What happens when you stop taking collagen supplements? Collagen can improve the quality of your skin, hair, nails, and muscle tone. If you are taking it, you are experiencing these benefits. Now that you feel it’s time to stop, what can you expect?
The benefits of collagen last as long as you are taking the supplements. When you stop taking collagen, your body and health may revert to their previous state after a few weeks. You may experience joint pain, dull skin, and brittle nails. The best way to maintain the benefits of collagen supplements is by continuing to take them.
What Are the Benefits of Taking Collagen?
Collagen peptides can change your body for the better. They reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles by firming up the skin. You can also ease joint pain by taking collagen supplements.
Collagen is widely used in the beauty industry to boost the growth of healthy hair, skin, and nails. Fitness enthusiasts also take it to stimulate the production of creatine in the body, which boosts muscle strength. It also enhances the body’s ability to create and maintain lean muscle mass.
Therefore, you can expect to maintain a healthy weight and appearance when taking collagen supplements. But what happens when you stop taking collagen? Do you continue to experience these benefits, or does your body revert to its former state? Let’s answer that.
When to Stop Taking Collagen?
Another question you may ask as you wonder what happens when you stop taking collagen supplements is when to stop. You’ve noticed the benefits we’ve mentioned above. And now that you have achieved the positive changes you wanted, maybe you feel it’s time to stop taking collagen.
Most people only plan to use collagen for a short time. Some do it out of curiosity, just to see how it performs. While others take it to deal with a specific health issue. For example, it is widely used to reduce joint pain in people suffering from arthritis.
And in some cases, people take collagen to solve a short-term beauty problem. For instance, if your hair is falling off or your nails are brittle, taking collagen can restore the balance.
People who use collagen as part of a health treatment may extend its use for a lengthy period. However, cases of people taking collagen for up to six months and stopping it are expected.
And it’s mainly because they have achieved the desired results, such as noticeably smoother skin, healthier hair, and leaner muscles. The question is, what happens next?
Possible Side Effects When You Stop Taking Collagen
If you’ve been taking collagen and plan to stop, you may be worried about side effects. The good news is that few side effects are associated with stopping collagen supplements.
However, when you stop taking collagen, the positive changes you notice may start to fade. For example, your skin may get back to its dull state, or you may start to lose your lean muscle.
The main reason the benefits of collagen fade after you stop taking it is your body is not producing enough collagen. You started taking collagen in the first place because your body’s natural ability to produce collagen declined. That resulted in wrinkled skin, aching joints, weak nails, and hair.
After taking collagen, you may have noticed some positive changes as it worked its magic in your body. When you stop taking collagen, the decline of collagen production in your body will cause negative physical changes.
How Long Does it Take for Side Effects to Show?
The time it takes to stop experiencing the benefits of collagen depends on how long it takes to start working. Ideally, you should notice a change in your bone health after taking collagen for between a month and six months. The length of time will differ depending on how severe your joint issues are and your consistency in taking the supplements.
Your hair and skin will exhibit a positive change due to taking collagen at most after six months. And collagen supplements will improve your muscle tone and strength after 12 weeks of taking them.
You can see it takes a month to 6 months to experience the benefits of taking collagen. Therefore, if you want to experience positive changes from taking collagen, commit to taking it for six months.
In retrospect, it should take you that amount of time to see any adverse effects when you stop taking collagen. But residual collagen quickly leaves the system. Therefore, some people notice a negative change when they stop taking collagen in as little as six weeks.
What About the Body’s Supply of Natural Collagen?
And it wouldn’t matter so much if your body was capable of producing enough collagen to maintain your positive changes. However, we start taking collagen because our bodies are not making enough in the first place.
So, what happens when you stop taking collagen supplements, and your body is not producing enough? You will experience signs of collagen depletion until you decide to revert to supplementation. Another option is to adopt a diet that stimulates collagen production.
Note that some habits will worsen the signs of collagen deprivation after you stop taking it. These include exposure to sunlight, taking too much sugar, smoking, and drinking alcohol. If you stop taking collagen, avoid these habits to maintain the benefits you’ve gained for longer.
Do You Have to Stop Taking Collagen?
You now know what happens when you stop taking collagen supplements. But why should you stop taking it? Unless you’ve noticed some negative signs of taking collagen, you should continue taking it for as long as possible.
Collagen rarely causes side effects unless you take low-quality supplements made with artificial additives. And if you are suffering from collagen depletion, your body does need collagen supplementation.
Therefore, the wisest decision you can make if collagen is helping you is to continue taking it. The best collagen supplements are marine hydrolyzed collagen peptides because the body absorbs them quickly.
Conclusion
If you stop taking collagen, there aren’t any significant side effects to worry about.
If you cannot continue to purchase collagen supplements, commit to taking foods rich in collagen. These are protein foods such as beef and chicken that are rich in proline and glycine amino acids.
Bone broth is another food rich in collagen protein and healthy for you. You should also take foods high in vitamin C, zinc, and copper to encourage the absorption of collagen.
I’m not clear about why your body would go back to how it was so quickly. If the collagen supplement helps build your own collagen, then you have more collagen. It doesn’t make sense to me why your body would start to go back the way it was just 6 weeks after you stop taking it. This suggests to me that the collagen supplement does not actually encourage your body to make collagen, but is just giving it a bit of a temporary boost. If the collagen was actually being made, you would reap the benefit long after you stop.
I hear what you’re saying, but the collagen supplement is meant to boost the decline of your body’s natural collagen production due to ageing, and since you can’t stop ageing coz you grow everyday, it makes sense why you need to supplement forever until scientists or maybe you find something that can pause ageing forever.
What you can do however is embrace the idea of getting old and everything that comes with it, since it is only natural…