Live Like a Girl with Dr. Mindy Pelz - Boost Collagen & Age Naturally with These Nutrients & More!

Episode Date: February 17, 2025

Struggling with wrinkles and joint pain? It's time to harness the natural power of two essential nutrients! In this episode, Dr. Mindy shows you how hydrolyzed collagen and vitamin C can help you age beautifully. Plus, Dr. Mindy answers the listener's questions. Chapters: 0:00 Introduction to Aging and Collagen 2:05 Hydrolyzed Collagen Supplementation 6:35 The Role of Vitamin C 10:00 Protein Intake During Fasting 13:45 Protein Types 17:45 Navigating Fish Consumption 22:05 Maintaining Fasted State with Snacks 26:40 Avoiding Overeating When Breaking a Fast To view full show notes, more information on our guests, resources mentioned in the episode, discount codes, transcripts, and more, visit https://drmindypelz.com/ep275 Check out our fasting membership at resetacademy.drmindypelz.com. Please note our medical disclaimer.

On this episode of the Resetter podcast, who wants to know how to slow aging and boost collagen, which is, aka. Rinkles, all through two nutrients. It's literally that simple. So on this video or podcast, depending on where you're consuming this information, I'm going to go through two really key nutrients that will help you with building collagen and help you with what I call pro-aging. I am not anti-aging, I am pro-aging. We are all aging every single day. It's called how do you work with aging, not against it?

So on this episode, I am going to explain these two nutrients. And then I'm also going to answer my new format. I'm going to answer five questions that you all have asked to make sure that I help support you in building a healthy lifestyle. Because really, we're in a really interesting time in human history where there's a lot of chronic disease. A lot of it is not our fault. There's a lot of we're aging faster than ever because of the high physical stress, the high chemical stress, the high emotional stress going on in our world. So even though it's not our fault, it is our responsibility. And these two nutrients are really interesting and I want to unpack them

for you so you can make really smart choices for yourself. So you can be a pro-ager, not an anti-ager. We want you to be a pro-ager. So with that in mind, let's dive in. Welcome to the Resetter podcast. This podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself again. If you have a passion for learning, if you're looking to be in control of your health and take your power back, this is the podcast. podcast for you. Okay, so first, let's start by this with this understanding of what collagen is. Because collagen, I don't think we think about it until we lose it. At least that was really me when I, you know, I kind of thought about collagen and then I hit my 40s and all of a sudden I started to see more wrinkles on my face. I started to get more injuries in my joints. And when I

dove in to what was happening to the female body during my 40s, I saw, oh, there's this real interesting intersection between estrogen production and collagen. So let me explain this because this is really this episode I want to is all about aging and how do we work with it. And a part of working with aging is understanding that there are certain changes that are happening to you that you might not be aware of. So we have three types of estrogen. One is called estradiol. I call her the diva. Estradial came in in the front half of your cycle and released an egg. So this is there for women. So, you know, if you have a male counterpart that's watching this with you, obviously doesn't apply to him. But Estradial released the egg,

but she also brought with her what I call the girl gang. She brought her girl gang with her. So whatever estradial came in, she stimulated dopamine, serotonin, acetycholine, glutamate, BDNF, which is like brain fertilizer for your brain, and oxytocin. So you had all these neurochemicals that came with esteridial. But she also brought another nutrient with her called collagen. And collagen, when it's in your system, it makes your skin elastic and it creates cartilage in your joints so that your joints aren't rubbing against each other.

So as a woman moves through perimenopause and into those postmenopausal years, oftentimes she sees that all of a sudden the wrinkles show up, all of a sudden the joint stiffness shows up. So it's because you're not getting as much natural collagen production now and you've got to supplement it from the outside, which leads me to my first nutrient for you to add in and it's hydrolyzed collagen. Now, hydrolyzed collagen is a little bit different in the sense that it requires, collagen in general, by the way, requires a very large amount of amino acids. And so hydrolyzed means that they have broken this collagen down most of the time it comes

from a bovine collagen. So it's derived from cows. It has the same exact, the bovine version has the same exact amino acid profile as our human version. So let me back up for a second because I always want to honor my plant-based friends. But when we're looking at things that we can get in nature that are plant-based compared to things that are like an omnivore, like meat style, sometimes there's not a match. So if you're okay doing hydrolyzed collagen in a bovine source, you're going to get the same

collagen amino acid profile as estradial was making. If you're like, I'm not doing a bovine source, I will tell you that my favorite, my favorite marine source is put out by true Vonie. Vonny Harri, so she's a friend of mine, she's a food babe, I know she has good quality products, she has a marine source. But for the sake of this video, I want to just point out that the bovine source of hydrolyzed collagen, it's best to get the bovine because it is coming from, it is the most analogous with your own collagen production.

Now, when you go to buy collagen, I just want to make sure that you're looking at the label and make sure it says hydrolyzed collagen on it. That just means it's been broken down into amino acid. already, so it's easier for your body to absorb. Now, most collagen powder will be hydrolyzed, so this shouldn't be hard to do. Now, there was a 23 meta-analysis in the journal Nutrients, which is a meta-analysis means they looked at a lot of different studies. In this particular study, they looked at 26 different studies, and they found, and they specifically were looking at taking hydrolyzed collagen to slow the aging of skin.

And what they found was that there was a daily improved skin hydration and skin elasticity and that collagen with collagen intake and that it overall, over time, they didn't say how long, right? Because it's a meta-analysis. So it's looking at these 26 different studies. and it found that not only is it helping make the skin look more hydrated, not only is helping with elasticity of the skin, but that it's actually overall reversing the aging of skin. Oh my God, if you think about the ramifications of that, how many people are spending thousands and thousands of dollars

on trying to stop aging skin when really one of the biggest steps they need to do is they need to take this hydrolyzed collagen every single day. And here's what this meta-analysis found is that it's 10 to 20 grams of collagen protein a day, which is usually one to two scoops for increasing your natural collagen production. Now, you want it, it's flavorless. Collagen is flavorless. You can put it in water. And it's also heat-tolerant, so you can heat it up.

I will tell you where I put it in. As a soon-to-be-55, depending on when you listen to this, my birthday is in October. So it's coming up. I'm about to go to my 50-fifth year. And I take every morning in my coffee, I do one scoop of collagen powder, and I do a scoop of creatine. That has given me more muscle strength, has hydrated my skin more than anything else I have seen to date. And I've been practicing a lot of things because I am not going in on the Botox. I'm not going in on fillers. I am not toxifying myself to stay young, to look young. I am using the principles, the pro-aging principles that I'm teaching you here on my podcast and my YouTube channel so that I can age

at the appropriate rate for my body. So 10 to 20 grams of collagen protein every single day. Okay, nutrient number two, this is also really good and one that doesn't get talked about enough, which is vitamin C. Vitamin C is a precursor to collagen. So if we know the skin needs collagen to slow down the aging process, then we know collagen needs vitamin C. It's very much like I've talked a lot about how serotonin, you need tryptophan to make serotonin. Well, in order to make collagen, you need vitamin C.

So just as you're aging, it doesn't mean that you're not going to make any collagen. it just means you make less collagen. So let's make sure you have that vitamin C in your system so that it can take the amino acids that you eat in meat specifically and it can turn them into a collagen protein. We're literally just like a big chemical reaction walking around. It's just nobody gave us the user's manual. So vitamin C.

So now what's interesting is if you think about, like I don't know if you all think about this, but scurvy. Like scurvy was like back in the day. It's not just for pirates. Like scurvy was like something that that people like really were concerned about, but specifically sailors. It was definitely a pirate term. I don't think anybody has any pirates in their life, but it was scurvy was a thing back in the day. And what happened with scurvy is it was low vitamin C. But what's interesting why I bring up scurvy is that the sailors used to the pirates, first of the pirates, the pirates, the pirates, used to spend months at sea eating only dried meat and bread because they couldn't bring fruits

and vegetables. They were out at sea. So they got the amino acids to make collagen, but they didn't get the vitamin C. They were low in vitamin C. So that vitamin C didn't activate those amino acids to turn into collagen. And what they started to notice was scurvy is that their skin became very rough and dry and wrinkled in their teeth and their joints would all start to break. So you need that whole chemical reaction.

So just like estradiol helped with production of collagen, so does vitamin C helps with the production of collagen. But you need the vitamin C mixed with the amino acids. So like today, as I'm doing this video, I'm drinking a glass of amino acids. I'm thinking now I could have put some vitamin C powder in here. And now I'm making, I'm giving myself a precursor for collagen. I'm making, giving myself all the nutrients. on how to give my body to make collagen.

Now, there's some interesting information on vitamin C. So there was a 2024 study done in the journal nutrients that they found taking vitamin C alongside collagen protein further increased skin density and smoothness and reduced wrinkles compared to just plain collagen protein. And, of course, they did a placebo. So let me put this in order now. I just talked about hydrolyzed collagen. I talked about how important, especially after 40, it is for women because estradiol is not

stimulating it. So just putting hydrogen, hydrolyzed collagen powder in your coffee every morning is going to help with overall collagen production. Now, if you go one step further and you make sure you're getting good doses of vitamin C on a regular basis, you're now making sure and you're getting eating plenty of meat or you're taking an amino acid supplement, you're adding that vitamin C. vitamin C with the amino acids, now you're making collagen. So we're coming at this from a lot of different angles, but I hope you see this is why

it's so important to know thyself. If you know how your body makes certain things and you understand when those things go away that you can add them in through diet or through supplementation, now you have a pro-aging toolbox, which is my whole point in like stop being anti-eating. aging, be pro-aging. Know what it means to age appropriately and not just gracefully, but how to work with your body when you age. And this is a classic example of what that looks like. Okay. With that in mind, now we're going to go into the questions that you all asked. And you'll see that some of them relate to what I just shared with you. So a question I get a lot is how can I get all the

protein I need while fasting, it seems impossible to get one gram per pound. Okay, so this is really interesting because let's go back for a moment. I have been teaching you all metabolic flexibility where you have an eating window and you have a fasting window. Fast like a girl was about the fasting window. It introduced that and how important it was to move in and out of this fasting and eating window. We call it metabolic switching.

Then I taught you eating window with Eat Like a Girl. Those two books coming together are an example of here's your metabolic formula for women. Now, in the eating window, the protein is getting a lot of press these days because we have been a protein deficient society. We haven't put enough emphasis on protein. I think it's a great conversation. And in that, we are hearing things like one gram of protein for every pound of ideal body weight you want to be. So remember, it's ideal body weight.

So when we're fasting, depending on how long our fasting window is, if our eating window is really small, getting protein in on that level of protein in on a regular basis can be difficult. But here's what I want to point out to you. is that this is why we don't do the same type of length fast over and over again. If you're pretty much doing five days a week of a 15 to 17 hour fast, that leaves you eight hours, like, you know, seven, eight, nine, ten hours of eating. You should be able to get your ideal body weight, the grams per pound of ideal body weight.

Let me give you some ideas. If you do protein shakes, double up on the scoops. I like beef sticks. I do a lot of beef sticks. I like jerky. Beef jerky is got the highest amount of protein. Because it's dehydrated meat so you can eat more. So make sure you're eating more jerky if you eat meat.

If you don't eat meat, then you're going to need to lean into more of the legumes. You're going to need to lean into more of the powders and the protein. powders. Cottage cheese has a high amount of protein. Eggs has a high amount of protein. In Eat Like a Girl, I mapped out the protein amounts. I have lists after lists after lists for you so you can be smart about your protein. Now, I will also say that in my Reset Academy, we've been playing with this. We have thousands of women over there that we all fast together, we eat together, we work out together on Saturday mornings. It's a beautiful community. Come join me over there. And one of the things that we discuss,

amongst the community there was we don't want to count anything. I don't want to count calories. I don't want to count macros. I don't want to count protein. The idea of a healthy lifestyle should be an effortless living where you're just kind of doing things on a regular basis and it's keeping you healthy. So make sure that you just have protein with every meal. When you go to snack, do you snack on protein? I mean, I just came up into my office to do this solo episode And I just, again, I did, I had a breakfast where it had an egg, it had beans, and had chicken. It also had some sweet potatoes. And I had the eggs, beans, and chicken first to make sure I got the protein in there first.

And then I do jerkeys a lot. I do meat sticks. I'm now doing the collagen powder in my coffee every morning. So these are ways that you can get protein, sneaky bits of protein in over and over again. but don't get obsessed with it. And if you go into a longer fast, like two days or three days, it's not going to kill you to not have enough protein for a few days. It's just if you were doing two and three day water fast every single week that eventually

those muscles are going to break down. So second question is the confusion, there's a confusion on the different variations of protein. Which one is best for what purpose? Okay. this is this is there's a lot to unpack in this question so first i want to say that the number one rule to protein is variation make sure you're not eating the same protein over and over again let me tell you why each protein amount packs a different protein punch so we want to make sure we get diversity

i'm sorry packs different amino acid punch so we want to make sure we want to make sure we get diversity i'm sorry packs different amino acid punch. So we want to make sure we get a diversity of amino acids. So if you eat chicken all the time, try eating turkey or try eating grass-fed beef. If you're having pinto beans, it might be time for you to have lentils. The name of protein game, the very first name, is variation. Just don't think about anything else other than I need to eat a variety of different foods. I do this when I go to a restaurant. I literally look at the menu and I'm like, what do I not, I don't normally eat. Oh, I don't normally eat bison. Okay, let me have that, this. I was recently at a grocery store that had buffalo bone broth. And I was like, oh, I haven't had buffalo bone broth. Let me see what amino acid

punch that is going to give me. So make sure that you are in diversifying. So that's the first rule. The second is we want to lean into the leucine-rich proteins. And leucine-rich proteins, the reason Lucine is important. It is the one amino acid that opens up. It's like we have these amino acid sensors in our muscle. And when you get 30 grams of lucine, you open up these sensors and they stay open and they start to let all the other amino acids go into the muscle to build the muscle strong. So lusine is really important. My most favorite way to get lucine into the diet is through eggs, eggs have the highest amount of leucine in up. When we look at legumes, black beans, pinto beans, and lentils are high in leucine. And eat like a girl, I have lists. I have the omnivore

list of leucine. I have the plant-based list of leucine. So it's all in that book for those of you who want to dive into protein. So there is no best one, I mean, the leucine's the best one, but diversification matters because they bring different amino acids to you. Now remember, if you combine those amino acids after you have your Bisonburger, drink something with vitamin C in it, and now you've created a chemical reaction in your body where you're taking amino acids and vitamin C and you're making collagen. So be your own lab. Okay, number three, what do you say about fish?

I never hear you mention anything about when to eat it, which to eat it. it and how much. Yeah. Yeah, it's complicated. You caught me because I have mixed feelings about fish. So our oceans are toxic. Our rivers are toxic. So the first thing I just want to say is can we as humans please take better care of our earth? Because fish is swimming in toxic soup. So there are some fish that are very high in toxins compared to others. And they're typically, the larger fish, like the halibates and the sword fish, and the fish that have been living longer, like orange rush ruffy, is a fish that lives a long time. So if it's a big fish or a long living fish, it has had more time in the water to absorb these toxins. So you do not want to eat them.

Smaller fish, like the fatty fish, like macrules and sardines, they're amazing. And eat like a girl, there's incredible recipe that Chef Jeff brought to us that I'm so excited about. It's a sardine toastata. So I'm not like I'm not the type of person that she's going to like pull a sardine out of a can and stick it in my mouth. So I got to do something with it. So the sardine tostadas is a really interesting way to bring it in in a yummy way. Now when it comes to fish, there are farm, There's farm fish and there's wild fish. You always want wild fish. So specifically with salmon. Salmon is high in omega-3s. I love salmon. I'm a huge, yeah, huge fan of salmon. I have salmon on a regular weekly basis, but it's always wild. Farm fresh means that they raised them in a smaller

container. That means those fish didn't swim as far. So they didn't get as many omega-3s in their system. You can tell when you look at a farm fish versus a wild salmon, wild salmon has a real red color to it. Farm raised salmon is much lighter. It's much paler. So when it comes to salmon, make sure that you are doing the wild. Then the last fish I feel like I really need to talk about is tuna. So when I started to understand heavy metals, so in my clinic, we detoxed heavy metals, so many people, so much.

I was like, for years and years and years, we were detoxing heavy metals out of people. And because I saw how many people, I mean, we ran tens of thousands of blood tests, heavy metal tests, and every single person came back, high in lead and high in mercury. And so I started looking at all the places we get mercury from, and one of them was tuna. And so I just stopped eating tuna because of it. Now, I will tell you every once in a while, you will find me at a restaurant where a tuna is on the menu, and I'm going to get it because I eat it every once in a while. But what I am starting to bring back on a more daily basis, I'd love to make salads for lunch,

and this is a great version of tuna to put on a salad, is Skipjack. Skipjack tuna has been tested for its mercury eight levels. It's a smaller form of tuna, so it's smaller. It's not going to absorb as much mercury from the water. and they test it. So when you go to your grocery store, look for the canned tuna and see if it says skipjack. Because skip jack is an incredible way to get a mercury-free tuna. So it's complicated. This is why I don't mention a lot. It's a complicated topic. So thank you for asking it. Now you all got my current feelings on fish. Okay, question number four. How am I still in a

fasted state if I eat a fat bomb or a fasted snack. Okay. So let's talk about this. What puts you in the fasted state? What moves you from a sugar burner to a fat burner is your blood sugar comes down enough that you switch over. So eight to 12 hours without your blood sugar going up, it's your blood sugar going down, down, down, down, down, will trigger the body to move you over into the fasted state. Once you're over in the fasted state, in order to stay in a fasted state, you just don't raise your blood sugar. Just keep your blood sugar the same. So a fat mom, a pure fat mom like a keto cup, will absolutely do that. It does, for most people, it won't raise your blood sugar and pull you back into a sugar burner. So you want to make sure whatever fat mom you have,

it doesn't elevate your blood sugar and you might have to test it on a continuous glucose monitor. Now, outside of that, the fasted snack is based off of research that I found. And in Eat Like a Girl, I have several fasted snacks, plus I have the study. I also mentioned the study in Fast Like a Girl and the study went like this. They took two groups of people and they said, okay, one group is going to break their fast at 13 hours. The other group at 13 hours is going to have a fasted snack, and they gave requirements of what the fasted snack is, and is going to fast two hours more. And then we're going to see what happens to the fasted snack group.

How are they responding to, like, does their body keep healing? What they found is if they got people to go two more hours into this fasted state, then what ended up happening is that they dropped more. weight specifically around the circumference of their belly, and they continued to get mental clarity, they continued to get ketones, even though they had had this fasted snack. So I put all the lists, the requirements of the fasted snack and eat like a girl so you can get that book and find it there. But they're both based off research. And one is based off the concept of let's not increase your blood sugar. The other one was based off of a manipulation of macronutrients.

So they looked at calories. They looked at protein. And then also they included glucose. So again, you can read all about that and eat like a girl. Okay. And then the last question was, how can I stop overeating to break my fast? So, you know, this is how I, in eat like a girl, I have something that I call how to avoid rebounding. You know, we, we tend to. or boomeranging, sorry, how to avoid boomeranging. So we have a tendency, we muscle through the fast, and then we open up our eating window, and boom, we go boomerang back into our old habits. So I have a whole section in there for you to read, but I really want to say that one of

the things that has helped tremendously is to make sure that first meal matters. Tell your brain, okay, okay, brain, the fast is over. All you need to do is nail this first meal. And in this first meal, you need to have a fat, you need to have a protein, and you need to have some fiber. So you decide how you're going to put that first meal together. But if all you do before you boomerang is you just think about that first meal and make sure, is there a fat in here, is there a protein, and is there a fiber?

So like one of my favorite first meals is an avocado with sourcrow, hemp seeds, chia seeds, and then sometimes I'll take the skip jack tuna. sometimes I'll cut up a little bit of chicken and put it in there, and that will be my first snack, because now I have the fiber from the avocado. I'm feeding the nuts and seeds are a prebiotic. I'm feeding my microbes. I'm adding a probiotic in with the sauerkraut, and I'm getting protein with the chicken or the tuna. So again, I have all over Eat Like a Girl is the break the fast, because that was like the big thing I saw

with so many people buying fast like a girl is that I really saw how people boomeranged into food and there became a real distrust of how do I work with food? How do I change my relationship to food? So eat like a girl is all about helping you change relationship to food. And for the sake of this question, I want you to just say, I just have to nail the first meal. That's it. What you will find if you say that is that then you will, if you put that call, combination together that I just taught you, it's going to help stimulate the GLP1 hormone in your body,

so that kills hunger. The fat is going to help you kill hunger. And if it's a good meal, even if you do overeat, it's not going to destroy you. And then after that, you're going to find that when you eat in your eating window, it gets much easier. So I also, depending on when you're listening to this, we did a fast training week specifically on. eat like on GLP 1 hunger hormone. How do you increase that? So we will leave links on how you can access that fast training week. And I just want to also say that if you really make that first meal intentional, it tricks the

brain. It tricks the brain into discovering that it's actually not eating. It's hard to overeat healthy food. It really is. what we typically overeat is the unhealthy food. Because if you're in a relationship with healthy food, your brain doesn't, like most people aren't going to eat 10 apples. They'll eat an apple, maybe they'll eat two apples.

But if you now take that apple and you dehydrate it and you spray it with salt and you spray it with sugar and you make an apple snack out of it, a chip snack, you could overeat that. So if we're always staying with nature's foods, we typically don't overeat. nature's fits. Okay, so there you go. Again, new format. I'm excited to bring to you. Thank you for your questions. And let me know what you think of this new format. I'm enjoying doing it. And as always, I hope that my content helps move the needle forward on your health. If you want to dive into more of this, fast like a girl is out. It's been out for two years. Eat Like a Girl is coming out in

October, depending on when you're listening to this. So Fast Like a Girl is really about the fasting window, eat like a girl is about the eating window with a whole bunch of delicious recipes from professional chefs. And you can succeed and win your metabolic health. I promise you, I'm here to show you that and make sure that you fall in love with living in your body again. So, as always, hope that helps. Thank you so much for joining me in today's episode.

I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we'd love to know about it, so please leave us a review, share it with your friends, and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.