Author Archives: Liam

Soul Performance Nutrition, an up-and-coming supplement startup founded by Matthew Karich, has been a PricePlow favorite ever since we interviewed Karich on The PricePlow Podcast Episode #068, and even before that since Matt's quite active in the PricePlow Discord community. Soul Performance's formulas have been one home run after another. Their meticulously engineered approach to popular supplement concepts have turned a lot of heads and impressed a lot of industry insiders very quickly. Introducing Soul Performance Bliss Revitalizing Collagen. Today we're talking about Soul Performance's collagen supplement, Bliss Revitalizing Collagen. This product explores the concept behind collagen supplementation, which is to improve health and wellness —particularly skin quality. But "Bliss" also utilizes a new approach that we believe will improve collagen's uptake - which is a concern since we fear that too many consumers are still buying collagen supplements for the protein, when it's really more nuanced than that. A collagen protein paired with Nutrition21's Velositol As most of our readers know, collagen doesn't have the most "muscle-centric" amino acid profile, but just in case, they're attempting to boost amino acid uptake as much as possible with Nutrition21's Velositol. This is exactly what we had debated with Nutrition21 in PricePlow Podcast Episode #075, and it turns out Matt and his team had the combination in here all along! Beyond that, Soul took a pretty enlightened approach to the rest of the formula as well. Besides the typical skin-health boosting ingredients, we see a heavy emphasis on controlling inflammation and improving glycemic control, two huge factors in skin health that don't get nearly as much attention as they should. Soul Performance Nutrition Ingredients. In a single 1-scoop (19.5 g/0.68 oz) serving of Bliss Revitalize Collagen from Soul Performance, you get the following: Bovine Collagen Peptides – 12,000 mg. Bliss uses bovine collagen peptides, which consist primarily of collagen type I and collagen type III. In all, there are five types of collagen, and each is thought to have a different role in the human body. Collagen types I & III. Collagen type I is the most common type of collagen in mature connective tissue, like tendons and ligaments. The body uses collagen type I to support heavy loads.[1] Collagen type III is important for healing tissue damage caused by inflammation. Chronic inflammation is a growing health concern for many, thanks to toxins commonly found in the environment. This kind of collagen can be especially important for athletes and bodybuilders, since exercise itself causes acute inflammation.[2] In the case of exercise, of course, inflammation is generally a good thing because it triggers the body's adaptive response, which is the reason most people exercise. Still though, you want to make sure that your body has the raw materials it needs to heal from the hormetic stress of exercise – and that's where a high-quality collagen supplement comes in. Although isolated collagen peptide types are on the market, it's generally a good idea to take naturally-sourced collagen-like bovine collagen peptides. This is because a natural source of collagen contains appropriate ratios of various collagen. That's true of collagen types I and III – you don't want too much of one relative to the other, because this can disrupt your body's ability to maintain a good balance between rigidity and elasticity in connective tissues.[3] Collagen types I and III may also have synergistic effects in some bodily processes, i.e., they work together to play an important role in wound healing.[4] One study found that mice who took bovine collagen supplements had significantly improved skin quality and collagen fiber repair, higher collagen skin content, and a normalized ratio of collagen type I to collagen type III. All of these can be taken as anti-aging effects in skin.[5] The normalization of the mice's collagen type I and type III ratio is especially interesting, for the reasons discussed just above. Bovine collagen may also help bones remineralize by enabling the growth of osteoblasts, cells that help increase bone mass.[6] No surprise, then, that another study found supplementing bovine collagen can actually prevent osteoporosis in aging mice.[7] So what about human research? Well, a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study in healthy women over the age of 35 found that taking bovine collagen for 12 weeks significantly improved the quality of their skin. By the end of the study period, the women had much better skin smoothness, hydration, and elasticity - and these results were measured with precise instrumentation.[8] Glycine vs. methionine – the metabolic importance of collagen. Because collagen can be so great for your skin, the discussion of supplements tends to fixate on its cosmetic effects. But believe it or not, collagen is important for metabolic health as well. Glycine-to-methionine ratio is an important factor in metabolic health. Getting too much methionine and not enough glycine can actually increase cortisol blood levels, mimicking the metabolic effects of stress and muscle catabolism.[9,10] As it turns out, collagen is an incredible source of glycine. Taking in more glycine from collagen can help blunt the body's metabolic stress response.[10] So why does this matter? Well, the metabolic effects of glycine deficiency are serious. It's a risk factor for obesity and metabolic syndrome.[11] Some nutritional theorists have even argued that restricting dietary methionine could be a viable technique for extending lifespan and improving human health, because it increases the body's glycine-to-methionine ratio from the other direction.[12-14] With all that in mind, it may not be a huge surprise that supplementing with collagen can also improve cardiovascular health. This is because glycine can, thanks to its effects on methionine metabolism, reduce blood levels of homocysteine, an amino acid that has been identified as an independent risk factor for cardiovascular disease.[15,16] The interplay between glycine and homocysteine might even have a role in psychiatric disease. Although the causality is not totally clear, researchers have repeatedly observed that schizophrenia patients tend to have high homocysteine and low glycine.[17,18] Limitations of collagen? While it's great for your health, don't count on collagen as an anabolic protein. It just so happens that the amino acid blend in collagen is largely devoid of the specific aminos that activate mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR), which is an important part of the anabolic response.[19] Unfortunately, some are still using it for that purpose -- although the world now seems far more educated on this subject than it was in the prior decade. But just in case we need to eek out as much amino acid potential from the collage, Soul Performance has added Velositol from Nutrition21. High amylopectin starch (waxy maize) (from Velositol) – 2,000 mg. Velositol is a patented ingredient from Nutrition21 that consists of chromium picolinate, chromium histidinate, and amylopectin starch.[20] Its function is to increase the bioavailability of dietary protein and the amino acids inside. Nutrition21 got the idea for Velositol from their big commercial success Chromax, a trademarked form of chromium with much higher bioavailability than generic forms of chromium. Chromax has been tested in over 50 different peer-reviewed journal studies,[21] which have vouched for its insulin-sensitizing properties. Chromium's effect on insulin naturally makes it a great glycemic control supplement, with significant metabolic benefits. What Nutrition21 realized is that since improved insulin signaling in muscle tissue can also improve amino acid transport, this means that chromium could improve protein bioavailability as well. Since its release, Velositol has been mostly paired with whey protein powders in order to increase muscle protein synthesis, but here it's used in an attempt to increase collagen bioavailability. Since, as we discussed above, collagen supplementation probably isn't going to do much for your anabolic response,[19] this marks a little bit of a departure from Velositol's standard use case of increasing muscle growth by enhancing anabolic protein uptake. This is a pretty cool little innovation, and what we consider a "cutting edge" use of Velositol that will admittedly have less research behind it. In fact, when Soul Performance launched Bliss Revitalizing Collagen last summer, Matt Karich came on The PricePlow podcast and Velositol was one of the main topics we covered. We had another conversation about this during a lively podcast we did at SupplySide West 2022 with Nutrition21's Todd Spear and Katie Emerson – the consensus here is that using Velositol in this way should work pretty well! But there is a caveat. Although collagen-specific data on Velositol doesn't exist yet, data from non-collagen studies strongly suggests that Velositol should increase the bioavailability of collagen's amino acids: For example, an animal study in Wistar rats found that giving branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs) along with ACr boosted the animals' serum concentrations of all amino acids more effectively than BCAAs alone. Compared to controls, Velositol notably increased the rats' leucine levels by 87%, isoleucine levels by 70%, and valine levels by 18%.[23] These three aminos are the BCAAs, so this is pretty good evidence that Velositol increases amino acid bioavailability. In one way, "collagen" is just a cluster of specific amino acids in peptide bonds. So, in theory, we should see the same effect when stacking Velositol with collagen. Some larger brands would possibly wait for a full study performed on Velositol with collagen before going mainstream with such a combo. Otherwise, they really couldn't really make "claims" on it. But when you're...

Author Archives: Liam

Soul Performance Bliss Revitalize Collagen: Seeking The Fountain of Youth

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