Collagen - eggs boost your collagen

Eggs are considered one of the healthiest foods around. Eggs are packed with protein and contain all the essential (vital) amino acids the body needs, along with vitamins and minerals.

The egg white itself is the part of the egg that contains approximately 90% of the egg's protein and also provides all the amino acids required for your body to function optimally. This makes the egg white a complete protein source. Essential amino acids cannot be produced by the human body, so they must be supplied through the diet.

The 9 essential amino acids are:

• The election
• Phenylalanine
• Histidine
• Isoleucine
• Leucine
• Lysine
• Methionine
• The threonine
• Tryptophan
• For children, the amino acid arginine is also essential

With a few exceptions, plant-based foods lack one or more of these essential amino acids. Foods from meat, fish, chicken, eggs and dairy products, on the other hand, contain all essential amino acids and are complete protein sources.

Other amino acids - Non-essential amino acids

The other amino acids that are part of the body's proteins can be formed by the body itself, either from other amino acids or from intermediate products in the metabolism that are not amino acids. They are called non-essential amino acids. Only those amino acids that the body can form from non-amino acids are truly non-essential.

However, many of the so-called non-essential amino acids form the body with other amino acids as raw materials. A lack of an amino acid can thus lead to other, normally non-essential amino acids, becoming essential. In this way, e.g. the amino acid tyrosine is normally non-essential, as the body can form it from phenylalanine. With a phenylalanine deficiency, however, the body can no longer form tyrosine, which thus becomes essential. Amino acids that are non-essential only on the condition that another amino acid is available are called conditionally non-essential amino acids or semi-essential amino acids. A total of 6 of the non-essential amino acids are conditionally non-essential.

The 6 conditionally non-essential amino acids are:

• Glutamine
• Glycine
• Proline
• Arginine
• Tyrosine
• Cysteine

Can eggs boost collagen in the body?

Eggs contain abundant amounts of the amino acids glycine and proline, which are the main components of collagen . By eating eggs, you give your body the amino acids it needs to build up your collagen .

The amino acids glycine, proline and hydroxyproline make up about 50% of the amino acids that build up your collagen ! In fact, every third to fourth amino acid in collagen is glycine, making glycine the most abundant amino acid in the body's collagen!

Why are these three amino acids so important for the structure of collagen?

To understand why glycine, proline and hydroxyproline are so important for your skin, here is a simple explanation. The extracellular protein collagen (which, among other things, occurs abundantly in the skin, but also in bones, tendons, cartilage and teeth, but also in many other organs/tissues) consists of three spiral-shaped (helices) polypeptide chains that are rich in glycine, proline and hydroxyproline (hydroxyproline is a derivative of the amino acid proline). The collagen helix also lacks hydrogen bonds and is instead stabilized by a specific bond consisting of proline and hydroxyproline. However, hydrogen bonds occur between the helices. Glycine then fills the inside of the helix.

If you don't eat eggs, you can make sure to boost your collagen levels with a collagen supplement instead!