Is Beauty Drinkable?

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could choose magic drinks from the supermarket to fix our skin concerns? If only it was that easy!
“Functional drinks” have flooded the market in the past few years, promising to do so many great things, from whitening the skin and enhancing brain power to making a man handsome. Unfortunately you can’t expect a drink to work magic on your body. After all, it’s just a drink, and not even medicine.
Let me be clear about this. I am not saying these drinks are useless and I’m not saying they’re useful. I am just clarifying some claims for you, dear readers, to decide whether you want to give these drinks a try.
“Drinks with beauty benefits usually contain vitamins, amino acids or botanicals that possess antioxidant activities,” American dermatologist Francesca Fusco has written. “A person should usually get enough of these nutrients through diet, but drinking them is a reasonable way to supplement.”
In other words, as far as giving your body more nutrients goes, they do work. Your skin needs sufficient nutrients to look its best, so, in a way, these drinks do deliver skin-enhancing benefits. Moreover, since they are drinks, they hydrate the body, which in turn helps the complexion. In short, it’s healthier to consume beauty drinks than no fluids at all. While the nutrient absorption needs more evidence, getting extra fluids is good. Watch out for the calories, though.
However, there are some claims that need to be carefully considered. Many drinks claim to contain collagen and say it will make your skin firmer. This is not very credible. Collagen is, in fact, a form of protein. Like other proteins, when consumed orally, collagen is broken down into amino acids before absorption. What the body absorbs, consequently, is amino acids, not collagen.
Certain nutrients, like collagen, play an important role in the skin’s health and appearance, but that doesn’t mean that putting them in a drink is the solution. You can’t replenish collagen by eating or drinking it. It would be like expecting to treat hair loss by eating hair.
Another hero ingredient touted by many brands is glutathione, which is claimed to whiten your skin. While the substance does have a lightening effect, it is still debated whether taking glutathione in a pill or in a drink can whiten the skin. Some say it doesn’t get absorbed through oral consumption.
Dermatologist David Phillips insists that the glutathione in your cells needs to be made by your cells. Oral consumption, he says, is a waste of money, because the digestive system will break it down during digestion and it will have little if any effect. Other researchers found that oral dosing does work if done correctly – on an empty stomach followed by a full glass of water.
More evidence is needed before we can say drinking glutathione might whiten the complexion or drinkable collagen will reverse ageing signs. But if you think beauty drinks are delicious, affordable and make you feel better (with all that sugar, they definitely will perk you up), by all means, do drink them. Sometimes it’s the feeling that counts the most.
However, if you have skin concerns, it’s more realistic to see a dermatologist than grab a beauty drink. Dermatologists know how things like collagen and glutathione work and are able to provide useful information and options. And it’s always safer to seek medical advice than to rely on information from commercials.