How to Increase Collagen in Your Skin. Here's What You Should Know
What is Collagen and what happens to skin when it breaks down?
Collagen is a vital protein in the dermal layer of your skin that provides structural support and helps skin looking firm, smooth and youthful. As you age collagen production slows and existing collagen begins to break down, so it's important to maintain healthy collagen levels. In skin, collagen starts to break down at around the age of 25, which can result in signs of ageing such as wrinkles, fine lines and sagging. Environmental factors such as sun exposure, smoking, and poor nutrition can accelerate the breakdown of collagen in the skin.
Does Collagen infused skincare work?
Applying collagen directly to your skin won't help - the protein molecule is too large to penetrate the epidermis - which means skin products with collagen are unlikely to provide their claimed benefits.
However, some topical ingredients can stimulate your natural collagen production.
Using Peptides to stimulate collagen production
Your skin contains natural peptides that signal to the skin to produce more collagen. These peptides can be synthesized in the lab or isolated from natural sources.
Peptides are small protein fragments made of amino acids, that when applied to the skin, can penetrate the outermost layer and reach the deeper layers where collagen is produced because of their smaller size. Once there, they can interact with the cells that produce collagen, called fibroblasts. By binding to specific receptors on the surface of these cells, peptides can trigger a series of biochemical reactions that lead to increased collagen synthesis.
Going a step farther, biomimetic peptides mimick the structure and function of natural peptides, are more readily absorbed and more effectively trigger your body's natural collagen synthesis response.
Our KIGELIA Corrective Moisturiser contains three biomimetic peptides, which are some of the most well studied with robust clinical research, improving skin texture and regeneration while helping to prevent skin ageing.
The takeaway
When looking for results driven skincare our advice is always to look at the science behind marketing claims and the ingredients list. Reach out to brands if there are ingredients you don't understand or need further explanation around their efficacy and how they benefit the skin.
