Collagen in Nigeria: What It Is, the Types and How to Choose a Supplement

Collagen is the most abundant protein in your body and the scaffold that skin, bone and cartilage are built on. Production drops from your twenties onward. Supplements aim to top it up — but the word covers several types at wildly different doses, and picking the wrong one is the mistake almost everyone makes first.

• Type I is skin. Type II is cartilage. Same word, different molecule. The types explained.
• Most people buy collagen for skin — and joint formulas are built differently. Which one you need.
• Pack price tells you nothing until you work out cost per day at a real dose. Price compared.
• Well tolerated, with narrow cautions — and they usually belong to the other ingredients. Side effects and how to take it.

What collagen actually is

Collagen is a fibrous protein that makes up roughly a third of the protein in the human body. It is what gives tissue tensile strength: skin its resilience, tendon its pull, cartilage its ability to take load without tearing. There are at least 28 known types, but three account for almost all of it and only two are sold in any quantity.

Your body makes its own from amino acids, using vitamin C as a cofactor. Production begins falling in your twenties and drops by roughly one per cent a year past forty. Smoking, sun exposure, heavy physical work, intensive sport and a diet short on protein all accelerate it. None of that is a disease — it is ordinary ageing, and it is the gap supplements are sold into.

The four questions worth answering before you buy

1. What do you want it for? Skin and joints need different types. This single question decides most of the rest.
2. Which type is in the pack? A label that will not say is telling you something.
3. How many grams or milligrams per serving? Without this you cannot compare the product with any study.
4. What does a day cost at that dose? Not what the pack costs — what a day costs.

Where FlexiCore fits in this picture

FlexiCore is a joint product, not a beauty product. It uses collagen type II — the cartilage type — alongside glucosamine, chondroitin and hyaluronic acid, which is the pattern joint formulas are built from.

If your reason for reading about collagen is your skin, FlexiCore is not what you want and we will not pretend otherwise — this page explains what to look for instead. If it is your knees, back, neck or hands, then the type is right, and the type II page covers the evidence in detail.

Frequently asked questions