Tim Mount, educator for NeoCell Health, joined Andrea Donsky and Lisa Davis on Naturally Savvy Radio to discuss the best ways to boost your collagen. [The following transcript has been edited for print.]
Listen to the full radio interview here
Participants: Lisa Davis, MPH
Andrea Donsky, RHN
Tim Mount, CN, CCMH
Lisa Davis: Here on Naturally Savvy, Andrea and I love to talk about beauty and natural ways to boost your beauty through nutrition. We always love when Tim Mount from NeoCell comes on the show. We love to talk about how to build up collagen so we have nice, beautiful shiny hair and much more. Hey Tim, welcome back.
Tim Mount: Hi, thank you. It’s always a pleasure being here.
Lisa Davis: I want to start by saying I need to go to a twelve-step group to quit the NeoCell mint chocolate chews. I have no self-control! I’ve had to ask my husband to hide them. Seriously. They’re really good and they’re good for me.
Tim Mount: I ate probably 20 yesterday at a show and I could not stop eating them; I’m addicted to them too, so I feel you.
Lisa Davis: Andrea have you tried these?
Andrea Donsky: Yes I have and they’re delicious. You know I was thinking to myself when I saw you, that you are looking pretty good today. Maybe it’s all the chews you’ve been eating from NeoCell.
Lisa Davis: See! My cheeks are all plumped up and it’s not filler. Tim let’s talk about this. There are things you can chew, there’s things you can take, there’s things with food. Are there food sources for collagen?
Tim Mount: Well for collagen and hyaluronic acid which are the chews, you can’t really get them in your diet. For collagen it’s not very digestible and absorbable, so you only have about an 8% absorption rate for naturally occurring collagen. A lot of people like to take that in a soup or cook bone broth and it does do something but it’s not nearly as effective as a supplement which has a 90% absorption rate. As far as hyaluronic acid, unless people are eating gross parts of animals, eyeballs and such, you’re probably not going to get it in a diet.
Lisa Davis: No thank you!
Andrea Donsky: Ew! Is that what it’s really made from?
Tim Mount: Well that’s not where supplements come from, but if you’re going to get it in the diet, that’s one of the main concentrations that people used to get it from.
Andrea Donsky: Interesting.
Lisa Davis: Now you mentioned hyaluronic acid, I use a product that I love, Pure Attitude, and it has the hyaluronic acid in it. Now I use that topically.
Andrea Donsky: It’s a lotion, right?
Lisa Davis: Would you advise that as well? Both take it internally and topically?
Tim Mount: Well it depends on what benefit you’re looking for. For hyaluronic acid the benefit goes away topically after a few hours, or at least by the end of the day because it’s a big molecule and it can’t penetrate the outer layer of skin, the epidermis. When you take it internally, it will stay for several days, three, four, five days because it actually gets deposited into the very dermal layers of the skin and it stays around for quite a while. So it’s more of a long-lasting effect that way.
Andrea Donsky: I want people to understand the importance of hyaluronic acid and collagen and why we should be taking it. As you know Lisa I got to meet Tim a month ago and it was such an honor to meet you Tim because, first of all, you’re so knowledgeable when it comes to this. And I’m a huge believer in taking collagen, we need it. And we need it at all ages. Tim, give us all a little bit of a recap and a summary of why we should be taking this super, super important supplement.
Tim Mount:
The two most abundant substances in the body are water and collagen; water is number one and collagen is number two. Basically, all of your body’s tissues are made, in some degree, made up of collagen and then of course they’re hydrated as well. The problem is that after the age of 25, collagen production declines and your body starts to dry out as well. The two kind of go hand and hand. As a supplement, you can do something about that natural drop in production because that’s what causes these aging signs and symptoms; the wrinkling of the skin, the falling out or thinning of the hair, the weakening of the bones and joints, dry skin, dry eyes, all of that, the creaky joints, it’s all related to collagen and hyaluronic acid. What supplements do is they naturally boost your production of collagen when you take it internally as an oral supplement and therefore you begin to rebuild your tissues from the inside. When you take hyaluronic acid, it actually sticks to the collagen fibers and it will pull hydration into the tissues, very specifically the skin and joints. Synovial fluid in the joints is hyaluronic acid and water. So you’re going to be rehydrating the body and you’re going to be rebuilding the actual structure of it by taking those two supplements.
Lisa Davis: I love the chews. How many should people take a day?
Tim Mount: For the Beauty Burst or collagen and hyaluronic acid, you can take between two and four or as many as you want. I say that because it’s not dangerous and I’ve been known to eat a whole bag during a show. It’s really just as much as you really feel like you need. They’re a great maintenance type of product because you get a really tasty product. You can you keep it in your purse and every time you’re hungry or feel like a snack, you just reach in and grab a few of them and there you go.
Andrea Donsky: Do all of Neocell's products have hyaluronic acid in it?
Tim Mount: When we first started out we had just basic collagen products – our super collagen line. They still remain the best sellers in the nation so it’s a product that has almost a 30 year history of use and benefit. But as we’ve progressed, we started to combine collagen with these other nutrients like hyaluronic acid, so it depends on what product youchoose. The Beauty Burst will have hyaluronic acid, our new Derma Matrix has collagen and hyaluronic acid, our Beauty Infusion is more of a premium formula. We’ve started adding in things like biotin for hair and nail growth for an added beauty benefit. We have ceramides in some of our products that help with skin hydration at the surface layer of the skin. We have some keratin products that help to stimulate hair growth at the cellular level, so it depends on what you’re looking for. Collagen in general is fine, but you can get some of those more complete formulas too if you’re looking for that. We also have something called The Beauty Builder and that is a tablet and it has collagen, hyaluronic acid, biotin, an antioxidant called alpha lipoic acid which helps to even completion and protects again sun damage, like the UV rays that damage your skin. But our Beauty Infusion is a flavored powder that is very similar to The Beauty Builder, the tablet, but it’s flavored powder so you can just mix it up in water and enjoy the drink and still get your beauty nutrients.
Lisa Davis: On the last show you mentioned that your children take collagen, so is this something that I could give to my daughter when she is having a sweet craving? I say this because they’re not super sweet but they have a bit of sweetness to them. They kind of have the consistency of a Starburst, but without any artificial junk and the bonus is she would be getting her collagen.
Tim Mount: You know it’s funny because every single morning my daughter, she’s almost three, she runs into our bedroom and says, “Beauty Burst” she can’t really say the “T”, but it’s her favorite treat in the world and I feel good about it because she’s getting something healthy and she likes it because it’s a little bit sweet and it’s a nice snack. It is very safe, collagen is one of the safest supplements on the planet. There’s no worry about age or allergies or anything like that. Pretty much anybody can take it and benefit from it.
Andrea Donsky: That’s awesome Tim. Well we’re out of time today, you can visit Tim’s website at neocell.com. I’m Andrea Donsky along with Lisa Davis this is Naturally Savvy Radio, stay well.
