hundred percent vegan when there is no alternative. So, okay. I do take, I do take, uh, marine collagen, uh, product called revive. Okay. Uh, and, uh, [00:17:00] that's just 'cause my dermatologist who I mentioned before, doesn't, doesn't exactly understand how the product does produce collagen in your system, but I do take that and, and that, but that's practically the only non-vegan product that I do take just because I, I consider.
Increasing collagen is extremely important for decreasing aging and in, in increasing health. Yeah.
Sawyer Stone: Okay, great. I
Dr. Bill Andrews: would love, I would love to take a vegan collagen though. The second you have available, I will start taking it.
Christian Chase: There are a lot of things, um, that a vegan anyway that stimulate collagen production and, um, poly polyphenols is a really good example.
If you're low in polyphenols, even if you are, uh. A carnival eating steak every day. Um, those building blocks are not, are not necessarily gonna be turned into collagen. They're, they're going to just go to waste.
Sawyer Stone: Uh, Christian, before we continue forward, can you tell me what a polyphenol is for some of our [00:18:00] listeners that may not know?
Christian Chase: Sure. Well, polyphenols are organic micro ingredients that, uh, abundant in fruits, vegetables, and, um. A few other things, um, of, of certain an interest are things like, um, well actually a lot of the things in Telo vital are, are polyphenols as well, just coincidentally. Okay. And you can tell when you're eating something high in polyphenols because it will taste very astringent, uh, have a little bit of a better kick to it.
Uh, dark chocolate, for example, high in polyphenols. Which is a, is a nice one, but, um,
Sawyer Stone: yeah,
Christian Chase: yeah. Dairy. Does that mean something
Sawyer Stone: like a lemon that's like bitter, like the rind of a lemon's pretty bitter? Is that, is that sort of what you're saying? Or besides dark chocolate. What's another example of food?
Leafy leafy
Christian Chase: greens. We've got olive oil. Berries, brightly good. I see. Um, vegetables and fruits. Uh, green tea, massively high on, [00:19:00] oh, um, red wine. But I mean, I would, I'd limit that obviously 'cause of the alcohol.
Sawyer Stone: Listen, I'm always trying to find a way to rationalize my red love for red wine.
Christian Chase: Yeah.
Sawyer Stone: So good to know. It's helping with my collagen. Yeah.
Christian Chase: But I mean, other, other vegan, um, other things that are important to eat, um, to stimulate collagen that are vegan already is pineapple contains brom lane, which is an enzyme that helps the production and reduces inflammation, citrus fruit, amazing.
Lemons you mentioned already berries. Bell peppers, anything high in vitamin C and rich and antioxidants. Um, again, anything, anything that's, uh, longevity food is also a collagen food, so, so the collagen and the
Sawyer Stone: anti-aging idea really go hand in hand?
Christian Chase: Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, you look at young people, um.
Young vegans [00:20:00] don't have worse looking skin than, than young omnivores or young carnivores in, in my opinion, they probably have nicer looking skin because Yeah. The gene expression is there. They want to make collagen, um, unless they're eating crazy diets that are deficient in some of the essential amino acids, they're getting all the building blocks they need.
Sawyer Stone: Sure.
Christian Chase: And, and so the body just assembles the, um, the collagen. I mean, cow cows themselves. We, we, we eat bovine collagen, but the cow is vegan. The cow made it all true.
Sawyer Stone: Yeah, I, that's fascinating. I don't know why that's never clicked for me before, but that's a great point. Yeah, same here.
Dr. Bill Andrews: I, that didn't click for me either.
Sawyer Stone: It's awesome. That'll really be helpful to the listeners, sort of be able to understand that. That's great. Okay, so we've talked about some positive and negative effects of collagen on the body. We've talked about how eating collagen rich foods affects the body. Dr. Bill, tell us a little bit about what the [00:21:00] critical meta-analysis.
Of peer reviewed studies reveals about how collagen peptides affect our bodies. And maybe before we get into that, one of the two of you can explain what a collagen peptide is. Christian, you've mentioned it a little bit, but maybe you can give us sort of a breakdown about what that idea is before Dr.
Bill gets into the critic of critical meta analysis.
Christian Chase: Well, a peptide of any kind, collagen or otherwise, is simply a, um, a string of two or more amino acids that join together with what's called a peptide bond. Um, they're really, they're really, um, popular lately. People are taking engineered peptides, um, and a few of them are really good for collagen production as well.
Um, there's, I take, um, one of them, my favorite one is called G-H-K-C-U, which is a copper peptide, which induces collagen production. Um, but there are many others. Um, BPC 1 57. It's also been shown to do it. [00:22:00] Uh, you'll, your listeners can look these up, um, after. Yeah, but the, the, basically they're part of, um. A library of peptides that a lot of biohackers use.
They're considered research chemicals. They're not approved as medicine. They sort of fall through the cracks. But yeah, to long story short, a peptide is two or more amino acids joined together.
Sawyer Stone: Great. Thank you for that. I appreciate that explanation. All right, Dr. Bill, take it away.
Dr. Bill Andrews: Uh, lemme just add a key peptide.
Uh, is the tripeptide that Christian was talking about before, which is found, uh, a lot in, uh, both bovine and human collagen. More, more in human than, than bovine. And it's it's sequence of three amino acids. So that's why it's called a tripeptide. Uh, it's glycine followed by X and Y, which are two amino acids that can be proline or hydroxyproline.
And those, so when, when collagen gets [00:23:00] digested. That, those, that tripeptide gets secret created into the, uh, blood. And that is what was one of the most potent stimulators of collagen production inside of our cells by mostly fibroblast cells. Uh, so, oh, so that, that's just a, a little more about the peptides.
That's why, that's why it's important to do the peptides more than. Full length collagen because it takes a lot to produ to change that full length collagen into the tripeptides. Uh, but the, the peer reviewed studies, it is actually pretty simple, uh, when it comes to collagen because they all, they're all pretty good.
They all say that taking collagen supplements is really important. Okay? It's gonna work better than anything else you can do to stimulate collagen production. There's been several studies on collagen. All of 'em are saying that collagen is good. There's there, there's a few non-PE reviewed [00:24:00] studies that, that say that collagen products are questionable, but none of them say they don't work at all.
Okay. Uh, sure. And that's only because some of the product. Manufacturers kind of over exaggerate the, uh, use utilities of taking collagen supplements, but even though they over exaggerate, they don't need to because they're, they're all really good. So a study came out just last year, which I thought was really good in 2024, where they actually looked at, uh, and it's a good study.
So in terms of critical meta-analysis, it passes blind colors and I can provide that reference, uh, in. In the notes. Yeah,
Sawyer Stone: that'd be great.
Dr. Bill Andrews: The, uh, but it looked at a lot of different collagen products and I've done the same thing too. They're all, none of 'em are pure collagen. A lot of 'em say just collagen on the bottles, but they all, every single one of 'em, I've not found any of 'em that are just actually collagen, unless it says it is full collagen for some other reason.
But all of 'em are actually peptides. [00:25:00] That induced collagen. I
Sawyer Stone: see.
Dr. Bill Andrews: I just, the general public. The general public, I guess it's more marketable just to say it is collagen and to try instead of the supplement. But, uh, it, it, one thing that I found surprising, not, or unsurprising in this study is that it couldn't find any products that work better than any other products.
So it is actually fairly simple as long as you have things like the peptides. And you have, uh, vitamin C and copper and a few other important things. Antioxidants six, two, uh, they all work. Okay. So, so I don't think there's the only, the only problem is they're not vegan. Okay. And that's, that's, yeah. That, so I look forward to the introduction of a vegan collagen someday, and I think Christian's gonna be the person that takes it.
And as soon as I'll probably start taking it before it's even marketed.
Sawyer Stone: You've got the inside scoop. And the inside source. Yeah. That's why our next [00:26:00] question is what science goes into actually making a collagen supplement and how do they do it? And we, so we've talked about that a little bit because collagen supplements are a, a string or a series of peptides or tripeptides that induce collagen performance in your body.
Christian Chase: Uh, yeah, collagen. Collagen production would probably be a better way of saying it. Okay. They induce carbon production and they provide the building blocks to assemble the collagen as well if they're not already present. So, I mean, I, in my opinion, most collagen supplements have got very little science behind them.
Um, things that are just hydrolyzed bovine collagen, for example, which, which 90% of them are. They're using a byproduct of, of the cow that nobody else wants. Um, the cow will go to, it'll take the best bits, then it'll go to the pet food factory. They'll take the rest, and they're [00:27:00] left with the hard, stringy achilles tendons and other connective tissue that you can't really do anything with.
And so they grind that up, they hydrolyze it and they sell it to you. And it's, um, it's not that it's not good for you, it is good for you, but they could do a lot more. They could put a lot of the co-factors, we've talked into it. They could put vitamin C into it. They could put polyphenols into it. They could put some of the sulfur containing amino acids that are lacking in bovine collagen and are more abundant in human collagen.
And the, the hydrolyzation itself could be more thorough. Um, they're only putting it down to a molecular weight of between 3000 and 5,000 Daltons, whereas the Tripeptide itself could be as light as 500. I'll let Bill. More about that, but um, yeah, a [00:28:00] lot more in my opinion, could be done to improve, um, bovine college.
Well, animal collagen also bovine collagen is only type one and type three collagen present in it. They could add other sources. They could mix in some chicken co collagen and some marine collagen. They would work better synergistically as a blend than just choosing one over the other. There are a few products like that that I've seen online, but the majority, um, in my opinion, have got very little science behind them.
Dr. Bill Andrews: When Christian's saying that there's very little science behind it, doesn't mean that there's not been a lot of science done. What he's, I think he's referring to the fact that it requires very little science to deal with collagen. Okay. Collagen is, is producing collagen is just simply. Isolating collagen from cow hides or tendons or things like that, or chickens or pigs or, uh, other [00:29:00] sources, fish, marine, collagen, and then doing something to hydrolyze it.
So break it down into the small peptides, which is done by acids or proteases and things like that. And then that's it. So there's very little science. It's, it's actually a fairly simple product to make. That's probably why all the products work equally well because it's simple.
Sawyer Stone: Sure. Okay. Well, before you answer or fill in sort of what Christian was saying, Christian, you said there are types mm-hmm.
Of collagen and so maybe, maybe Dr. Be can talk first and then maybe later you can tell us. But I just, I'm curious about like what are the differences in the types and how many types there are?
Christian Chase: Well, as Bill said earlier, there are 28 different types of collagen, and I'm not familiar.
Sawyer Stone: Oh, I missed that.
Christian Chase: Yeah, I'm not familiar with what they all are.
Um, okay. Every, every different structure in your body has a different type of collagen. The collagen in your hair and nails, I believe is type of, oh, [00:30:00]
Sawyer Stone: sure.
Christian Chase: Three. Um, the collagen in your skin is type one, the collagen in your joints is type two. Um, and then there's everything in between. There's the eyeball collagen and collagen and your heart muscle, and, you know, there'll all be different types of collagen, but, you know, it's a, it's a shame.
That's why I said they should mix them because, um, personally I went to the health food store the other day and, um, they had a reasonable selection of collagen, but I predominantly was buying collagen for my skin. I want my skin, as I said, to become more elastic as I lose weight. And, um, you know, look nice and tight, but I also have some joint issues, so,
Sawyer Stone: Hmm.
Christian Chase: I had, I had, I mean, it does exist, but I couldn't find a collagen product that had both type one and type two collagen in it. Type one is predominantly bovine and type two is, is chicken collagen. I could get one or the other.
Sawyer Stone: Yeah. I would [00:31:00]
Christian Chase: really want to spend money on both. Um, yeah, that's
Sawyer Stone: fair.
Christian Chase: Yeah. In, in my opinion, if you wanted to make a really good collagen supplement, you'd have stuff that, um, represented the building blocks or had the building blocks of all the types of collagen, not just a couple.
Sawyer Stone: Yeah, that totally makes sense to me.
Dr. Bill Andrews: And lemme just add that, uh, 90% of the collagen in humans is made up of type one and type three collagen. And type three is more related to elasticity. So it finds not just tensile strength like collagen one does, but it also provides elasticity and the different types of collagens.
'cause there's 28 different genes for collagen, and we make 28 different types of collagen. And then when you factor that into the fact that. Collagen actually forms [00:32:00] a triple helix. So it's made up of three different collagens with 28 different ways of putting threes together. You have actually a tremendous number of different co collagen, uh.
Uh, types, just, just to deal with all the different types of tissues you have in your body. So it is, but, but the, but the peptides induce probably all of 'em. I don't think anybody's ever looked at making certain, if the peptides don't induce all of 'em, but it definitely in induces the type one, two, and three.
Sawyer Stone: Okay. Good to know. Thank you for answering that question. That's helpful. Okay, let's see what's next. Are adding collagen peptides to your diet or to your. Lifestyle, a cure all can buying and using one product drastically improve our body's collagen. Production,
Dr. Bill Andrews: drastically is not the right word, but significantly is.
Yeah. So it it does significantly, but it's not a cure all. It's, it's, it's just, [00:33:00] but it benefits you a lot in a lot of ways in terms of holding your body together. I mean, there are diseases, um, oh God, what's the name of this? Starts with. Eur or something like that? I, a disease.
Sawyer Stone: Oh, LR Sandler.
Dr. Bill Andrews: Yeah. Yeah. Okay, good.
Yeah, thanks for saying that. That's a case of where you're not producing enough collagen or the right types of collagen. Uh, and, uh, so it, it's, it's important, um, collagen, it's an example of how important collagen is to our bodies.
Sawyer Stone: Yeah,
Christian Chase: and I think people need to know that. Um, most studies show most studies are done on, on a quite a lot of collagen, um, collagen capsules.
Um, when you look at the amount of collagen actually in the capsule, um, are very difficult to get enough collagen from. You're probably better off with a powder. If you already do protein powder shakes, you can just put the collagen powder in with that. It, it usually is unflavored. It doesn't [00:34:00] really make it taste any different, and it doesn't change your lifestyle either.
I've seen people put it in water, um, with the drinks at the gym, so it's pretty easy to do, but you've gotta make sure you're getting enough. I would say most studies, almost all studies are at least five grams. But, um, I think it's 10 grams. Yeah. What I, what I've been reading is 10 to
Dr. Bill Andrews: 20 grams a
Christian Chase: day is
Dr. Bill Andrews: what people need to
Christian Chase: be taking.
Yeah. I would recommend probably 15 grams a day of, um, op of bovine collagen, if that's, if that's the way you're going.
Sawyer Stone: Yeah. Okay, great. So, not a cure all but can help for sure. And then so. If, if you're gonna buy a collagen product, you know, whether it's type one or type three bovine or chicken, what can someone look for on a nutritional fax label or on the label of the product in general?
Like you just said, Christian, that you prefer the [00:35:00] powder over a capsule supplement. And so what can someone look for on a collagen supplement to understand that that's a high quality product that y'all would recommend them to take?
Christian Chase: Okay. Do you want me to answer that bill?
Dr. Bill Andrews: Well, I, I can answer it, but tell me if, if you know of anything, like just make certain that there's vitamin C in it.
I mean, you do get vitamin C in your regular diet anyway, but it's better if, if you, if you get a collagen product that has vitamin C in it and also copper, uh, those two things are extremely important. Uh, and just make certain that the quantity is, is sufficient. Okay. So, you know, at least 10 grams.
Christian Chase: Yeah.
What else? What else? And you have to be careful because, um, some things that are are labeled as collagen are not even collagen, they're just collagen oysters, which is nothing wrong with that, but they wouldn't have the tripeptides. So when we say, sure, you want 10 to 15 grams or more of collagen, and it doesn't mean.
[00:36:00] 10 to 15 grams of collagen powder that you bought that that 10 grams of collagen powder might only have five grams of collagen in it. So you really have to the label, right?
Sawyer Stone: Yeah. Okay. Good to know. Good to know. All right. Let's see, and then I think we've got one more question. Are there things that we can eat or drink or do that negate the need for our collagen supplement?
So like if the question is, why should we take them? If I'm doing this, like if I have a thousand oranges a day, am I getting all the vitamin CI need? That's exaggeration. But
Dr. Bill Andrews: I, I can't think of anything. Anything that you can do that to supplement, taking the supplement of, uh, peptides, collagen peptides.
Christian Chase: Yeah. Nothing is, the only thing I can think of that is, comes close to being as effective is, um, just be very young. Okay. So [00:37:00] like, be less than 20 years old if you can, um, quite possibly don't need a collagen supplement.
Dr. Bill Andrews: So, so that's not keeping ke lengthening, keeping him long Yeah. Is something that, uh, should be very beneficial And, and, uh.
Products are gonna get better and better in in that sense, and possibly, eventually totally replace the need for collagen supplements.
Christian Chase: Yeah, my two.
Sawyer Stone: Yeah. Well, we've talked about this. Let's go into this a little bit before we finish up. We've talked about the telomeres and the collagen sort of working hand in hand. Can y'all chat a little bit more about what the collagen is doing to help induce the lengthening of the telomere? Have we already covered that and I missed it?
Dr. Bill Andrews: Well, no, we didn't, but collagen does provide antioxidant activity. So it does when, so when you do have, uh, [00:38:00] sufficient collagen, you, you are decreasing the rate of. Accelerated seal shortening. Yeah. But what, what I was referring to was the idea that when, like, so, uh, in 2000, the year 2000, Dr. Walter Funk, who used to work with me at Geron Corporation, uh, did an experiment where he had, uh, induced telomerase expression in human skin that was grown on the back of a mouth.
And one of the things that, one of the most notable things that he found was that. It restored collagen to youthful levels. It reduced collagenase, which is an enzyme that actually breaks down collagen. It reduced that expression to youthful levels. It increased, increased elastin and decreased elastin a just as effectively as it and did collagen.
So, so I think telomeres are gonna play a significant role in, in keeping our collagen levels up, but it also works the other way around. The collagen [00:39:00] also helps protect. Ex protects a person from accelerated tel ome shortening.
Sawyer Stone: Mm, there you go.
Christian Chase: Yeah. And most significantly, um, inducing telomere, um, improves collagen production.
Sawyer Stone: Great. So Telo vital is helping us all.
Christian Chase: Yeah.
Sawyer Stone: Good. Good, good, good. Alright, well, gentlemen, is there anything else you can think of that our listeners might want or need to know about collagen before we. Pop out of their ears.
Dr. Bill Andrews: I just think it's something that people should be taking. Uh, it's a good, good product and I just wish there was a vegan version and
Christian Chase: Well, I was Tristan,
Sawyer Stone: he's really pressuring you.
Christian Chase: I, I was a skeptic for years. For years I just thought, oh, this collagen stuff has rubbish. All your body does is break it down into amino acids and reassemble it. You could as well just eat protein. Yeah. And then I looked into it and it's not rubbish at all. It, it, it [00:40:00] does stimulate collagen production, um, through this complicated way that, that I now understand, but, um, had just dismissed and now I would put it right up there with vitamin D as, um, one of the essential basic things, vitamin D, vitamin C, collagen, they're all up there as something everybody should be taking.
Great.
Sawyer Stone: Yeah. That's awesome. Cool. Well, Christian, thank you so much for waking up early and joining us all the way from New Zealand. We really appreciate that. And Dr. Bill, thanks for hanging out.
Dr. Bill Andrews: All right. Thank you.
Sawyer Stone: Thanks for joining us on Up one. If you found today's conversation valuable, be sure to subscribe and share this episode with someone who's curious about the real science behind help.
Dr. Bill Andrews: Have a topic you want us to break down. Send us your questions. We're here to help you separate fact from fiction. [00:41:00]
Sawyer Stone: Until next time, stay curious.
Stay informed. And let's keep taking it up one.