Hello and a big warm welcome to Age Better with me, Liz Earle. It's Monday and you know I love a Monday as I get to answer all your questions on health and wellness. So if you have a question you would like my help with, please do get in touch. All the contact details are in the episode description and at the end of the show.

So coming up today, is it ever too late to start on collagen? I'll be offering my thoughts on that for Claire.

Ashley wants to know more about how a late night scroll might affect her sleep. And Anne-Marie has a question about whether her sparkling

water habit is bad for her teeth or health. I'll be helping Kelly with supplement suggestions

for postpartum. And finally, I'll be talking about that feeling of being not quite good enough

and offering some suggestions on how to overcome feelings of inadequacy.

So we're going to start the show with Claire's message and you ask, is it too late for someone in their late 60s who's on blood pressure tablets and a statin to start taking collagen supplements?

Well, that's a really good question, Claire, and one that I hear quite often from those who feel, you know, they might have missed the boat when it comes to supplements.

I'll give you the long answer and the short answer.

The short answer is no. It's absolutely not too late to start taking collagen in your late 60s.

And in fact, I do think that collagen is one of the supplements that can still be genuinely

helpful later in life. So what are we talking about? Collagen, it's the most abundant protein in the human body.

It forms the structural framework for our skin, our joints, our bones, tendons, ligaments,

even blood vessels are affected by collagen. And from our mid-20s onwards,

our natural collagen production gradually declines. So you can imagine that by the time we

reach our 60s, our natural collagen synthesis is way lower than it was in early adulthood. And you know,

that is one reason why we see more joint stiffness and thinner skin and slower tissue repair and loss of bone density

as we age. So people often talk about collagen as a beauty supplement. For me, that's the role

that it has in being the icing on the cake. You know, I think it's far more fundamentally a health

and well-being supplement. And when you supplement with collagen peptides, they can help provide the body with key amino acids

that it needs.

And we're talking here about glycine, proline and hydroxyproline.

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