Eat this to increase your collagen, naturally

If you’re looking for a food that will naturally prevent and fill in wrinkles, Royal Jelly is a strong contender.

Royal Jelly is a thick substance produced by the endocrine glands of nurse bees for the purpose of feeding the queen bee and larvae (baby bees).

Royal Jelly contains collagen, a main protein in our connective tissues which keeps our skin youthful, smooth, and wrinkle-free. A Japanese team of scientists found in 2004 that it promotes the synthesis of new collagen in the body.(1)

It also contains 28 trace minerals, including Sulfur (S), Zinc (Zn), Manganese (Mn), and Iron (Fe), which are essential for skin beauty.(2)

Sulfur, Manganese, and Zinc promote cell and tissue regeneration, which helps to produce collagen that has been destroyed through lifestyle factors, such as excessive exposure to the sun, alcohol consumption, and eating many advanced glycated end-products (“A.G.E.s”) in refined & processed foods. Further, iron-rich blood gives the skin a youthful, “colourful” glow.

Royal Jelly can be found in natural grocery stores, online, or at specialty stores such as Honey World in Toronto’s St. Lawrence Market.

It’s a little on the expensive side ($62 for a jar), so if you’re cash-strapped, a regular good quality unpasteurized or raw honey for about $10 also contains many of the same trace minerals, including Silicon (Si). Please note that we earn no financial benefits from your purchase of any bee products.

What’s even more interesting is that The Journal of Trace Elements in Medicine and Biology reported that Royal Jelly seemed to be the result of nurse bees’ lactation, lending it the same function as human breast milk, and indeed had the same homeostatic adjustment in the body that human milk does.(3)

In laymen’s terms, it stabilizes the body’s internal chemical environment after we alter it through a poor lifestyle: for example, restoring the acid-alkaline balance of the blood, and stabilizing blood glucose levels.

Sources:

1. Satomi KOYA-MIYATA, Iwao OKAMOTO, Shimpei USHIO, Kanso IWAKI, Masao IKEDA and Masashi KURIMOTO, “Identification of a Collagen Production-promoting Factor from an Extract of Royal Jelly and Its Possible Mechanism”, Biosci. Biotechnol. Biochem., Vol. 68, 767-773 (2004).

2. Andreas Stockera, b, c, Peter Schramela, Antonius Kettrupa and Eberhard Bengsch , “Trace and mineral elements in royal jelly and homeostatic effects”, Journal of Trace Elements in Medicine and Biology. Volume 19, Issues 2-3, 2 December 2005, Pages 183-189.

3. Ibid.

Images by Trevor Henry and Micaela Rossato.