Can Collagen Help Your Hair Grow?

Collagen supplements are often celebrated for their skin-boosting benefits, but can they help with hair growth too? Let’s take a look at what the science says.

What is collagen?

Collagen is the most abundant protein in your body and an essential component in many different parts of your body. It’s used to make connective tissue, which is important for your skin, bones, muscles, tendons, and cartilage. As we age, our bodies naturally make less collagen which is why we get wrinkles, joint issues, and so on. That’s why collagen has become such a popular ingredient in supplements and skincare products aimed at promoting elasticity and reducing the visible signs of aging.

Your hair, skin, and nails are mostly made up of the same thing: a protein called keratin. Collagen doesn’t directly form hair strands, but it does contain lots of the amino acids needed to make keratin. So, the idea is boosting your collagen intake could supply your body with more of the nutrients it needs for healthy hair growth.

Lab research on the properties of collagen points to theories that collagen could help with hair growth, but there are few human trials which truly put the benefits to the test. We’ll go over a few of the theories:

Why collagen might help with hair growth

Collagen peptides (CPs) are potent ‘antioxidants’. Free radicals are unstable molecules which tend to increase as we get older, and they wreak havoc on our cells by causing DNA damage. Antioxidants are our body’s defence against free radicals; they scavenge for and neutralize them.

Evidence shows that CPs derived from fish (marine) are particularly good antioxidants. The reason this might be good news for hair is that free radicals cause oxidative stress which contributes to hair thinning and graying, and marine CPs have been found in studies to be effective antioxidants.

Another way marine CPs might help with hair growth is their potential to promote growth factors. The hair cycle is regulated by markers called growth factors, which govern how the hair transitions through all the different stages of growth. A 2022 study on mice found that marine CPs increased the expression of growth markers, and decreased the expression of markers that inhibit growth. Similarly, a Japanese study found supplementation with marine CPs raised levels of the growth factor IGF-1 in the blood after 8 weeks.

Collagen peptides have also been tested on human hair follicles in ex vivo (organ cultures in a lab). In these experiments, they produced more hair and showed increased cell activity compared to untreated ones. The peptides seemed to support the follicles by boosting growth-related signals and dialling down those linked to hair loss.

However, these tests were done outside the body, so we still need more human studies to know if taking collagen supplements can really make a noticeable difference in hair growth. One small, 12-week human trial on women taking a supplement containing hydrolyzed collagen and vitamin C found that hair count increased by 27.6% compared to the placebo group. That said, the study was small, and the results have yet to be reproduced, so the findings are encouraging but not hard proof.

The bottom line

Early research in animals, test-tubes and organ cultures demonstrate that collagen could be beneficial for hair growth, but the evidence in humans is still limited. More large-scale clinical trials are needed to confirm how beneficial collagen supplements are for hair loss.

Our Hair Growth Complex combines marine collagen peptides with essential vitamins and minerals like copper, zinc, and vitamin C – all of which play key roles in healthy hair growth. Many of these nutrients work best together; for example, copper and vitamin C both help your body produce collagen. That’s why it’s important to maintain the right balance of all these nutrients, and take a supplement (if needed) to make sure you’re getting enough of each one.

All of our blog articles are reviewed for medical accuracy by our Medical Director before publication.

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