Collagène végétal, animal, marin… Et si la vraie question était ailleurs ?

Blog article • Scientific dossier

Plant collagen, animal collagen, marine collagen…

What if the real question lay elsewhere?

Why helping your body make its own collagen is the key to lasting beauty

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The great debate of the moment

If you are interested in skin beauty, joint health or simply ageing well, you cannot have missed the debate stirring up the world of food supplements and cosmetics: should you take animal collagen or plant collagen?

On one side, advocates of marine or bovine collagen point to centuries of biological adaptation and to peptides our body recognises. On the other, supporters of “plant collagen” — often biomimetic blends of amino acids obtained through fermentation — appeal to ethics, sustainability and recent clinical studies.

At the Laboratoire Géomer, we believe this debate, however legitimate, misses the essential point. Because the real question is not which collagen to swallow… but how to help your body make its own.

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1. Collagen: an architecture, not an ingredient

Before going further, let us put things in their place. Collagen is not a simple nutrient that one swallows like a vitamin. It is the most abundant protein in the animal kingdom — it makes up roughly a quarter of the total protein mass of our body. It is found in the skin, bones, tendons, ligaments, the walls of blood vessels, and above all in the fasciae, that vast network of connective tissue which literally holds our body together in one piece.

Its structure is remarkably precise: three polypeptide chains wound into a triple helix, stabilised by hydrogen bonds and specific enzymatic hydroxylations. The repeating Glycine-X-Y sequence (where X is often proline and Y hydroxyproline) gives collagen its characteristic rigidity and strength.

What to remember: collagen is not a sum of amino acids. It is a three-dimensional architecture of extraordinary complexity. No plant naturally produces collagen. And reconstituting a similar amino acid profile does not mean recreating this architecture.

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2. The fundamental problem: ingesting is not integrating

Animal collagen: evidence, but limits

Hydrolysed collagen peptides of animal origin (marine or bovine) have been the subject of numerous studies. Some show a plasma peak 1 to 2 hours after ingestion and incorporation into connective tissues. However, as INSERM researchers point out, when collagen is ingested, it is digested like all other proteins: it is broken down into amino acids so that it can cross the intestinal barrier. The body cannot assimilate collagen in its native structural form.

In other words, whether you swallow marine or bovine collagen, your digestive system breaks it down first and foremost. What your cells receive are free amino acids and short peptides — not a ready-made triple helix.

“Plant collagen”: an attractive term, but a misleading one

The alternatives described as “plant collagen” are in fact blends of plant-derived amino acids or glycoproteins extracted from yeasts, which attempt to reproduce the amino acid profile of human type I collagen. Technologies such as VeCollal® or GreenCol® are described as “biomimetic”, which means that they imitate the composition without being bio-identical.

A study published in 2024 (Lin et al.) compared the skin effects of a biomimetic plant collagen and a marine collagen in 90 volunteers over 8 weeks, with apparently comparable results in terms of wrinkle reduction, elasticity and hydration. However, as the scientific literature points out, plant proteins do not contain all the amino acids in the right proportions, and above all, they cannot act as a ligand — that is, bind to the membrane receptors of fibroblasts to directly stimulate the production of new collagen.

The real problem: a common dead end

Whether animal or plant-based, ingested collagen always raises the same fundamental questions: what is its real bioavailability? Are its peptides actually integrated into our tissues? With what yield? And above all, why settle for supplying from the outside what the body knows perfectly well how to make from the inside — provided it is given the means?

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3. The paradigm shift: stimulate rather than supplement

What if, instead of ingesting exogenous collagen (whether animal-derived or reconstituted from plants), we helped our body restart its own production?

This approach may seem simple, almost too simple. Yet it is backed by an unassailable biological logic. Your body has been synthesising collagen since birth. It knows the exact architecture it needs. It adapts the structure to each type of tissue — type I for skin and bones, type II for cartilage, type III for vessels. It does not need to be supplied with “ready-to-wear” collagen. It needs the cofactors and trace elements essential to its own enzymatic processes.

This is precisely where organic silicon comes in.

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4. Organic silicon: the forgotten key to collagen synthesis

A trace element at the heart of cellular machinery

Silicon is the third most abundant trace element in the human body. It is found in high concentrations in all collagen-rich tissues: skin, aorta, tendons, bones, cartilage. This is no coincidence.

Research published in journals such as the Journal of Nutrition, Health & Aging and Bone shows that silicon plays a direct role at several levels of collagen biosynthesis:

MMST: the most bioavailable form of silicon

Not all silicons are equal. Mineral forms (silica, quartz) are almost unusable by the body because they form insoluble polymers. The form that has demonstrated the best bioavailability is monomethylsilanetriol (MMST) — a monomolecular organic silicon, stable in solution and readily absorbed by the gastrointestinal tract.

A clinical study published in Nutrition & Metabolism (Jugdaohsingh et al., 2013) confirmed that MMST is efficiently absorbed, significantly increases the body’s silicon pool, and is metabolised into orthosilicic acid — the biologically active form.

Another study (Ferreira et al., 2018, published in Cosmetics) showed that oral supplementation with MMST for 150 days led to a significant reduction in wrinkles and UV spots, an improvement in skin firmness, and a reduction in aluminium levels in the body — a considerable neuroprotective effect.

Moreover, comparative studies show that MMST is 3.5 times better absorbed than choline-stabilised orthosilicic acid, and 21 times better absorbed than conventional forms derived from horsetail or bamboo.

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5. The fasciae: the forgotten network that silicon nourishes

One cannot talk about collagen without talking about the fasciae — and yet most articles on the subject ignore them completely. The fasciae form an immense network of connective tissue that wraps and links every muscle, every organ, every vessel and every nerve in your body. They account for 18 to 23 kg of body mass in an adult and contain more than 100 million sensory nerve endings, which makes them the largest sensory organ of the human body.

The fasciae are 60-70 % collagen, supplemented by elastin and a water-rich extracellular matrix. Their health depends directly on the quality of the collagen that fibroblasts produce — and therefore on the availability of silicon.

A fascia well nourished with silicon retains its suppleness, its gliding capacity and its cushioning properties. Conversely, when silicon is lacking, the collagen produced is of poorer quality, the fasciae stiffen, “stick” to one another, and become a source of pain, restricted mobility and premature ageing.

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6. The Géomer approach: supporting the body, not replacing it

At the Laboratoire Géomer, our philosophy rests on a fundamental principle: the human body has an intelligence of its own, which it is right to support, not to short-circuit.

Rather than offering an exogenous collagen — whether animal-derived or reconstituted from plants — our approach consists in providing the body with the cofactors it needs to restart and optimise its own collagen production, in its own architecture, adapted to its own tissues.

Our organic silicon (MMST) formulations follow this logic. They are designed to:

This approach is reinforced by the ARK Quantique Process®, our exclusive process that integrates energy principles into cosmetic formulation. Because beyond biochemistry, the body’s energetic terrain plays a fundamental role in its ability to regenerate.

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Conclusion: true luxury is not imitating nature… it is giving it the means to express itself

The plant collagen versus animal collagen debate is a legitimate one, but it remains a prisoner of a reductive paradigm: that of collagen as a product to be ingested.

Science invites us to look at things differently. Your body knows how to make collagen — it has been doing so since you came into being. What it loses with age is not the recipe, but access to the essential ingredients. Organic silicon in the form of MMST is one of these key ingredients, documented by research, validated by clinical studies, and naturally integrated into your body’s biological processes.

At the Laboratoire Géomer, we do not sell collagen. We support your body in its ability to produce it itself, in its own architecture, adapted to its own needs.

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Scientific references

About the author

Alain Ledroit

Founder and CEO of the Laboratoire Géomer, Reiki Usui Master and creator of the ARK Quantique Process®, Alain Ledroit devotes his expertise to research in holistic and quantum cosmetics. Passionate about organic silicon, the fasciae and energetic approaches to care, he develops formulations that combine scientific rigour with a global vision of the human body.

This article is written for information purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Cosmetics and food supplements are not medicines and cannot replace medical follow-up. Consult a healthcare professional for any question relating to your health.