Animals are made of anywhere from thousands to trillions of cells, depending on their size. Typically too small to see with the naked eye, it consists of watery fluid surrounded by a membrane or wall. “It’s something to think about when we get hurt ― or really before it happens,” Baar says.Ĭell The smallest structural and functional unit of an organism. Collagen acts like the steel rods.” If you add gelatin to your diet, he explains, you’ll give your bones more collagen to build bone faster. “If there’s a building being built out of cement, there are usually steel rods to give it strength. So to get the full benefits, Baar contends, athletes would need plenty of that vitamin in addition to the gelatin.Įating gelatin rich in vitamin C could help mend a broken bone or torn ligament, Baar believes. Vitamin C actually plays an important role in collagen production. He prefers one low in sugar and high in vitamin C (such as Ribena, a brand of black current juice). That’s why he suggests buying gelatin and mixing it with fruit juice for flavor. Store-bought gelatin snacks have “too much sugar,” Baar says. Although Baar says Jell-O and other commercial brands should work, his daughter’s finger-food is homemade. She eats a gelatin snack before playing soccer and basketball. If girls eat gelatin from a young age, Baar says, it may stiffen their collagen and help keep them injury-free as they get older.īaar’s daughter, who is 9 years old, follows her dad’s advice. Stiffer collagen keeps tendons and ligaments from moving as freely, which might prevent tears. Estrogen gets in the way of the chemical building blocks that help collagen stiffen and strengthen. This is a hormone, a type of signaling molecule. Why? When girls hit puberty, their bodies begin making more estrogen. In fact, she says, a generally healthy diet may offer the same benefit.īut if gelatin does help strengthen and heal tissues, it could be especially important for athletic girls, Baar suspects. It will take more work to prove that gelatin boosts tissue health. Still, she adds, this research is only in its early stages. (She also works for the Australian Institute of Sport in Canberra.) A graduate student at Australian Catholic University in Sydney, she studies supplements that might prevent injuries or help heal them. She is a dietician who did not take part in the new study. These results do suggest eating gelatin may help with tissue repair, agrees Rebekah Alcock. His team described its findings late last year in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. The gelatin snack may also help heal tears, he says. Their ligaments might not tear as easily. For instance, the tissue didn’t tear as easily when tested in a machine that pulled on it from both ends.Īthletes who snack on gelatin may see similar benefits in their ligaments, Baar concludes. And serum from men who had eaten a gelatin-rich snack seemed to make that tissue stronger. The cells had formed a structure similar to a knee ligament. The researchers added this serum to cells from human ligaments that they were growing in a lab dish. This is a protein-rich liquid left behind when the blood cells are removed. Then they separated out the blood’s serum. So the scientists collected another blood sample after each rope-skipping workout. The team wanted to know whether these extra collagen building blocks might be good for ligaments, a tissue that connects bones. That suggested that eating gelatin might help the body make more collagen. ![]() On the day the men ate the most gelatin, their blood contained the highest levels of collagen’s building blocks, the researchers found. That keeps people’s expectations from affecting how they initially interpret the results. Such tests are known as “double blind.” That’s because both the participants and scientists are “blind” to the treatments at the time. ![]() ![]() Neither the athletes nor the researchers knew on which day a man got a particular snack. ![]() On a third day, the snack contained no gelatin. An hour before each workout, the researchers gave the men a gelatin snack. Each man did this routine on three different days. To test his idea, Baar and his colleagues had eight men jump rope for six minutes straight. As a physiologist at the University of California, Davis, Baar studies how the body works. So Keith Baar wondered if eating gelatin might help those important tissues. (Most Americans know gelatin as the basis of Jell-O, a popular treat.) Collagen is part of our bones and ligaments. Gelatin is an ingredient made from collagen, the most abundant protein in an animal’s body. This means the jiggly snack might have health benefits. before exercising might limit injury to bones and muscles, a new study shows. Downing a gelatin snack along with some O.J.
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