Ann M. Coulston and Carol J. Boushey
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 The most abundant protein in the organic compartment is type I collagen, a fibrillar structure consisting of three interweaving strands, normally two strands of alpha-1 collagen and one of alpha-2 collagen. collagen represents 98% of the organic phase of bone and various noncollagen proteins account for the remainder [7].
The mineral phase of bone is about 95% hydroxy apatite, a highly organized crystal of calcium and phosphorus. Other minerals normally found in bone mineral include sodium (indeed, about 30% of total body sodium can be stored in bone crystal), magnesium, and fluoride. |
Lester A. Mitscher and Victoria Toews
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 The interlacing of collagen with elastin (a protein found in the body's elastic tissues) gives skin its strength, elasticity, and smoothness. When free radicals attack collagen, they damage the molecules that determine the skin's appearance and so contribute to an older-looking face. In addition, the enzyme colla-genase breaks down collagen. The energy in the sun's ultraviolet rays can turn susceptible stable molecules into free radicals and therefore are a major threat to firm, youthful skin. Frequent or prolonged sun exposure is a major contributor to premature aging and wrinkles. |
Gabriel Cousens
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 Increased capillary permeability, resulting in retinal hemorrhage with resultant abnormal collagen repair, is an underlying cause of diabetic retinopathy. Bilberry can decrease abnormal collagen formation and capillary permeability, thus helping prevent retinopathy.195 In another study, fifty-four diabetic patients were treated with 500-600 mg per day of an extract for eight to thirty-three months. Almost total normalization of collagen polymers was achieved, as well as a 30 percent decrease in structural glycoprotein. |
Andreas Moritz
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 Examinations of connective tissue in obese people have proved that it contains not only plump fat cells, but also large amounts of dense collagen-fiber. collagen is 100 percent pure protein. Building more collagen-fiber than normally needed is one of the main emergency measures the body takes to deal with dangerously high protein concentrations in the blood. By removing the protein from the blood and thereby putting it out of circulation, the blood becomes thin and a major crisis is avoided. |
Paul D. Blanc, M.D.
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 Although plants do not make collagen, they do produce theit own long molecular polymers that, like collagen, help them hold themselves together. These polymers, too, can be exploited for their adhesive qualities. In contrast to collagen, however, gluey plant polymers are made up of repeated sequences of sugars, not amino acids. Very long polymer strings of sugar occurring in nature are called cellulose. Somewhat shorter strings of sugar also occur in nature. They are not as stiff as cellulose, but they too can be usefully sticky. |
Hyla Cass
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 VITAMIN C: GOOD NUTRITION WHILE USING NSAIDS
Vitamin C (ascorbic acid) is an antioxidant vitamin that also happens to be a building block of collagen. collagen is the material the body uses to build connective tissue, including skin, blood vessel walls, gums, bone, teeth, tendons, ligaments, and cartilage. Depletion of vitamin C could partially explain why NSAIDs cause cartilage to break down. This vitamin "activates" folic acid and is a part of the process of building neurotransmitters and steroid hormones.
The highest concentrations of vitamin C in the body are in the adrenal glands. |
Paul D. Blanc, M.D.
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| At best, none is a very strong glue (one tends not to make furniture out of papier-mache, after all), but just as with protein collagen, none is particularly toxic, either. water solubility
The animal glues and the vegetable gums may differ in their strength and utility, but they have one very important thing in common: both are water soluble. Even in the eleventh century, Rugerus understood that glue-stuff dissolves in water, even if he didn't know that it was collagen that he was extracting by so patiently simmering his fish heads and stag horns. |
Andreas Moritz
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 Excessive proteins are "temporarily" stored in the connective tissues and then converted into collagen fiber. The collagen fiber is built into the basal membranes of the capillary walls. The basal membranes may become up to ten times as thick as normal. A similar situation occurs in the arteries. As the blood vessel walls become increasingly congested, fewer proteins are able to escape the bloodstream. This leads to blood thickening, making it more and more difficult for the kidneys to filter. |
Dr. Steven R. Gundry
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 Vitamin C, also found in green leaves, is essential to rebuild collagen breaks in your blood vessels and skin. The sun's rays cause wrinkles, which are one kind of collagen break. (Add vitamin C to your face cream and those wrinkles vanish, or at least diminish.) Vitamin C is also essential for recharging other vitamins, including beta-carotene, which becomes a pro-oxidant without vitamin C's help. (Pro-oxidants are the bad guys; antioxidants are the good guys. |
Andreas Moritz
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| Excessive proteins are "temporarily" stored in the connective tissues and then converted into collagen fiber. The collagen fiber is built into the basal membranes of the capillary walls. The basal membranes may become up to ten times as thick as normal. A similar situation occurs in the arteries. As the blood vessel walls become increasingly congested, fewer proteins are able to escape the bloodstream. This leads to blood thickening, making it more and more difficult for the kidneys to filter. |
Connie Bennett, C.H.H.C. with Stephen T. Sinatra, M.D.
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 When you have collagen breakdown, that's when wrinkles and fine lines start to appear."
But our bodies are quite miraculous: collagen can be rebuilt. "The skin goes through a regenerative process every 28 days. It doesn't matter at what age you start," says Dr. Lam, medical education director at the Pasadena, California-based Academy of Anti-Aging Research, a worldwide society of health professionals dedicated to advancing antiaging medicine.
"Of course, the more damage you have to your skin, the harder it is to repair. |
| Those deep grooves remain, because that is where the sugar molecules have attached to collagen, making the fibers stiff and inflexible.
The bond between the sugar and collagen generates a large number of free radicals leading to more inflammation. When glycation occurs in the skin, the ultimate effect is not unlike tanning a leather hide. Over time, skin begins to resemble a cross between beef jerky and an old boot, unevenly discolored and heavily striated with deep lines and grooves.
But it is not just the skin we have to worry about. |
Dawson Church
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 Cell biologists studying collagen reductively would miss these unique properties. Broken down into individual collagen molecules, connective tissue does not have the same characteristics; it takes its collection into a parallel array structure to produce its ability to conduct and store energy The electrical properties of the connective tissue also explain how cells can communicate much faster than the speed of neural transmission.
Each cell also has a skeletal structure. The shape of the cell is partially determined by a system of cylindrical protein "beams" called microtubules. |
| D E
Tissues with highly regular arrays of molecules include (A) rod and cone cells in the eye; (B) collagen molecules in connective tissue; (C) phospholipids in a cell membrane; (D) cross-section of muscle tissue showing actin and myosin molecules, and (E) DNA molecules in a chromosome1
This crystalline structure of the collagen molecules that make up your connective tissue has a remarkable property: it is a semiconductor. Semiconductors are not only able to conduct energy, in the way the wiring system in your house conducts electricity very quickly from one point to another. |
| Collagen fibers are composed of collagen fibrils, assemblies of molecules secreted outside of specialized connective tissue cells, called fibroblasts. Taken as a whole, the connective tissue system is the largest organ of the body.
Below the skin and superficial fascia are the ligaments (white areas)
Yet the simplicity and ubiquity of the connective tissue system masks an important characteristic: connective tissue fibers are arranged in highly regular arrays. There is a name for a highly regular parallel array of molecules, whether it's in liquid or solid form: it's called a crystal. |
Paul D. Blanc, M.D.
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| Even in the eleventh century, Rugerus understood that glue-stuff dissolves in water, even if he didn't know that it was collagen that he was extracting by so patiently simmering his fish heads and stag horns.
Collagen and starch are water soluble because, fundamentally, the wotld of a living cell is water bound. All its vital connections interface with an aqueous environment. The water solubility of the plant and animal glues has critical importance for evaluating any adverse health effects these glues might have. |
Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., C.N.S.
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 Remember that free radicals can and do damage collagen and connective tissue, and the antioxidant activity of vitamin C helps protect against this damage all the while helping collagen synthesis.) And a paper published in Arthritis and Rheumatism that looked at 640 human participants from the Framingham Osteoarthritis Cohort Study found a threefold reduction in the risk of osteoarthritis progression for those with higher intakes of vitamin C. This also translated into a reduced risk of cartilage loss. |
Hyla Cass, M.D.
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| VITAMIN C: GOOD NUTRITION WHILE USING NSAIDS
Vitamin C (ascorbic acid) is an antioxidant vitamin that also happens to be a building block of collagen. collagen is the material the body uses to build connective tissue, including skin, blood vessel walls, gums, bone, teeth, tendons, ligaments, and cartilage. Depletion of vitamin C could partially explain why NSAIDs cause cartilage to break down. This vitamin "activates" folic acid and is a part of the process of building neurotransmitters and steroid hormones.
The highest concentrations of vitamin C in the body are in the adrenal glands. |
Bryan Hanson, PhD
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 In later stages, the smooth muscle cells begin to proliferate and synthesize collagen, the protein which holds our skin together. The collagen is also deposited into the subendothelial space, which becomes a dumping ground for damaged molecules held together by a matrix of collagen. Finally, cholesterol and the calcium salts begin to precipitate as crystals. This is the ultimate "hardened artery," and obviously we'd like to avoid it.
Are there ways to avoid developing atherosclerosis? Certainly. |
| Tannins stabilize the collagen (a protein) in animal skins by working their way in between the collagen strands and then binding to the collagen and other proteins present in the skin. Tannins also precipitate most types of proteins. If taken orally or applied to the skin they produce astringency—a feeling of tightening and drying—due to the precipitation process. If significant quantities are taken orally, tannins can be quite hard on the stomach. Chemically, tannins fall into two classes, which are structurally quite different: the hydrolyzable tannins and the condensed tannins. |
Mehmet C. Oz., M.D. and Michael F. Roizen, M.D.
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 UV radiation causes the structural protein of our skin, collagen, to break down and disables our ability to repair damage. Another way sun ages our skin is through the formation of free radicals—those aggressive charged compounds that damage cells and break down collagen as well. Free radicals can cause cancer by changing our DNA and preventing our body from repairing it. How? UV destroys the rungs of the DNA ladder so that the DNA ladder posts bind with one another. This makes a bulge so that the DNA doesn't form—or function—correctly. |
Lester A. Mitscher and Victoria Toews
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| Flavonoids in general are well known for supporting healthy collagen and elastin and maintaining their elasticity. In part, they do this by realigning these proteins to a more youthful, undamaged form. Among the polyphenols in green tea, EGCG and ECG show the strongest effect in reducing collagenase activity. Supplementing the diet with antioxidants, such as green tea's polyphenols, lessens the likelihood of wrinkles.7
Allergies that produce skin reactions are a common affliction, affecting 15 percent of the population. |
Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
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 The reason is that grape seed extract is one of the best collagen cross-linkers known. You get weakened blood vessels when you get glycation of the proteins because you have high blood sugar all the time. If you can cross-link those proteins and collagen, you are going to prevent the blood vessels from just deteriorating. That is some of the design logic that goes into a product like Diabetes Defense.
The cost of pet nutrition vs. sick pets
Mike: Many pet owners say, "Well that is going to get very expensive for me to keep buying these vitamins. |
Gabriel Cousens
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| Two extracellular proteins, collagen and elastin, are particularly affected, and we see it in the skin as wrinkles. The formation of AGEs throughout the body is an accelerated aging process, hence the apt abbreviation of glycosylation or glycation as AGE. AGE-related changes to collagen and elastin are believed to contribute to the stiffness of blood vessels and the urinary bladder, as well as impaired functioning of the kidneys, heart, retinas, and other organs and tissues. |
Hyla Cass, M.D.
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| VITAMIN C: GOOD NUTRITION WHILE USING NSAIDS
Vitamin C (ascorbic acid) is an antioxidant vitamin that also happens to be a building block of collagen. collagen is the material the body uses to build connective tissue, including skin, blood vessel walls, gums, bone, teeth, tendons, ligaments, and cartilage. Depletion of vitamin C could partially explain why NSAIDs cause cartilage to break down. This vitamin "activates" folic acid and is a part of the process of building neurotransmitters and steroid hormones.
The highest concentrations of vitamin C in the body are in the adrenal glands. |
Gabriel Cousens
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| Bilberry can decrease abnormal collagen formation and capillary permeability, thus helping prevent retinopathy.195 In another study, fifty-four diabetic patients were treated with 500-600 mg per day of an extract for eight to thirty-three months. Almost total normalization of collagen polymers was achieved, as well as a 30 percent decrease in structural glycoprotein.196
Dosage: Prepare bilberry tea as an infusion, using one teaspoon of dried berries in 1 cup of water. Drink one cup per day. |
the Editors of PREVENTION
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 If the mixture seems either too runny or too thick, adjust it by adding a bit more
Cause: Wrinkles are caused by the breakdown of collagen, the intertwined cell layer that forms an elastic, spongy base under the second layer of your skin. When you're young, collagen easily absorbs moisture and swells to keep your skin plump, smooth, and resilient. As you age, though, your body makes less collagen, and the existing collagen loses some of its ability to soak up water. Crevices in the collagen eventually cause the skin to collapse and fold on the surface. |
Mehmet C. Oz., M.D. and Michael F. Roizen, M.D.
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| You need collagen for the smooth functioning of joints. High blood sugar magnifies all aches and pains and can lead to impaired joint movement—and eventually arthritis.
In your lungs: The glycosylation of collagen results in abnormal recoil of the elastic tissue, so you have trouble getting the air out as well as in. This occurs slowly in lung connective tissue, but forty years of high glucose levels often lead to respiratory failure—the inability to get enough oxygen into your blood without the use of an oxygen tank. |
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