The five most common types are:
- Type I: skin, tendon, vascular ligature, organs, bone (main component of the organic part of bone)
- Type II: cartilage (main collagenous component of cartilage)
- Type III: reticulate (main component of reticular fibers), commonly found alongside type I.
- Type IV: forms basal lamina, the epithelium-secreted layer of the basement membrane.
- Type V: cell surfaces, hair and placenta
Collagen, when digested, is broken down into amino acids in the stomach. Digested Collagen is, therefore, not absorbed into the body as Collagen but as Lysine and Proline. This means that Collagen will never have the opportunity to be dissolved into the bloodstream as Collagen.
Soft-tissue (cartilage/ tendons), in the human body has very little or no blood supply. How does the “Collagen” expect to be absorbed by soft-tissue without any blood supply?; that is, even if it wasn’t already ‘simplified’ into amino acids in the stomach. Amines contest for absorption, therefore, any amines not taken up, are excreted as faecal matter/ urine.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), with support from the TSE (Transmissible spongiform encephalopathy) Advisory Committee, has since 1997 been monitoring the potential risk of transmitting animal diseases, especially bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE). The FDA study concluded: “…steps such as heat, alkaline treatment, and filtration could be effective in reducing the level of contaminating TSE agents; however, scientific evidence is insufficient at this time to demonstrate that these treatments would effectively remove the BSE infectious agent if present in the source material.”