Collagen deficiency is a huge factor in age-related loose skin - and it likely plays a role in cases of loose skin that doesn’t change after years.
Though industrial culture considers the human body’s collagen loss over time a normal part of ageing, I think it’s largely dietary. My impression is that elders from high-collagen consuming cultures with other favorable conditions (such as fasting and/or slow weight-bearing work which boosts HGH, not being smokers, not struggling with exposure to the elements due to homelessness or exposure to long-term war) age without nearly as much muscle loss and collagen loss as the average SAD person. And, that by doing certain rejuvenative practices (like tai chi, yoga, meditation) and eliminating junk food, one can gain many metabolic/HGH benefits even without collagen supplementation. Collagen + LCHF/keto just really helps timeless ageing!
Though I’d prefer to make bone broths my current lifestyle isn’t conducive to it - so I buy grassfed collagen powder online that is very economical compared to the rip-off tiny bottles of collagen capsules and the overpriced paleo brands. I add a scoopful of it to bouillon broths or just use it alone in hot water with spices & oil, and take it near berry consumption or a Vit. C capsule. Very tasty, esp during colder months. In warmer weather, I add collagen to smoothies about 2-3 times a week.
Ancestral food traditions contained plenty of regular collagen from long-cooked bone broths which were the basis for meals, and the scrapings of collagen from pelts which was in turn thrown into the broth. Also, being that Vitamin C is necessary for collagen uptake - the ancestral love of gathered & dried berries, pomegranate seeds (throughout north Africa, the mediterranean, and europe), and garlic certainly helped with that. Or, perhaps as some say, the LCHF/keto physiology has its own capacity for Vit. C production - which I have yet to learn about.
Re mitochondria & muscle usage, Doug McGuff MD in Body By Science discusses how typically runners favor working the legs only in quick movements that do not work the types of muscle fibers that enhance mitochondria. Thus we have the typical premature ageing faces of runners, furthered by excess exposure to sun in some cases.
Another thing is bags under the eyes - looks like simply loose skin, but is frequently a sign of longer term kidney overload or digestive toxification (often related to medication side-effects) which can be explored through labs done in integrative/functional medicine (and goes back to eastern medicine principles of biodynamic rejuvenation, and vitality/glandular health). Bags under the eyes/premature ageing can have different habitual causes (longterm alcoholism, imbalanced muscle usage, glandular stress, nutrient deficiencies from longterm veganism, excess sleep deprivation over years, and/or frequent flying exposures to atmospheric radiation) - it’s something more than merely a little age-related loose skin. But it’s dismissed as merely ‘genetic’ which I find strange - as members of one bio family can age very differently according to different factors.
Biological transformation through dietary healing is real though, so, I would think that collagen supplementation along with LCHF/keto can go very far at cellular rejuvenation. The skin replaces itself cellularly every 7 years according to western industrial medicine - but that definition isn’t specialized related to dietary practices or whether one does fasting. I’d think the LCHF/keto way of life as well as IF and EF speeds rejuvenation.
Dr. FUNg has pointed out that EF for 3 days reaps the full benefits of autophagy and fasting longer than that isn’t necessary if you’re doing it only for autophagy. It’s interesting that yearly autophagic short water fasts are a part of many traditional cultures indigenous and aboriginal, as well as in the modern orthodox religions of the mediterranean, european, and south asian cultures - yet got virtually eliminated by the British-American industrial foods TV culture.
What’s THIS gonna cost?)
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