The great collagen debate. Collagen may be part of your daily routine. If not, you may have heard of people pouring it into their daily cup of coffee. The collagen craze is catching on, but some doctors warn, it's just marketing.
"I do think it's working," said Liz Gospel, who swears by collagen.
"I put it in my morning caffeine beverage. It just dissolves in there. I can't taste it. At night, I'll make a bed time tea," said Gospel.
She started taking it for joint health and noticed other benefits.
"After month two, I really noticed my nails are strong, they were growing really fast and my hair is really strong and healthy," said Gospel.
Dr. Bonnie Gasquet isn't convinced.
"They take the product thinking that 'OK, I'm going to get collagen back.' It's like taking hair because I want new hair. It's not how it works," she said. "The collagen protein is likely not doing you much at all."
Gasquet argues it's everything else doing the work.
"They need the building blocks, not actual collagen. They need messages to tell their body to renew and that's the anti-aging beauty of it."
She suggested talking to your doctor to figure out what vitamins you really need.
"The vitamins and trace elements and whatever it is that is with the collagen, that's what's giving you results. Its not technically just the collagen protein."
Gasquet also warned about what could be in the collagen you're taking.
"Most of this came from cow, these are bovine. Some of them come from rat tails. Some of them come from fish. Some of them come from algae, some of them from chicken," she said.
The trend of putting it into your coffee? She's not a fan of that either.
"You can imagine, if you have proteins that are linked together, if you put it in a hot beverage, it breaks apart. It's not going to go back together," she said. "Like taking your child's LEGO building and chunking it into the toy box and expecting it to come back together."
