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Comment by ggm | Hacker News Reader

I'm here for two probably contradictory comments.

The first is collagen: I'd love to see Lowe's take on recent peer review which says boosting oral collagen does appear to show signs of improved joint pain and skin resilience. Obviously modulated through how protein deprived you are, but for older people, eating enough protein can be an issue: it's not rapidly absorbed so you need 3 squares a day to get to the higher numbers. Collagen powders and vitamin C (oj) at breakfast might kick start this.

The second contradictory point is that this entire thread makes me want to shout GELL MAN AMNESIA because it's an exercise in otherwise intelligent people who can distinguish between anecdata, their personal experience and some cold hard facts in their core field, but not when it's self injecting unknown chemicals from China bought off-script.

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Note that there is research showing that whey protein powder has exactly the same effects as collagen, for much lower price.

Mechanistically it makes sense, as I understand the ingredients in Collagen are largely a subset of the ingredients in whey powder, albeit at different ratios.

it is the same if you base it just on the amino acid profiles, they are both just proteins with different amounts.

I always wondered if there were nutrients we can’t measure though, because collagen is typically made from skin or bones whereas whey protein is dairy. Even though both have similar “nutrition facts” maybe there are some unmeasurable differences. Both are highly processed though so who knows.

I think the idea is that some short peptides might survive the digestion and make it to the blood stream, but I'm doubtful there's any specific benefit to collagen.

Afaik, not exactly, collagen has hydroxyproline which is attributed for skin\hair\joint improvement.

For the first one, I assume you mean a systematic review, not a peer review? I guess you're talking about this one:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10180699/

It has a Mechanism section which explains that when collagen is digested, one of the products of that is Gly-Pro-Hyp, which is what has the effects. I don't think that conflicts anything in this post?

I assume they're referring to the brief bit in the post that indicates that oral ingestion leads to a breakdown that makes oral supplements of amino acids pointless. They say it very briefly and they don't really outright assert it, it's just a sort of implied aside.

Sweeping statements in biochemistry must be made with caution. It is well known that there are some small peptides that are absorbed following oral administration.

...BPC-157 itself is said to be among this class. As are certain milk tripeptides: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lactotripeptides

Interestingly enough, those two, as well as Gly-Pro-Hyp, are proline/hydroxyproline-rich, which might suggest that proline-rich small peptides are resistant to degradation in the gut.

Anyway, in general oral proteins and peptides are broken down prior to systemic absorption, but not always...

I'm in agreement. It's the article that made the sweeping statement.

> It is well known that there are some small peptides that are absorbed following oral administration. ...BPC-157 itself is said to be among this class

Do you know of any studies that suggest BPC-157 absorption from gut?

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jor.21107

Among others. If you read the paper, it's actually apparent that there's little difference between i.p. and oral administration in terms of efficacy -- both were roughly equally effective in improving MCL ligament healing.

Admittedly the paper's in rats -- as are 99% of the others -- as there's no incentive for anybody to run human trials.

You should note that your study is not controlled.

There are two groups, those with oral administration those with sub-q administration. There is not group without administration.

This means you can't say that oral vs injected is "equally effective" because you can't assert that BPC 157 is effective at all. You can't tease out the effect size because you don't know if any or all of the MCL ligament healing was done via normal pathways

> This means you can't say that oral vs injected is "equally effective" because you can't assert that BPC 157 is effective at all

Is that true? It seems that you can say that they were equally effective without quantifying an effect. It could be the case that both are equal in that neither has an effect, which this would validate. Then you can just point to other studies to claim effectiveness of injected.

You just read the abstract and didn't read the full paper.

There were control groups.

> Methods:

> [administration] as follows: (i) BPC 157 10 mg or 10 ng/kg or saline 5.0 ml/kg (controls), intraperitoneally, or (ii) BPC 157 in neutral cream (1.0 mg dissolved in distilled water/g commercial neutral cream) or commercial neutral cream (controls), as a thin layer, locally, at the site of injury, administered once daily with the first application 30 min after surgery and the final application 24 h before sacrifice; (iii) BPC 157 0.16 mg/ml or nothing (controls) in the drinking water (12 ml/day/rat) until sacrifice.

There was a big difference vs. the control groups.

Here is the exact quote:

    > You’re not going to be taking these things orally... These mail-order peptides are injectable items.

Every single YouTube video and blog post I have read about peptites is exclusively about injectable supplements.

That's not the exact quote lol you cut out the exact part I was referring to.

> because unless a really substantial amount of engineering has gone into it, any given peptide is going get the same treatment from your digestive system as a chicken breast does, i.e. a complete teardown

> Every single YouTube video and blog post I have read about peptites is exclusively about injectable supplements.

Collagen peptides, ghk-cu, and many other peptide supplements are often taken orally.

> Collagen peptides, ghk-cu, and many other peptide supplements are often taken orally.

And with very rare exceptions, it's as useful as watching someone workout when you want to gain muscle. Every meat we eat is awash in peptides, and to keep our body from getting hijacked by the signaling for, say a chicken, our body has to break down almost all peptides ingested orally.

There are a few exceptions, notably there's one that is produced by our own bile acid, that can be taken orally, and then SNAC, which was developed by Novo Nordisk over thirty years and has extremely limited capabilities and is fully patented and cannot be made by your fly by night distributers. SNAC achieves a whopping 1% bioavailability of the peptide, and it's ability to work depends on the size of the peptide, specifically the only commercially available use for this is Rybelsus.

Oral peptides are snake oil for the most part.

> And with very rare exceptions, it's as useful as watching someone workout when you want to gain muscle.

Who cares? I never made broad claims about their efficacy, the author did.

> Oral peptides are snake oil for the most part.

The author's claim is not nuanced by "for the most part", that's why I quoted it directly.

Besides, I was merely clarifying what the other poster was likely referring to.

> you need 3 squares a day to get to the higher numbers.

> Collagen powders

In that case if you're eating collagen powder you could be eating just regular protein powder then?

I want to point out your own contradictory comments about absorption and specifically mentioning a typically highly processed food (orange juice), one which has been stripped of its natural fibers and flavors.

That age group (and all others) should be eating real/whole fruit or having the juice fresh (I.e. just juiced). They would be better served getting this advice than creating more anxiety about protein intake.

Is there any reason to think that freshly squeezed juice is chemically different from, for example, frozen juice concentrate?

yes it’s been frozen and concentrated..

You can freeze and concentrate a substance without chemically altering it

There is reason to think the differences are biotic vs. abiotic, between the two. Our digestive system is dependent on healthy microbiota. Pasteurization would be the difference here.

So it's essentially the same argument as for raw milk, but at least it's less likely to make you sick (?).

Raw milk is on the fringes of the same argument that whole foods play a more beneficial role in healthy gut microbiota and digestion, and that our current models focusing on nutrient composition are incomplete. It says that our measurements are off, and that there’s more to nutrition than composition alone. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11901572/

From the Wikipedia page on orange juice:

> Commercial orange juice with a long shelf life is made by pasteurizing the juice and removing the oxygen from it. This removes much of the taste, necessitating the later addition of a flavor pack, generally made from orange products.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orange_juice

The same article goes into additional detail:

> Commercial squeezed orange juice is pasteurized and filtered before being evaporated under vacuum and heat. After removal of most of the water, this concentrate, about 65% sugar by weight, is then stored at about 10 °F (−12 °C). Essences, Vitamin C, and oils extracted during the vacuum concentration process may be added back to restore flavor and nutrition.

So essentially there are components that vaporize during processing. The make sure to condense the same components and add them back in so that the orange juice contains all the components of fresh orange juice.

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