Collagen: Can pins or pills improve your health?

Stacey Morrison find out the best way to increase our collagen and keep our skin looking healthy and radiant.

There's no doubt collagen plays a key role in keeping our bodies healthy. The question is, how do we get more of it?

Dr Louise Reiche, head of the Dermatological Society of New Zealand said it gives support and structure to a lot of the different components of our bodies.

" helps to enable us to move and to have strength," she said, "Otherwise we would be jellylike."

Unfortunately, as we age, we tend to produce less collagen and that makes our skin appear less firm.

There are many different ways of increasing collagen being touted at the moment, from social influencers like Khloe Kardashian joining up with NZ company Dose & Co to promote collagen supplements through to sticking needles in your face.

We sent RNZ reporter Gill Bonnett along to The Cosmetic Clinic in downtown Auckland to give microneedling a go. Her beauty therapist, Sam, explained that microneedling is about creating micro-injuries which send the body into healing mode.

"These amazing little enzymes that grow inside our skin go into overdrive making collagen and elastin. Their main thing they're trying to do is heal the skin tissue, but a byproduct of all those things is rejuvenation, we get skin tightening, you get plumpness."

There are other treatments that do a similar thing, but microneedling is at the less invasive end of the treatment spectrum.

"People literally come in their lunchtime and they can go back to work afterwards," said Sam, "They'll be a bit pink, but there's definitely no extensive downtime."

Dr Angela Hou is a fourth year dermatology resident at George Washington University. In 2017, she reviewed the various microneedling studies available.

"So we found that microneedling seemed overall to be effective and a fairly safe option for various dermatologic conditions," said Hou, "Most of the studies so far have been fairly small or they haven't been randomized controlled studies, but in the studies that have been done so far, it seems to work well with good results."

The Cosmetic Clinic uses the latest microneedling technology, but it costs nearly $300 dollars a go and Sam recommends at least 6 treatments for the best results.

Many different treatments fall under the microneedling banner, but Sam warned that cheaper options might not necessarily yield the same results.

And Dr Reiche had a few warnings of her own. She said there is some evidence that microneedling might accelerate aging later on…

Go to this episode on rnz.co.nz for more details