Certified Naturals - Marine-Source Collagen (Cartidyss Hydrolyzed Collagen)

Product Notes:

Moisturizers and plumping serums may help to temporarily reduce the appearance of wrinkles, alright, but to actually reduce the "crow's feet" developing around your eyes or the depth of your "laugh lines" naturally, you'll need to somehow reverse the normal age-related decline in collagen production that largely accounts for those issues.

Collagen, of course, is a type of protein that plays a variety of vital roles in our bodies' connective tissues, including to support strength, flexibility, movement and motion in our muscles, bones, tendons, and joints, and to provide structural support to the dermis, the middle layer of our skin. It's the latter that helps maintain the firmness and resiliency of our skin – or which leads to it getting thin, saggy and wrinkled when it's deficient in collagen.

Of course, humans aren't the only animals with great stores of collagen providing structure in our bodies: it's also in the cartilage, skin, and bones of foods we eat (such as chicken and fish), and in the hides of cattle and pigs, among other things. And it's to those sources that many of us turn for collagen supplements, hoping that consuming them will provide the building blocks to rebuild our own diminishing reserves.

However, collagen molecules are far too large to get absorbed into our bloodstream intact when we consume them, so our bodies need to first break them down into their smaller constituent parts: amino acids, like glycine and proline. And that can be difficult to do and cause digestive upset, so supplement makers have turned to 'hydrolyzing' or, in essence, pre-digesting them into tiny, readily absorbable bits, with the use of enzymes.

That's also the case here, and it works, as evidenced by their 2022 study which found the bulk of it gets absorbed within two hours and immediately starts boosting elastin production by 40% and hyaluronic acid production by 5.4%, and their 90-day study of 45 to 59 year-old women published in 2021 which found a 14% reduction in frown lines, a 26% reduction in crow’s feet, and a 31% reduction laugh / smile lines (in the nasolabial area), along with a 10% improvement in hydration and a 38% increase in the density of the dermis.

(For more detail on these studies and this product, you can download the Cartidyss Brochure by Certified Naturals [PDF, ~1 MB], which also covers how it reduces pore size and how the vast majority of test subjects indicated it made their skin more hydrated and improved their dull or thinning hair, brittle nails, and orange peel skin on the body.)

But unlike other collagen supplements, Cartidyss can achieve all this at the relatively low dose of 500 mg per day, which represents just two capsules, in contrast to the 4 or more capsules you'd need to choke down each day from other hydrolyzed collagen brands, or the 10 or 20 gram servings of collagen peptides powder you'd need to mix with water or hot drinks to consume.

Another virtue of this particular type is it's from a more sustainable source, or at least one with a smaller environmental footprint than many types. E.g., some brands of bovine collagen have been linked to the loss of tropical rainforests in the Brazilian Amazon, as cattle ranches ramped up there to meet demand, and both cattle and pigs are high emitters of greenhouse gases. In contrast, Cartidyss is entirely derived from the cartilage from three varieties of fish that are being caught by local fisherman off the coast of Brittany, France for their flesh, anyway, on a sustainable basis (a process monitored by
the IFREMER division of the National Institute for Ocean Science to ensure compliance).

It should also be noted that a third published clinical study has shown that Cartidyss can even reduce pain and improve joint function in subjects with knee discomfort, albeit at twice the dose needed for skin improvement. (That is, four rather than just two of these pills a day.)

This should come as no surprise, considering the source: this collagen isn't drawn from just any old fish, but from one particular class: skates (or 'rays,' as in stingrays), which are cartilaginous: i.e., their skeletons are made of cartilage, not bones. And unlike most marine-sourced types, Cartidyss isn't using the scales or skin from the fish, but that cartilage from their endoskeletons, and cartilage has high levels of other substances which people take for relieving joint inflammation and pain: glycosaminoglycans (GAGs), like glucosamine and chondroitin sulfate, and hyaluronic acid.

That's why Cartidyss is technically considered a Type II collagen, rather than Type I, and Type II is generally the type that's most associated with reducing joint inflammation. However, it should not be forgotten that this collagen has been hydrolyzed, or reduced in molecular size, with 85% of its peptides or chains of amino acids being below 3,000 Daltons and 33% below 1,000 Daltons in size, which get readily absorbed by our intestines and enter our bloodstream, where they appear as tiny fragments of the original proteins. And the emerging theory is that the key to hydrolyzed collagen supplements' demonstrated success is not just that they provide the building blocks for rebuilding, but that they provide a signal to our body that it needs to ramp up collagen production, because it interprets those fragments as evidence that we sustained some sort of injury which will need repairing.

Of course, amino acids aren't the only things we need to produce collagen: Vitamin C is also an essential cofactor, which is why Certified Naturals has also added some of its extremely potent PureWay-C™ Vitamin C. And aging isn't the only factor inducing wrinkles: UV damage is, as well, which is why they've also added some ApplePhenon® Apple Polyphenols, which has antioxidant properties to help protect the skin from sunlight damage.

One final note: the bottles these capsules come in contains a desiccant to absorb humidity, to help prevent the pills from sticking together, and Certified Naturals has gone a step further, by electing to use one infused with a natural citrus scent.