Transcript #424 Is Collagen The Fountain of Youth?

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  1. Find out what’s in store on this Myers Detox Podcast where I discuss everything about collagen.. Is it the fountain of youth, or is it an edible hoax? Are you falling pray to slick marketing? I also go over the benefits of collagen, how to use silica to produce collagen in the body, and a variety of different topics around silica supplementation.
  2. Find out more about why healthy collagen production is essential.
  3. Learn more about what you can eat to naturally produce collagen instead of supplementation.
  4. Find out why it is essential to have silica in your diet in order to produce collagen in your body.
  5. Learn more about why people are deficient in silica.
  6. Learn about the different forms of silica, and find out which one is best to supplement with.
  7. Learn more about my silica supplement called Ageless AF and why it is great at detoxing heavy metals.
  8. Find out why you should take a binder if you are using silica to detox heavy metals, and why I recommend my Citricleanse binder.
  9. Find out why having a choline stabilized silica is important.
  10. Learn more about what you can do to prevent detox symptoms when supplementing with silica.
  11. Learn more about the heavy metals that silica can not help remove from the body, and what you can use instead.
  12. Find out more information on how to properly take silica.

 

Wendy Myers: Hello, everyone. My name is Wendy Myers of myersdetox.com. Thank you so much for joining me today. I’m going to be talking about collagen. I’m going to be talking about silica, but most importantly, I’m going to be talking about collagen. Is it the fountain of youth or an edible hoax? Are you falling prey to slick marketing buying collagen supplements of all kinds?

Wendy Myers: I’ll also be talking about how and when you should supplement with collagen, why there’s no point in taking collagen unless you’re getting enough silica as well. I’ll be talking about silica deficiency symptoms. Why most people are silica deficient, why most silicas don’t absorb well and which forms do absorb really well, and which ones detox you and which don’t, and why silica rich waters like Fiji really don’t help that much to boost silica levels, much less detox or detox aluminum, and how the right form of silica is not only important as a beauty mineral and plumping up your skin and giving you healthier hair and nails and bones, but it’s also amazing at heavy metal detox. So we’ll get more into that. So that’s what we’re covering.

Wendy Myers: So first I want to talk about collagen. So is this the fountain of youth or are people falling prey to marketing and buying really expensive supplements? So in my opinion, you want to make sure that you’re getting enough collagen in your diet, and it’s not that difficult to do to get enough of that. The reason you want collagen is because collagen and fibers formed by it are responsible for the biochemical properties of the skin, allowing it to act as an organ of protection from external trauma and infection and viruses, and they present as an essential component of the structural integrity of the connected tissue, and collagen is present in large quantities in the skin and the bones and the joints. You have a reduction in the amount of collagen in your skin about 1% a year after 21 years of age, and this results in thickness reduction, elasticity loss, which is directly related to wrinkle depth.

Wendy Myers: And then this loss also accelerates after menopause for women. They have a much, much more rapid loss of collagen and their skin just corresponding also with bone loss as well.

Wendy Myers: But you don’t necessarily need to supplement with collagen. You can get what you need from your diet if you eat a healthy, well balanced diet. So if you don’t eat a good diet, you might benefit from a collagen supplement. So how to make collagen naturally. When your body makes collagen, it combines amino acids, like the nutrients you get from protein rich foods like beef and chicken and fish, beans, eggs, and dairy products. And this whole process of collagen synthesis also requires vitamin C, zinc, and copper, which a lot of people don’t get enough of. But you can get vitamin C by eating amla berry powder or amalaki powder. I put that in smoothies every time I make a smoothie. You can also get it in strawberries, citrus fruits, red and green peppers, tomatoes, broccoli, and greens. You can get copper and zinc from eating meats, from eating fish, nuts, whole grains, and beans if those are tolerated by you.

Wendy Myers: And so you can also get those nutrients in supplement form, zinc or copper in supplements, and liver is also a very rich source as well. But the best collagen boosting food is bone broth. I recommend making it yourself, but there’s lots of good companies out there that sell high quality, organic grass fed bone broth, but it’s very expensive. I mean, for what you pay for a little tiny pint or two pints of bone broth, you can make a whole batch of it, and it’s super, super simple. I have a recipe on myersdetox.com for how to make chicken bone broth. And I love that. I make that and have it for a snack sometimes. Use it in cooking. That’s the best source of dietary collagen. So also bone broth, it draws collagen out of the beef, chicken, or fish bones, leaving a flavorful liquid that you can drink straight up or just use in dishes.

Wendy Myers: You also want to make sure that whatever you’re purchasing, whatever you’re buying, collagen supplements or bone broth or what have you, you want to make sure it’s organic, preferably grass fed. You’re going to get lots of glyphosate and pesticides and other really nasty contaminants in those foods.

Wendy Myers: But second best is supplementing. So if you’re eating lots of protein, vegetables, and fruit, you don’t need to supplement collagen. Sorry, you just don’t. And collagen is marketed under the terms hydrolyzed collagen, collagen peptides, or collagen protein. But quality matters. You want to make sure that, like I said, it’s grass fed, organic, because you’re going to get metals, glyphosate, pesticides, and other chemicals, because they’re essentially cooking down the hooves and the tendons and other animal parts, the parts that aren’t consumed as food. So they take all that. They cook it down and they make collagen and gelatin and other things out of it that then is turned into powder and put into your protein drink and smoothie. It’s delicious.

Wendy Myers: So one mistake, though, that people make, they may be taking all these collagen supplements and collagen peptides and what have you, but they’re missing one key ingredient, and that is silica. There’s no point in taking tons of collagen unless you’re also getting enough silica in your diet. And it’s actually difficult to get enough silica from your diet, unlike collagen. So why is that? So silica is important for the optimal synthesis of collagen and for activating hydroxylation enzymes that are important in the formation of the collagen network, which improves skin strength and elasticity.

Wendy Myers: So without silica, you can eat and supplement with collagen all day long and it won’t be as effective without adequate silica. But many people are deficient in silica. So silica deficiency symptoms include brittle nails, thinning, brittle hair or hair that’s falling out easily, wrinkles, sagging, crepey skin, osteoporosis and osteopenia, stiff, inflexible joints, tendons, and ligaments, shrinking or weakening muscles, joint pain or osteoarthritis, and gastrointestinal problems due to thinning of the lining of your digestive tract. So those can all be signs of silica deficiency.

Wendy Myers: Your nails are very affected by the presence of silicon, because this is the predominant mineral in their composition. So without enough silica, you’re going to have weak, brittle nails that break easily. And it’s also shown that in the case of the hair, it’s suggested that higher silicon content results in a lower rate of hair loss and increased brightness or increased luster and shine in the hair. There was even one study with 50 healthy volunteers aged 40 to 65 years old that had clinical signs of facial photo aging, and they measured the effect of taking silica supplements in the form of OSA or orthosilicic acid, and they looked at the skin, hair, and nails. And the supplement was taken for 20 weeks or four months, and they took 10 milligrams a day of this orthosilicic acid.

Wendy Myers: And this was the first randomized, double blind, placebo controlled clinical trial that showed positive results in the skin after the intake of the silica. And at the end of this period, there was significant improvement in the skin surface, its mechanical properties, and significant improvement in the fragility of the nails and hair in the group using the OSA or orthosilicic form of silica.

Wendy Myers: And so let’s talk about why people are deficient in silica. So there’s a few different reasons. So number one, if they don’t eat enough fruits and vegetables. Silica is what makes a lot of vegetables shiny. I’ve had very shiny swish char before, or have shiny vegetables, shiny green peppers. Well, that’s silica. It gives them this bright luster. So if you don’t eat enough of those fruits and vegetables, you won’t get silica in the diet. A lot of people are avoiding grains in their diet, and this is probably the most abundant source of silica in the diet.

Wendy Myers: Number three, people actually have a very poor absorption rate of silica from food. There’s about a 3% absorption rate from food. And then number four, then if they have poor gut digestion and therefore poor absorption, they’ll probably absorb even less, even if they’re getting silica in their diet. So a lot of things are working against us to get adequate intake of silica.

Wendy Myers: So there’s a lot of different plants with active uptake mechanisms, such as rice, wheat, corn, barley, soybean, and pumpkin, that bioaccumulate salicylic acid in their cell walls where it starts to crystallize. And so these cereal crops are the best food sources of silica in the human diet, but a lot of people aren’t eating those today so they’re not getting silica.

Wendy Myers: And a lot of people also have reduced stomach acid. You have reduced stomach acid as you get older, if you have lots of stress. Heavy metals can reduce stomach acid production, and then you’re going to get less absorption in that way also.

Wendy Myers: And so I’m going to talk about different forms of silica, because this is the biggest question that I get from people is, “I’m taking horsetail or I’m taking this form of silica. Will that work?” And so there’s a wide variation in silica bioavailability within supplements, ranging from a 1% absorption rate all the way up to 30%, sometimes more depending on the chemical form of the silica. And so number one, there’s food sources with silica. Horsetail is a very popular one that people take to add silica. It’s in a lot of silica supplements, but frankly, it’s added because it’s cheap. It’s sold as a silica supplement because it’s cheap. And it has a really low one to 3% absorption rate. Very, very, very low. So you’re taking it, but it doesn’t matter what you consume. It only matters what you absorb. So you have to factor this in when choosing supplements.

Wendy Myers: And then there’s a colloidal silica. That has about a 7% absorption rate, so not terribly spectacular. That’s really popular in Germany. And then there’s a choline stabilized OSA or choline stabilized orthosilicic acid. That’s the form that’s in my activated silica, and that has about a 17% absorption rate, which is pretty good comparatively. But then you have what’s called an MMST form of silica, and it has a 30% absorption rate. So that sounds really great, right? Well, it has a higher absorption rate, but it also has a very high excretion rate, which is much faster than all of the other forms. So it absorbs a lot, but it excretes much faster. So it stays less time in your body, and so you have less time to absorb it.

Wendy Myers: So I use silica with my clients to detoxify them of heavy metals. So I don’t give people the MMST form because it doesn’t really work very well for detoxification. There was even a recent study that showed that hair aluminum was decreased by about 7% with choline stabilized orthosilicic acid, which is the form in my activated silica, but only 4% reduction when the person used MMST or the participants in the study used MMST. And both were tested. Both groups of people were tested at a dose of 10 milligrams of silica per day for five months. And so the OSA form works much better for detoxification, because they were absorbing much more of it and it was staying in their body for longer.

Wendy Myers: So there’s a lot of marketing out there for some forms of silica that have MMST and they have little graphs like, “Oh, it has the best absorption.” But again, there’s other factors to consider like excretion rates.

Wendy Myers: And then there’s silica rich waters. So what about those? So I don’t recommend drinking water like Fiji water to improve silica in the body. Every little bit helps, but you also get silica in tap water. So that’s a very legitimate form of getting silica as well. But you’re not going to get really a lot of silica. I know Christopher Exley really popularized this, popularized drinking Fiji water, and there’s other silica rich waters out there as well. And yeah, hey, if you’re buying bottled water, why not buy a silica rich mineral water? I think it also has a really nice mouth feel. It feels a little bit more full and heavy in your mouth. And it has benefits. It’s silica rich, but you’re not getting the concentrations that are needed for adequate detoxification or it’s an insoluble form of silica, so you’re not really having a high absorption rate of that as well.

Wendy Myers: So don’t drink Fiji water thinking that you’re going to meet your silica needs or really have any meaningful movement in heavy metals out of your body or aluminum as a result of drinking Fiji water. There’s, like I said, a lot of people out there that are drinking Fiji water trying to remove aluminum in their body. I’ve seen tons of stuff on Facebook and comments on Facebook. “I’m drinking Fiji water to get rid of aluminum.” But it just isn’t adequate enough.

Wendy Myers: So let’s do the comparison. So for the same amount of money, say about $30, you get 15 small bottles of Fiji, about a half liter bottle of Fiji for the price of one bottle of silica that will last for two months. So for the monetary investment, you’re going to have far, far better results getting a bottle of orthosilicic acid or OSA or my activated silica.

Wendy Myers: This is my activated silica right here. This is the best form of silica to improve silica levels, to improve your hair, skin, nail bone health, to plump up wrinkles. Tons and tons of studies that show it improves the appearance of fine lines. It plumps up your skin, and it’s important and needed for anyone taking collagen or looking to boost our collagen. You have to have silica along with that for it to work optimally. So that’s my recommendation for that.

Wendy Myers: And another benefit of silica is that it’s shown in the research to detox heavy metals. So I talk about this a lot. Anyone who follows me knows that I’m constantly talking about heavy metal detoxification and using natural ways to go about that, ways that help to mineralize your body while at the same time pushing heavy metals out. That’s one of the best ways and safest ways to go about detoxification.

Wendy Myers: So in the research it’s shown that my activated silica will help to remove arsenic, aluminum, tin, thallium, cesium, antimony, barium, and some free floating iron as well. A lot of people have iron overload. This is a big problem. So activated silica gets a lot of different metals. And why is that? This specific chemical form of activated silica binds onto what are called trivalent metals. Valence is about bonding. So this specifically binds on, grabs onto these metals deeply embedded in your tissues and pulls them out. It works like a chelating agent, where it grabs onto metals and helps them exit the body quicker, where it wouldn’t otherwise.

Wendy Myers: And so a lot of people take binders for detoxification, but those only go through your gut usually. Some of them go through your bloodstream, but they don’t go deep into your tissues to pull stuff out. You have to use natural chelators like my activated silica to pull these metals out.

Wendy Myers: And these metals I just listed, the arsenic, aluminum, tin, Valium, cesium, very potent mitochondrial poisons. And in various ways they impede your mitochondria’s ability to reduce energy in your body. So one of the big underlying causes of fatigue are these toxic metals that are poisoning enzymes that transport nutrients into your mitochondria. So you’ve got to get rid of these metals to restore energy and restore energy production. There’s a lot of different underlying root causes of fatigue, but I assure you, heavy metals are a big, big cause and 100% a factor. Anyone who is dealing with chronic fatigue or they feel tired a lot.

Wendy Myers: So this is my number one recommended form of silica. I’ve been taking it for years. And I just feel like because I started taking it about three, maybe four years ago that it’s really reversed the clock for me. I feel like I have less wrinkles. I feel like my skin is really plump and young looking. I feel like my hair is thicker and stronger. My nails are really, really hard where they used to always bend. Now they’re really hard. And I just noticed my clients when they start doing my program and I recommend activated silica to them, they turn into really healthy, fluffy chia pets. They’re always really happy, because they notice that their hair, skin, and nails are getting a lot healthier when they’re trying to do their detox. So it’s kind of funny, that side effect.

Wendy Myers: So it is recommended any time that you’re taking a supplement that grabs onto metals and removes them, it works better if you take a binder. You can take this without taking a binder. Your body will excrete the metals and whatnot. But some people do have detox symptoms, especially if they have a lot of aluminum in their bones, they can feel like they’re getting achy bones. And taking a binder will help to reduce those detox symptoms for maybe when they’re feeling uncomfortable or feeling tired or what have you. There’s a lot of different symptoms that can come with detox. So taking a binder dramatically reduces detox symptoms. So it’s recommended, but you don’t have to. Some people or the majority of people don’t feel anything when they take activated silica. They just notice their hair, skin, and nails have improved, but I recommend a binder with it.

Wendy Myers: What I recommend is my CitriCleanse binder. And this is something that we have in my store also, at store.myersdetox.com. This is a wonderful binder, and it’s what I recommend to my clients. It’s what I take every morning.

Wendy Myers: Naturally occurring silica actually is the worst form for detoxification, because most forms of silica are insoluble, and then they have to be broken down by the stomach acid to then get into a form. The orthosilicic acid, the OSA form, your body will actually break natural silica down into OSA to then bind onto metals. But again, naturally occurring forms of silica have a very low absorption rate because they are insoluble. But when you take something in a concentrated form like this activated silica, it’s choline stabilized. So they took choline, which a lot of people are deficient in as well. It’s very, very important to get choline for detoxification.

Wendy Myers: So they took this choline. They stabilized the silica with it. And so you just end up getting a lot more of it and your body has a higher absorption rate. So it’s technically man made, but it doesn’t matter. Most of the silica, the most effective forms of silicas on the market have been chemically altered, but you want that. So sometimes natural, so to speak, is not better, and certainly that’s the case with this.

Wendy Myers: Another great form of silica is intestinal metal detox, IMD. It’s a Quicksilver product. That’s another chemically altered form of silica. That gets a whole different type of metal. It’s also extremely expensive, but it’s another example of a chemically altered silica that’s altered in that way to improve its results for detoxification.

Wendy Myers: So do people get herxheimer reactions when using activated silica? Some people, they do get herxheimer reactions or detox reactions, especially if someone is fairly ill. If they’re extremely chronically fatigued, you probably want to start with one or two drops per day and then work your way up. The recommended dosage is about 10 milligrams, which is about 10 drops. Each drop’s about a milliliter or a milligram, same thing. So like I said, if you are sick or you feel like you’re typically sensitive to supplements, you probably want to do one or two drops a day to start. You can always increase. You can always increase the dose.

Wendy Myers: And a lot of people actually will take those to improve their hair, skin, and nails and notice that they might start feeling more tired. They might get achy bones or sometimes people feel headachy if they’re getting rid of arsenic or aluminum. But like I said, not everyone experiences that. If you take it with a binder like my CitriCleanse binder, you’re very, very unlikely to experience detox symptoms. Because the binders, that’s its purpose is to more quickly remove the metals that will be floating around in your body, in your gut, in your bloodstream, and absorbing any of the toxins that are grabbed onto and chelated by the activated silica. So that dramatically reduces the excretion of them. They get out of your body faster, so they cause less detox symptoms.

Wendy Myers: So will it pull out lead in the nerves? So activated silica does not get lead. Lead is a divalent heavy metal. So divalent heavy metals are removed with different products than activated silica, which removes trivalent metals. So divalent metals are like lead, nickel, mercury, and each product, each metal has different things that are removed by it or help it to be removed. Lead, you can get rid of that with my Citracleanse. Very, very good. It’s full of boron, tons and tons and tons of boron, and boron binds onto lead and really any heavy metal. The boron in this, it’s not on the label, but that’s what this is made of. It’s made from grapefruit citrus pectin and the pectin is full of boron, and that boron loves to bind onto different heavy metals and toxins. Binds onto them and then takes them out of your body. So this is great for lead.

Wendy Myers: EDTA is also amazing for lead. Zeolite is going to help as well. And cilantro is also great. So those are my go-tos. If you’re really high in lead, go with the EDTA, bring your levels down really fast.

Wendy Myers: So this is only going to get a little bit of iron if you do have anemia issues. So it’ll get some free floating iron in your blood, but it’s not going to dramatically reduce iron levels. It’s not something you need to worry about if you are anemic. One thing about anemia is it’s not always due to low iron in your body. Many times people have low ferritin because they’re magnesium deficient or their copper zinc levels are off or there’s other things going on. It’s not as simple as, “Oh, I have low iron and I’m anemic and I need to replace and supplement with iron.” That’s not how the body works. It’s not that simple. Most people that are anemic, it is due to something other than iron deficiency. You can listen to my podcast with Morley Robbins on that. Just search for iron and Morley Robbins on myersdetox.com, and you’ll find that very, very eye opening.

Wendy Myers: And so you can take this with any type of supplement. Just don’t take it at the same time as a binder. So don’t take these two at the same time. You can take them on the same day, but you want to take them about an hour apart, but this can be taken with any other supplement. So the activated silica can be taken with anything.

Wendy Myers: So is there a risk of getting too much silica in the body? Do you need to be careful how much you take? No, I don’t think there’s any risk of getting too much. Your body is naturally going to excrete in the urine. If you do get too much, I think your body, you’d have a lot of different reactions and symptoms with detoxification and you would stop taking it before you got too much. But again, if you take high amounts of it, your body just gets rid of it and excretes it. So no worries there. It’s totally non-toxic.

Wendy Myers: So thanks so much for listening and tuning in. I hope I opened your eyes to the benefits, pros and cons of collagen and silica supplementation. Help you guys make some distinctions there so that you aren’t wasting your money on supplements that you don’t need or that don’t work. So thanks for tuning in. I want to wake you guys up to what is really going on in your body and how metals are causing your symptoms and what to do about it. So thanks for tuning in. Talk to you guys next week.