I'm new to posting in this particular forum, but I lurk here often. This subject is very relevant to me. A year ago I began to experience dramatic collagen depletion. It started on my face, with random areas sinking in and also having strange indented shapes such as triangles appearing on my face out of nowhere, sometimes within a period of hours. My skin also started to sag and feel loose, literally overnight, especially on my forehead. There are spots on my cheeks where it looks like I pushed my thumbnail into my skin and the imprint stayed. This progressed to overall rapidly degenerating skin texture, with many fine lines on my cheeks, broken capillaries all over, and huge pores developing in areas that were previously smooth. After a few months, I noticed this collagen depletion happening all over my body, and my fingers look like I have spent three hours in the bathtub - all permanently wrinkled and pruney. I also have new "life lines" forming on my hands every day. It's a joy, I tell you. By the way, this started at the age of 29 and previously I had been mistaken for being no older than 22. Now I would have difficulty convincing someone that I am younger than 45. At the time that this degeneration began, I was having trouble sleeping for a couple of weeks, and was only able to sleep maybe an hour per night. I also had strange twitches all over my body and also a type of palpitation in my stomach/chest area that would lurch me every time that I began to slip into sleep. Luckily this symptom went away rather quickly. I had a 4 point adrenal saliva test run at the time, and it came back slightly abnormal, with morning being below normal, noon being normal, afternoon above normal, and late night normal. I was not and am still not convinced that this collagen wasting is entirely due to adrenal malfunction.

By the way, several years before this phenomena began and up to this day I was taking a good amount of Betaine HCL as well as digestive enzymes so I should have been digesting protein sufficiently. I have been on a program to re-balance my body in all aspects for years so I was quite surprised to experience this rapid breakdown. I'm still looking for answers to this puzzle...

Matt,
What do you recommend to digest the protein better? Also, you mentioned before you had the wrinkles at one time, right?

In the beginning of this ordeal I tried everything I could to reverse the damage - collagen supps, MSM, Aloe, Vitamin C (I actually took lots of vitamin C and MSM anyway before and while this destruction infolded), L-Lysine, Organo Living Silica (a very expensive highly absorbable silica product), the very best diet, superfoods, herbs, green juices, sleeping up to 15 hrs. per day...nothing stopped the destruction. I started taking a good quality powdered colostrum a few months ago and it seemed to help slightly (it contains growth factors and is supposed to help reverse tissue aging). I might start taking it again when we get paid next week. Unfortunately, I have lost hope that there is a magic bullet for my collagen loss. I have had to accept the new me.