Latest / Wellness by Designs - Practitioner Podcast / Collagen in Motion: The Missing Link in Rehab, Recovery, and Bone Health with Matthew Craig

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Collagen in Motion: The Missing Link in Rehab, Recovery, and Bone Health with Matthew Craig · Wellness by Designs - Practitioner Podcast

• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: This is Wellness by Designs, and I'm your host, Andrew Whitfield.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: And joining us today is Matthew Craig, an integrative physiotherapist who uses collagen to help his patients overcome injuries, stave off degenerative disorders, and also to recover from surgical interventions faster.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: Matthew, welcome so much to Wellness by Designs.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: How are you?
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm great.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Andrew.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: How are you?
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for having me.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: Our pleasure.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: And thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_01: Matt, can I just first ask you a little bit about your history?
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you've been a physiotherapist.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: Most physiotherapists are pretty sort of hunky-dory onto the physical interventions.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: What sparked your interest in giving an oral supplementation of coral, of collagen?
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's a really interesting question in terms of having to look back historically to the reasons why I do use collagen quite frequently and a lot.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's part of the daily protocol in terms of like when a lot of patients are coming in.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's so easy to talk about for me.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: But I remember it must have been around 10 years ago.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I've been a physio for just over 20 years, let's call it 23, 24 years.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, you're seeing patients like chronic pain, you're seeing acute pain, you're seeing shoulders, you're seeing toes, broken toes, you're seeing everything.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: Seeing people post-cancer treatments.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot, there's a lot involved in private practice that we see.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I just remember my sister, who's a geneticist over in Switzerland, and she's a smart cookie.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: She's a molecular biologist, and she's got patents, and she was in the cancer research field uh for many years and big researcher.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: Like anything she says, I sort of just go, yes, it must be true.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: And then 10 years ago, she actually made did a big backflip and she created a collagen product.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I was talking to her just on probably very primitive uh FaceTime 10 years ago.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder what that was.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: Was it FaceTime?
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: Who knows?
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: It could have been Skype or something exciting.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, I remember saying to her, What what what making collagen?
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: What's collagen?
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Like call isn't that like isn't that tendons?
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that bone broth?
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that, you know, something that you know the hippies sort of stir up on the stove and you know, like take and uh yeah, so that's where I started learning.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: She said she essentially said, Look, Matt, you're a physio, you're dealing with people every single day that have orthopedic issues, inflammatory problems, uh, yeah, like muscle strengthening issues, etc., etc., degenerative, etc.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought, oh, like, so does that mean I could use that?
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I said I could talk to my patients about this?
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like, is this like am I allowed?
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: I I immediately thought, maybe I'm not allowed as a physio.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what's my governing body thinking of this?
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: Is this a drug?
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what is it?
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, like to my um patient's benefit over the last at least 10 years, it's been amazing to use as an adjunct in the background of what I can do or what I've been able to provide my patients.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: So it's really, yeah, it's it's nice to be able to talk to to you about it today, in terms of how I wouldn't utilize it on a daily basis.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: So, Matt, can I then ask, when do you approach this along the patient's um therapeutic journey, if you like?
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: When do you start to talk about collagen?
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_01: Do you say, hey, listen, early on, let's get into it?
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: Or do you say, look, let's do my physio, we'll see how that works.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: And if we're having some struggles, we might then instigate some collagen therapy.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: Which where do you sort of approach it?
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's I I probably have like thinking about it, I probably have two approaches.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: There's the approach where someone's really busy.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: I I work in the city in Sydney, so it's a very busy clinic.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: So sometimes people aren't, I guess they're they're just they just want some really quick relief, manual therapy, out they go, back to their Pilates classes or their normal routine.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: I am pretty firm when someone comes into the clinic with certain conditions that I know take the human body quite a long, a lengthy period of time to improve, whether it's the natural history of the particular connective tissue that's injured.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, an example would be like a meniscal tear of the knee, uh uh a disc related uh bulge, a protrusion, an extrusion.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: And when you put those two together, those particular um issues, if you're looking at say a knee and a lower back or a neck, you're that's that that that is a lot of what a physiotherapist would see each day in the clinic.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm pretty tough on those people in terms of outlining how poor the perfusion of blood flow is to those tissues, and the best thing they can do, because everyone wants to get better quicker, right?
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: They don't actually want to come and see me in my clinic, pay my rate, and and know that they could or could not get better quickly.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: So it's in their best interest to know straight away about it.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, scenario two is often the case, but there is also that scenario one where someone just wants to get in, they've got a headache, they just want their neck manipulated, and they just want to get back into a lot of their you know busy meetings.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: But if it's if it's a journey, I talk about it straight away.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: I don't wait three months and say, look, we could be getting better if we also take some supplementation in your diet.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: And and I mean you you mentioned a few conditions here, but what other conditions do you tend to employ collagen in?
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: You said you're a cancer specialist physio.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: Take us through that.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's really interesting.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's really interesting, particularly knowing your background too, and your um, yeah, your career uh in nursing and medicine.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: So there is a pink for women and a steel uh rehab physiotherapy accreditation uh that's out there.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: And it was essentially uh uh, I guess the founder, you could say the founder of the the particular cancer rehab uh foundation is a New Zealand physiotherapist.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and she works with a lot of pain management specialists, cancer, oncology, doctors, etc.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I I guess just naturally, with my history of treating chronic pain and also sports injuries, but you know, as you're getting a bit older, you sort of you see you just want to delve a bit more, a bit more into the complexity of uh treatment and helping people in need.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: So therefore, yeah, I went down that pathway and just learned a lot more about, I guess, cancer, inflammation, mechanical issues as a result of different treatment types, whether it's like chemotherapy, radiotherapy, hormone therapy, yeah, physio exercise.
• 8:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's a it's a it's a it's a big world.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the best approach is a multidisciplinary approach, yeah.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: So can can I ask you can I ask you about cording?
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: We we commonly refer to cording as this sort of you know tight muscles that mainly women experience when they've had breast cancer radiotherapy, and so the you know, the muscles under the armpit get really tight and corded, bunched up.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: But do you see cording anywhere else in the body?
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: You know, let's say for um, you know, men experiencing prostate cancer and they're they're getting, you know, they'd be lucky enough to get the cyber knife, but if they had other radiotherapy um in the genital area, do they get cording like of the groin or anything like that?
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: They do.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh coming back to the I guess more the the bust to breast surgery at the cord, the cording is amazing.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: If you haven't seen cording, it would be hard to try and explain.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it is I'm explaining it now.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's very hard to explain that someone's armpit can look like they've got guitar strings poking outside the skin.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, it's really interesting, right?
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: You've seen it.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: And to think that I guess it's generally pretty conservative in medicine, in the oncology clinics and and that world, like everyone's just sort of getting information and advice just to be happy that you're alive, but there's functional impacts on things like cording, and cording will basically present like uh particular female having um uh breast surgery or a massectomy, uh, their glands try and find a new pathway within their own lymphatic system, and then suddenly you do you get this like guitar string effect through the armpit.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_00: And now in the armpit, every single nerve that goes to your fingertips from your neck down goes through your armpit.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: So it's an absolute nightmare if you were just to follow general practice advice and just see how it goes.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: So that I have seen definitely um on the male side, like through like different um like areas of the adductors, probably not as common in terms of the presentation to a private practice, because I I think also men tend to you know not seek therapy, or they probably just I don't know, they hide it away, or I don't know, they just don't tend to probably talk much about it, or it's not really potentially painful or or you know irritating their their function, but I have definitely seen it through that sort of that adductor area, but also through the carbs.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, and it can, yep.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: So if someone's actually generally a male might tell me their history after the fact that they've introduced themselves to me or one of my physios in the clinic as someone with sardica or back pain.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: So then we start looking at the body, we start like testing, you know, the length of muscles and you know their range of motion through the hips, the knees, the the ankles.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then suddenly you can just see it's it's quite an interesting twitching response that the the medial gastroc or the the calf muscle can actually portray.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: And straight away I know that this person has probably had something else other than just back pain, like something's hypersensitizing, you know, the the neural connectivity, right?
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: Which is really yeah, it's it's a bit of a pick a path, like how much time do we have to find out what's actually going on?
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: And majority of the time, like because people come back very frequently uh and finish off their treatment because they want to, um, we can get to the bottom line of it.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: And and of course, you mentioned early on your backs and your and your knees and things like that.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, there's degenerative changes that we get as we age.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but there's also the sports injuries as well.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: So, how do you pick and choose uh well, which type of collagen, if you like?
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: Or um now we can't mention brand names here, can't mention product names.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I don't know how you feel about um ingredient names, but that's I don't have a problem with that.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_01: But um hang on.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, how do you sort of wend your way and and introduce that topic to somebody say, hey, listen, we should apart from me, you know, massaging you and working on range of motion, things like that, we should also be looking at collagen.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: How do you approach that conversation?
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so I would I I see a lot of a lot of arthritis and a lot of uh perimenopause, menopause, bone density issues uh coming through.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: There's so much excellent research.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I will definitely be chatting to most people that enter the clinic um to like take that pathway and understand more about how they got to where they are or potentially prevent where they could be heading when it comes to certain conditions like that.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: Um we often laugh like when you come into our particular clinic, um, where I guess we're rare in the sense that we do have like quite a big retail space as you enter.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: So it's we we kind of laugh and call it our physio open locker room.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: So you've got your bands, you've got your supplements, you've got your uh products that we trust, right?
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_00: And we know we're going to use them.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: So they don't stay on the shelf for very long before we then replenish them.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: So there is very good trademarked brands of collagen out there.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: You've got some very bad collagen, and you've got some very good collagen.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, it's like it's like anything out there that you've probably been talking about for years and years and years, like a lot of years, right?
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like, and we're talking about we're talking about trying to supplement someone's or be an adjunct to a treatment, but then also give someone the the best outcome.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: So generally, you kind of do get what you pay for, in a sense, when it comes to collagen.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: It has to be a small enough amino acid peptide to be able to be absorbed.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: So, therefore, when you're looking at what you're treating, let's say it's a tendon versus a bone, there's a certain collagen that's better for that tendon, but then there's also one that's better for the bone.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's been researched, so it's it's there's a lot of really cool microbiology and macrobiology out there to to allow us to know, okay, go down that path.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: But essentially, it's a lot of it's patented from like Germany and some of these like really forward-thinking countries, yeah.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, in that gelatin.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, it's very and high-drive.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: I know one of the products you're talking about, and uh, yeah, and one of them I remember looking at the at the research, I think it was a Z score um that they were looking at, and the improvement was dramatic.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like it was dramatic.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah, and look, honestly, like the the nice thing is like I I guess a lot of people have heard of collagen, and it's been sort of a bit exciting in the beauty market.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: So a lot of the like a lot, a lot of it, a lot of the hype and the knowledge of collagen has come from a good place in the beauty market, but then it's in very low doses and sort of poorly absorbed, and it's it's led to a lot of uh big companies wanting to achieve better outcomes for chronic conditions that actually don't have good treatments for.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: There's no cure for arthritis, like there's no cure.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: There's symptomatic relief, there's different drugs you can take.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh exercises, like obviously excellent, as in to to try and somewhat modify the disease.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: But we're seeing right now, like we're I reckon in the last five, like in the next five years, there's going to be a lot of really fine-tuned research, if not already, it's beginning, in terms of how and which collagen we can use for that particular case or that individual.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: And there's literally no side effects.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: I've had a couple of patients say, Oh, I don't want to take my collagen now because it upsets my tummy.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, well, just get used to it.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: It's you know, if that's the side effect of not having, you know, less bone density.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: That's the big thing.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's usually really well tolerated, isn't it?
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I I too have had a couple of patients and wind has been the issue, but it's normally been with combination products.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_01: As soon as I take the it's not the combination, it's when they're combining it with collagen and other things.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: As soon as I keep it to collagen, it the side effects tend to abate.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's really interesting too, because people like when when I sort of I I am pretty forceful with my uh treatment plans, like after being a physio for many, many years, you sort of think, well, you're you you you called me, you made the effort to like book in online or call me.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like I didn't call you.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_00: So you you want the best outcome possible in the shortest amount of time and to not have a recurrent issue.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm I can be quite forceful and just say, and now you're taking this twice a day, which we'll talk about, no doubt, in terms of the dose for different conditions, but it's it's like basically being the pharmacist or the doctor just going, this is what you need to do.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: That's what it is.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: We understand, we understand a lot in terms of like those in the researchers know how to get the molecule into the tissue to best help your condition.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: Take us through post-surgery, because that's another area that you're experts in.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: This is huge.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: I like this is a big area.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: So what do we should we start with the incision?
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, look, take us through like when do you start to employ it, pre-surgery or in um, let's say a week or two post-surgery?
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: Look, it's really dependent on when the person's booked in to come and see us.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like, I I might have a patient where uh, for example, I'll I'll say Wendy, and Wendy is a real patient.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: And if Wendy ever sees this, she'll laugh and go, yep, that was actually, yeah, that's what we did.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_00: So Wendy, known her for many years, so many years, and I think we both just got sick of treating her her knee.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: We just got sick of it, just going, it's bone on bone.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_00: You need a total knee replacement.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: We've got no, we've we've run out of jokes.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: Our bedside, our bedside conversation is like, you know, getting boring.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: So essentially, Wendy needed to have surgery a long time ago, I think.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: So if someone is already a patient, we've tried a little bit of collagen, a little bit of this, a little bit that, but they were too far gone.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: So a lot of patients come in freshly post-surgically.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: I've got a lot of orthopedic surgeons that refer directly to us, neurosurgeons, oncologists, uh, where there's incisions in the skin and a lot of the connective tissue have been um modified, you could you could call it.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_00: So there's going to be scar tissue involvement, there's gonna be bleeding, inflammation.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_00: Oh mate, it's like it's like a cocktail of chemicals that your body is pretty clever at releasing, mediating, and trying to somewhat turn those chemicals into a physical structure.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: So I would definitely get my post-surgical patients as soon as possible onto taking collagen.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: We know there's a huge amount of research that shows how great it is at stimulating fibroblasts in the skin, the dermis, uh, like scar tissue itself lays down its own like venous structures and nerve structures essentially, hence why we feel it when it gets tight.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and the fascia, which we generally cut through.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: So not only the bones that we might be cutting into and you know, putting metal into to make a new surface, we're also got to be thinking about how much pain is presenting within the skin and the upper layers of the tissues that then allow us to move, which is the muscle, the connective tissue, the padding, the burses, the fat pads, like and and the like of those structures are all innovative by nerves.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of swelling post-surgically.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: I make my patients take it.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: How long after surgery?
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_01: Are we talking like five to seven days or a couple of weeks once they can walk and make an appointment to see you?
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's generally one to two weeks after.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that's only because they're yeah, they're they're usually stuck in a institution, a hospital, or they've like potentially chosen to do rehab in an external facility for yeah, two to two to three weeks maximum.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I guess the the largest delay would be within a month of having a surgical procedure.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: And can you give us an idea of dose that you use in in those instances?
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I would generally if if I know there's inflammation uh or or it's very acute in terms of like someone's body's trying to really heal, as opposed to say just a uh like a garden variety tennis elbow, for example, someone's had it for months, months, months, months, months.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: They can stick to a standard dose, uh, which I would say these days, the standard dose is about 10 grams of collagen per day.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: However, someone that's in that, I I call it like a critical window, like that critical window of the body's really trying to heal.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, you need to power that factory and all the mitochondria and everything in your system to do its job at its best in terms of the immune system.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm I'm always telling people to take the daily dose twice a day.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: So up to 20 grams of collagen a day.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of the literature says 15 is great.
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: So we just go a little bit extra, knowing that it's actually quite a cost-effective, it's not expensive, it's not that expensive when you think about how much you're paying otherwise for lyrica, for pain, uh, or MOBIC, or you know, there's a lot of there's a lot of other more expensive things that are just more symptomatic relief as opposed to um, yeah, good for you into the future long term.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we usually think you mentioned this quite early on.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_01: We usually think about collagen as you said, about tendons and you know, soft tissue and fascia and blah, blah, blah.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: But but you you mentioned bones.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: Have you got any case histories?
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: Can you can you pull out, obviously not mentioning names, but but can you pull out any case histories of especially women, I'm gonna say here, that might be suffering from osteoporosis or osteopenia, and you've seen the results that they can gather, that they can get when when taking collagen?
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, a lot.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah, it's nice to say a lot, like many, many.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: We because we because we've been in our uh community where we're based for 20 years coming in January.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: We have seen a lot of people and they're growing, we're all growing old together.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: We're all growing old together, Andrew.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's great.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: And they laugh going, yeah, but like you're doing really well out of this.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: But yes, a lot of I tell you what, endocrinologists, I mean, they're starting to like get it.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: They're really starting to get it.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: Like they don't just go, boom, you've got to take the HRT, or um you there's only one way for you to go.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: They'll they'll talk about some some that I know, they'll talk about uh with my patients collagen, they'll talk about exercise, and how together they are the best methods for you moving forward.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: So there's research for pre-menopause, there's research, really good research for uh menopause, postmenopause, and it's amazing.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's all in the last three, four years, this research, and a lot of it's from Germany.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: So it definitely indicates that the bone density improves.
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like who would have thought?
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like shock horror.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: When I went through physio school 20 years ago or more, um, I was told the best you can do is lose one to two percent per year bone density as a female that's hit menopause.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's a lot, but now like people are seeing like the extracellular matrix improving, like not like that, but they're not continuing.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's like a very shallow chain, yeah, yeah.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: And then it goes up a little bit, which is quite nice, and that's that's important because where that's a big difference when you consider, as you said, their trajectory, their normal trajectory.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: That little uptick is a massive difference in a Z score.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_01: You're talking long term.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: If you think about nerve impingement, you know, um, collapsed vertebrae, all of the extremely painful conditions that are disabling for especially older women, but they're men who suffer from osteoporosis as well.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it that slight uptick is dramatic.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I think one of the things we need to talk about is to say you don't even know your bone density, particularly like most of the time, you wouldn't even know what your bone density is unless you actually had a fracture.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: You fell over, you tripped over the tree route, you're walking down the main street, going to a meeting, suddenly you've gone straight in an ambulance to hospital, you've had a pin and plate put in your wrist, and then your GP goes, Maybe we should do a uh bone density scan, and then suddenly, oh Shiva's, you're like you're up the top end of osteopenia, or like you're on your way.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: Who would have thought you otherwise exercise?
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: Do you know?
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_01: I I was speaking with a uh an endocrinologist who specializes in osteoporosis, and this was some years ago now, but he was mentioning this study he was involved in where they were looking at n-telepeptides.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: And n telepeptides were back in my day, they were a functional pathology that was poo-pooed by the orthodoxy, and yet here they are.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_01: Now, this is probably 10 years ago, but it was 10 years after the fact, um, using it as a standard sort of check to see, um, to look at bone turnover over time, if you like.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_01: Wouldn't it be great if we were allowed?
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm just thinking, I'm trying to think about the public purse.
• 29:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to think about public expenditure health expenditure.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: And wouldn't it be great if we had enough knowledge of the trajectory, if we checked something like n telepeptides of women and men say age 40, 30, and then did another one at 50 and said, Oh, you're headed on this trajectory?
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: I've I've got a my pen slanted at a 45 degree angle downwards.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, or you're at this trajectory, don't worry about it, go on and merrily on your way.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: Wouldn't that be a lovely thing for the Australian healthcare system to look at?
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: Amazing.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how many people die like within two years of having a hip fracture?
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's just that like we know this.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: There's so much information there.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: It would be interesting though, with your concept to like really fine-tune it, kind of like I guess the uh the bowel cancer kits that get sent out by the government.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: Like, is there a way you could easily or more easily have access to checking your bone density?
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: Because with bone density, I guess that's also not that not that osteoporosis or osteopenia, you have to have arthritis, but a lot of the time they go hand in hand from a built bone health point of view, and they're hugely impacting our socioeconomic like outcomes.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: Hugely.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: Our hospitals are full of like knee replacements.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my gosh, it's number one.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's the number one thing that we see longer term in our clinic.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: The rehab of an osteoporotic knee that sort of has had a probably like a medical practitioner say, Don't do anything until you actually can't walk anymore.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: And by that stage, mate, you've got diabetes, you've put on so much weight, like this just such big an anaesthetic risk.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's hard, it's harder to then rehab.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my god.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: And it's harder to recover for uh elderly people.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: So hence the college.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_00: You and I should trademark that.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever you come up with.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: I was here.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_01: I'll work on it with you.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: Let's go to the other end of the spectrum, um, Matt, and that is uh the younger people.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: I shouldn't I shouldn't be so careful to pigeonhole people.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_01: So, but let's say the the the more younger set, the athletic injuries.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_01: So what do you treat?
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_01: What do you see in clinic?
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, you've got your common ones, your netballers, but what else do you see?
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_01: And how do you treat it with collagen?
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_01: And can we throw in maybe a few other therapies you might use?
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: Can I can I do this?
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: Can I just show you a very recent review?
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_01: 24 week study on the use of collagen hydrosylate.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_01: What keep going, sorry?
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: Hold it up.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_00: Essentially for athletes with activity-related joint pain.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: So no arthritis, none of the you know, comorbidities that we were talking about before, not old people, like young people in their prime, but exercising hard and having to recover.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_00: That particular study is one that that one was back in 2008, but that same set of researchers have just continued along that pathway in terms of making sure that it has had very good outcomes for people.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, from a joint pain point of view, from a uh recovery point of view, so they can actually train more again the next day or the day after that, they recover well, they don't get to that point where they tear tissues or I guess live in too much discomfort.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_00: So their functional strength is definitely improved with collagen.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: There's a huge, huge oh, I love it actually.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_00: I I I I love Google YouTube collagen, and you will see it's a very interesting world because collagen is a protein, but it's for a particular purpose, yeah.
• 33:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just the whole protein that you should be taking, and the only people saying collagen isn't very effective is the ones that are really broscience because they want the best outcome for their muscles.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: So collagen is a good protein, it's sort of known as like a lower growth protein when it comes to muscle, but everything else, connective tissue, the best.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: The little amino acids in it, the peptides in it is amazing.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: Glycine, proline, all that sort of stuff is great.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: But when it comes to muscle, the belly of muscle, so you know the bulk, the guns, yeah.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: You can take whey protein or soy protein, you can take something else.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: So a lot of my patients, I will say take a higher dose.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: If you're, for example, if you're a dragon boater, that we see a lot of dragon boaters, we're in Piemont, so we're near the Anzac Bridge.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh younger, older, like you're in high school, you're competing at um the Olympic Games, you should be taking collagen, essentially.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: It helps that recovery phase.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: It also helps to mediate a lot of the inflammatory cells that you develop post-exercise.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: So it actually helps to dampen down the lactic acid effect and feeling.
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_00: And guess what?
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, it's really good for your hair, skin, and nails.
• 35:24
  unknown: Yeah.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I tend, I tend to get a really good laugh from my athletes when I say that.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's the side effect.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_01: So so can I ask um about delayed onset muscle soreness?
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_01: Are you saying that because of that anti-inflammatory action, it could dampen some of that DOMS syndrome?
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and that and that's coming back to that.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, one of the first questions you asked about the types of collagen, that is sort of important to know, like why, which one are we giving someone based on why you are presenting and and what's your lifestyle like?
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_00: What do you need to be able to do, compete with?
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, yeah.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_00: So if I if I know that someone needs to be able to back up and they're very intense with their training, I will actually think, okay, you need a collagen that targets type one or type two or type three collagen.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: In that sort of particular instance, it's more like type two.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: There's so many different collagens.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_00: So we need to try and target that because that mediates the inflammatory phase.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas the other one might be good at really rebuilding your tendon length or your tendon, your skin, etc.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, it's a little bit complicated, and they're just fine-tuning it.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: They're going to keep fine-tuning it every year, you know, for the next five years or more.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_01: Matt, it absolutely so interesting talking to you and your history.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_01: You know, sort of I I can see that you've got like files floating around your head of so many patients that you've used collagen on and gained so many benefits.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_01: But thank you so much for taking us through just some of the ways in which you use collagen for a therapeutic benefit today.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_01: I've really enjoyed it.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: Really interesting to talk to you today.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks so much.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no problem.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for having me.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_00: I've had a great time.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_01: And we'll put up in the show notes as much information as we can so that you can explore the different actions and usages of collagen.
• 37:35
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, there's the other podcast that you can listen to on the Designs for Health website.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Andrew with Phil Cook.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_01: This is Wellness by Designs.