Why’s everyone talking about gelatin?
Are you waiting for it to pass you by like so many health and beauty trends?

The truth is that gelatin has been widely used for many years and is currently being rediscovered by the health and beauty community for its beauty benefits.
Gelatin has been used in skin products and as a joint supplement for a long time, you’ve probably come across it if you cook too, jelly anyone?

But more recently the conversation has been about how it’s beneficial for both our insides, and our outsides. Your grandma might have been onto something when she said ‘beauty is more than skin deep’.

Below are our 5 top ways to use gelatin for beauty …but there are many others, did you know it’s used a stiffener in hat making for instance?

#1 Beautiful skin from the inside out

Taking gelatin internally can help (alongside good diet and exercise) to build strong foundations for fantastic skin, hair and nails.

Gelatin is a dietary source of collagen and eating or drinking collagen helps to increase the body’s own collagen production.
Increasing your collagen production helps to smooth out fine line facial lines and create firmer, plump skin.

It’s not just your face that can benefit from taking gelatin either.
Amazingly it can even help to prevent stretch marks as it helps with skin elasticity. Stretch marks occur when your body grows faster than your skin’s collagen can handle. Your skin is made of collagen and elastin proteins that can only stretch so far before they break. Once you exceed the limit that they can stretch, the proteins will break leaving behind stretch marks.

Why not try introducing a little gelatin into your morning smoothie? You won’t even notice that it’s there and it will be working hard from the second you drink it.
There’s a great recipe here.

 

#2 Get the ‘glow’

The ‘glow’, the way you look and feel on your very best day when everything falls into place, good hair, check, great skin, check, happy insides, check!

We’d all like to feel like that more often and although gelatin is at it’s most effective when taken internally it’s also great when it’s used topically.

Using gelatin as as a skin cream, hair mask, hair gel can seriously smooth and strengthen skin and hair.

If you want an intensive conditioning treatment that creates super shiny hair why not have some fun and make your own hair mask?

There’s a great one here that will leave your hair feeling strong and shiny, we know we’ve tried it! If you’ve got curly hair and suffer with the ‘frizz’ this is a great way of achieving those soft frizz free curls too.

 

#3 Healthy glow begins in the gut

Gelatin is a gift to tired, stressed systems and can help to improve your digestion since it naturally binds to water and helps food to move easily through the digestive tract.

It also helps to heal the gut lining by boosting gastric acid secretion and restoring a healthy mucosal lining in the stomach.
Reducing inflammation in our bodies has become a major focus in health and wellbeing, with the thinking being that long term inflammation can be one of the triggers for chronic conditions.
Gelatin contains two anti-inflammatory amino acids which assist with reducing inflammation, ‘when your body is absorbing your food and using it effectively then inflammation in the gut is reduced’ (Research from Gotthoffer, NR, Gelatin in Nutrition and Medicine).

My Grandma always said that her chicken broth was magic when we were under the weather, it turns out that she was right. Bone broth isn’t just trendy at the moment, it’s been in ancestors medicine cupboard for long time. Pete Evans has a super tasty recipe here.

 

#4 Sleeping Beauty

How many times have you heard the phrase, ‘Get your beauty sleep’?

The truth is that we all know we look and feel better after getting at least 8 hours of sleep a night, as our bodies rest and recuperate.
The reality is that strive as we might it’s not always possible to get to, and stay, asleep.

One of the amino acids in gelatin is glycine and research from the Japanese Society of Sleep Research has shown that taking glycine just before bed can actually enhance sleep quality and efficacy (sleep time/in-bed time), daytime cognitive functions and also reduce daytime.sleepiness.
Glycine is recognized as an “inhibitory” neurotransmitter, which put simply means it acts similarly to some anti-anxiety or antidepressant medications, only without the unwanted complications and side effects.

So the next time you’re counting sheep why not consider making some tasty gummies like these and see if they help you get that beauty sleep.

 

#5 Happy Hormones

If you’re happy in the head it shows all over your face.

Hormones are our circuit board of emotions, flicking the switch from happy to sad in mere moments, but did you know that hormonal changes affect our skin too?

In older women, lower levels of estrogen can contribute to the breakdown of collagen. Interestingly, just the opposite occurs in younger women.
If there is too much estrogen, collagen can also break down. Because of poor diet, stress, lack of exercise, and consumption of phytoestrogen foods like soy, many young women these days are experiencing a condition called estrogen dominance.

The good news if you’re now thinking of embracing the use of gelatin is that it has anti-estrogenic effects. This basically means that it can help offset the effects of excess estrogen in the body.
Estrogen dominance is something you’ll be happy to avoid as its causes those pesky monthly cramps, uncomfortable bloating, and fertility related hormone issues. Certain amino acids, such as glycine, which we find in gelatin, not only help lower hormones like norepinephrine, but also increase “happy hormones” like GABA.

So if you’re looking a little pick you up when you’re feeling low why not whip up a batch of our raspberry and coconut chocolates? Recipe here.

What sort of gelatin should I buy?

Our ancestral diet involved truly eating nose to tail, by doing this we’d be eating all the bone marrow, tendons etc and with that the gelatin contained in them.

Our modern diet has evolved and it’s less likely that many of us are eating like that regularly, however you can go ‘back to basics’ making your own bone broth for instance.

For a quicker fix you’ll need to turn to a powdered gelatin such as our premium grade, pasture fed, Beef Gelatin or our Supergreens Collagen Hydrolysate for making all of the recipes above.

Our Supergreens Collagen Hydrolysate is cold water soluble and is easy to add to smoothies and juices.

It will help boost the body’s own collagen production, making skin appear firmer, smoothing out wrinkles and helping to maintain your skin’s elasticity.

The ‘supergreens’ element also work their beauty magic as they are full of antioxidants which protect against signs of aging, vitamin C for collagen formation and tissue repair and magnesium, B vitamins and chlorophyll, which together help hormone function and liver detoxification. What a great building block for super skin!

You’ll want our Premium Beef Gelatin that ‘gels’ for making your jelly, gummies and hair masks. It’s unflavoured and mixes well in warm, hot or cold water.

This high quality gelatin is also great for increasing your collagen production, as mentioned above, a boost we could all do with.
Gelatin is also 88% pure protein and almost half of the amino acids are glycine or proline, which are critical building blocks for healthy hair, skin and nails.

Along with the benefits discussed above glycine can also help regulate blood sugar levels and combat sugar cravings, so it could help with keeping your waistline in check too!

 

Sources

• Merrymaker Sisters – Morning smoothie & Paleo gummy lollies
• Pete Evans – Bone Broth recipe
• Mommypotomus.com – Hair mask
• Sylvie McCracken  – The gelatin secret
• Wellness Mama
• Dr Josh Axe
• Gotthoffer, NR, Gelatin in Nutrition and Medicine

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