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Electrolytes
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Source Magnesium
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Raw Elements Tallow Soap (Lemongrass)
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Raw Tallow Sun Balm
★★★★★ 1,000+ 5 Star Reviews
Pure ingredients
Raw ingredients. Ancient wisdom. Modern results. Every product contains only what nature intended:
- Grass-fed tallow rich in bioavailable nutrients
- Raw honey and adaptogenic herbs in their purest form
- Regeneratively sourced proteins, never denatured
- Zero synthetic additives or lab-made fillers
Small-batch wellness our ancestors would recognize. Because when you honor nature's integrity, your body knows the difference.
Purely Natural, Perfectly You
Let customers speak for us
I love the way this tallow soap makes my hands feel! Just make sure you shake it before use because it does separate. It smells wonderful, very light scent and the tallow has made my hands feel softer then ever before.
I've been taking now supplements vitamin d and my blood results still show that my Vitamin D levels are low. I saw an ad for this brand and decided to try it. I just had my blood work done again and for the first time ever, my Vitamin D was in the green marker. Very happy!
I literally can't drink water without these electrolytes now. I'm not kidding. You guys killed it with this product. I take both flavors to mix and match sometimes :) I hate the taste of other electrolytes. These taste natural and very light on the flavor, which I love. Please don't ever get rid of this product!!!
This is the only protein powder I have ever taken that digests easily for me. I always struggle with bloat after a protein shake. I tried both but I LOVE THE CHOCOLATE.
Honestly love the taste of this honey. I've been buying the orange blossom for months but the saw palmetto is something else. I definitely recommend it!
Clean, great taste and doesn't leave me bloated. I finally can take protein shakes every day. I tried so many different brands, but every time I drank them I felt like puking. Can't wait to try the chocolate protein
Clean and like the moisture
I love this product. it helps to give me energy.
Trust this product! We’ve been deceived by so many products labeled CLEAN but these guys put their money where their mouth is. Sleeping noticeably better after 2 weeks of consistently taking it!
Taste great and mixes well into a smoothie
It's a bit more liquidity than the usual body wash but overall its nice. Smells good and makes my body soft.
It's a bit thick but its still nice and it smells really good. I feel as though it cleans my scalp well
It's a nice consistency, makes my hair really shiny and moisturized and smells amazing.
Love it
The best protein powder I have ever tried
Why PÜRISHH?
Pure Ingredients
Handpicked and ethically sourced from trusted, natural farms.
Effective Results
Each product is designed to protect, nourish, and enhance your skin’s natural balance.
Holistic Wellness
Embrace a balanced lifestyle with supplements and creams that work in harmony with your body.
Frequently Asked Question
What makes PÜRISHH products different from conventional supplements or skincare?
What makes PÜRISHH products different from conventional supplements or skincare?
Our mission is to return to the raw, unprocessed power of nature. Every product is formulated with 100 % natural ingredients and no synthetic preservatives, fillers, or dyes. For example, the Raw Honey Butter contains whipped Wagyu beef tallow, cold‑pressed olive and coconut oils, mango butter, raw honey and beeswax – it moisturizes deeply and can even replace conventional lotion. The Raw Tallow Sunbalm uses grass‑fed tallow, non‑nano zinc oxide and organic oils to provide mineral sun protection while nourishing the skin. Our Protein Powder combines grass‑fed whey and hydrolyzed collagen with organic superfoods to deliver 26 g of easily digestible protein with zero added sugar. Across their range, Purishh keeps ingredient lists short and transparent, using only what is necessary to support health and well‑being.
Are PÜRISHH’s ingredients ethically and sustainably sourced?
Are PÜRISHH’s ingredients ethically and sustainably sourced?
Yes. The founders emphasize sustainable sourcing and ethical treatment of animals and land. Tallow for the skincare range is hand‑sourced from 100 % grass‑fed, Wagyu, halal cattle in New Zealand, ensuring humane slaughter and optimal nutrient quality. Olive and coconut oils are single‑origin, cold‑pressed. The whey in Purishh protein powder comes from grass‑fed cows raised without hormones or antibiotics, and the collagen is hydrolyzed for better absorption. These practices mean customers receive products that are both pure and sustainable.
Why does PÜRISHH use beef tallow in its skincare products?
Why does PÜRISHH use beef tallow in its skincare products?
Grass‑fed beef tallow is biocompatible with human skin; its fatty‑acid profile closely resembles natural sebum, so it’s absorbed efficiently. Properly rendered tallow is a vitamin powerhouse, naturally supplying vitamins A, D, E, and K that support cell turnover, immune function, and antioxidant protection. Tallow also contains oleic, stearic and palmitic acids that strengthen the skin’s barrier, calm inflammation and maintain moisture. Grass‑fed tallow offers a high concentration of conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), an anti‑inflammatory fatty acid. These nutrients collectively help Purishh’s Raw Honey Butter and Raw Tallow Sunbalm to moisturize, nourish and protect the skin without clogging pores or causing irritation.
How is PÜRISHH protein powder different, and why is it easy to digest?
How is PÜRISHH protein powder different, and why is it easy to digest?
Many conventional protein powders use cheap sources and add artificial thickeners or sweeteners that cause bloating and digestive discomfort. Purishh starts with grass‑fed whey processed via cold‑filtration, which preserves natural enzymes and bioactive peptides that aid digestion. It also adds hydrolyzed bovine collagen to support joints, skin and gut health. The powder uses organic monk fruit for sweetness and contains no carrageenan, gums, sucralose or artificial preservatives, so it mixes smoothly and is gentle on the stomach. Each serving provides 26 g of complete protein with only 1 g of fat and zero sugar, making it suitable for keto, gluten‑free and non‑GMO diets.
What are PÜRISHH Electrolytes, and how do they support hydration?
What are PÜRISHH Electrolytes, and how do they support hydration?
PÜRISHH’s Electrolytes formula offers clean hydration without the artificial colors and preservatives found in many sports drinks. Each serving includes over 800 mg of unrefined Himalayan salt, providing sodium and trace minerals, plus magnesium malate and potassium chloride. Organic fruit powders (raspberry or lemon‑lime) and monk fruit sweetener give a natural flavor without sugar. The formula helps replenish electrolytes lost through exercise, supports muscle function, and is keto‑friendly.
What is Raw Shilajit, and how should it be used?
What is Raw Shilajit, and how should it be used?
Raw Shilajit is a resin harvested from high‑altitude Himalayan rocks. It forms from decomposed plant material and is rich in minerals and fulvic acid. Traditionally used as an adaptogen, Shilajit helps boost energy, improve stamina and support overall health. Purishh provides 100 % pure Himalayan shilajit. Users typically dissolve a pea‑sized amount in warm water, tea or milk. Due to its potent minerals, start with a small dose and consult a healthcare professional if you have existing medical conditions.
What is the Ishh Leaky Gut Protocol?
What is the Ishh Leaky Gut Protocol?
The Ishh Leaky Gut Protocol is a step‑by‑step program designed to help restore gut health naturally. It includes dietary recommendations, lifestyle tips and natural supplements to support the intestinal lining. The protocol focuses on removing irritants, replenishing beneficial bacteria and repairing the gut barrier. It is not a medical treatment, so customers with chronic digestive issues should consult a healthcare professional before starting.
How should I store PÜRISHH products?
How should I store PÜRISHH products?
Store supplements and protein powders in a cool, dry place away from direct sunlight. Skincare products like Raw Honey Butter and Raw Tallow Sunbalm are natural and free from artificial stabilizers; keeping them at room temperature helps maintain texture. If you live in a hot climate, refrigerating tallow‑based balms can prevent melting. Always use clean hands or a spatula to avoid introducing bacteria.
When will my order ship, and how long will delivery take?
When will my order ship, and how long will delivery take?
We ask customers to allow 2–3 business days for processing and production before an order ships. Once dispatched, average transit times are 7–10 business days; however, natural disasters, holidays and weather can cause delays. Free standard shipping is offered on orders over US$150 (or equivalent), and shipping costs for smaller orders are calculated at checkout. PÜRISHH cannot guarantee exact delivery dates because delivery is ultimately the responsibility of the shipping carrier.
Can I subscribe and save on regular purchases?
Can I subscribe and save on regular purchases?
Yes. We offer a subscription program for most of our products. Subscribe and save up to 30 % OFF your first delivery. You can choose delivery intervals (e.g., monthly). Subscriptions auto‑renew, but you may skip or cancel at any time through your account.
Are PÜRISHH products allergen‑free or suitable for special diets?
Are PÜRISHH products allergen‑free or suitable for special diets?
PÜRISHH formulates products without common synthetic additives, but some items may contain potential allergens. The protein powder contains whey (a dairy product) and collagen derived from bovine sources; it is unsuitable for vegans or those with dairy allergies. The Electrolytes formula is gluten‑free, sugar‑free and keto‑friendly. Always review ingredient lists carefully and consult your healthcare provider if you have specific allergies or dietary restrictions.
Where are PÜRISHH products made?
Where are PÜRISHH products made?
PÜRISHH sources ingredients globally, such as New Zealand Wagyu tallow and Himalayan shilajit, but manufactures products in small batches under rigorous quality control. By keeping production small and hands‑on, PÜRISHH can maintain freshness and ensure every batch meets the highest standards.
PÜR Insights
Magnesium vs. Melatonin for Sleep: How They Actually Differ
Magnesium vs. Melatonin for Sleep: How They Actually Differ If you've ever stood in a pharmacy at 11 p.m. looking for something to help you sleep, you've probably narrowed it down to two bottles: melatonin and magnesium. They often sit on the same shelf, they're both marketed for sleep, and online they're constantly compared as if they were two versions of the same thing. They aren't. Melatonin is a hormone your brain uses to tell your body what time it is. Magnesium is a mineral your body needs for hundreds of basic processes, sleep-related ones among them. They work through completely different routes. They've been studied in different ways, for different problems. And the evidence behind each is more modest than most marketing suggests. This post compares them side by side: what each one is, what the research actually shows, how big the effects are, what the safety and quality issues look like, and who might reasonably consider which. One disclosure first. We sell a magnesium supplement, and we don't sell melatonin. So we have a stake in one side of this comparison, and you should weigh what we say with that in mind. We've tried to be as hard on magnesium's evidence as on melatonin's. Two different kinds of thing The most useful way to understand the difference is to start with what each substance does in your body before any supplement is involved. Melatonin: a timing signal Melatonin is a hormone made in the brain. As the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH) puts it, melatonin is a hormone that your brain produces in response to darkness, and being exposed to light at night can block its production. That tells you its job. Melatonin is less a sedative than a messenger. Its rise in the evening is part of how your body knows night has arrived. It's part of your circadian system, the internal clock that times sleepiness, alertness, body temperature, and many other daily rhythms. When you take melatonin as a supplement, you're adding to that signal. That's why it's most often discussed for problems of timing: jet lag, for example, where your internal clock and the local clock disagree. Magnesium: a nutrient Magnesium is a mineral. According to the NIH Office of Dietary Supplements, it's a cofactor in more than 300 enzyme systems, involved in everything from energy production to muscle and nerve function. You get it from food: leafy greens, nuts, seeds, legumes, whole grains, and some in meat and dairy. Magnesium isn't a timing signal, and it doesn't tell your body it's night. Its possible role in sleep is more indirect. Researchers have proposed several mechanisms involving the nervous system, but the human evidence connecting those mechanisms to better sleep is limited. The most realistic way to think about magnesium is as a nutrient. If your intake is low, correcting it might help with a range of things, possibly including sleep. If your intake is already adequate, there's much less reason to expect a supplement to change anything. So the first difference is fundamental. Melatonin is a signal that can shift when your body feels ready for sleep. Magnesium is a nutrient that might matter if you aren't getting enough of it. Neither is a sleeping pill. What the research shows for melatonin Melatonin has the larger body of research of the two, so we'll start there. For general sleep problems The most widely cited meta-analysis is by Ferracioli-Oda, Qawasmi, and Bloch (PLoS ONE, 2013, volume 8, issue 5, article e63773). They pooled 19 studies with 1,683 participants with primary sleep disorders and compared melatonin with placebo. They found: Time to fall asleep: reduced by an average of 7.06 minutes (95 percent confidence interval 4.37 to 9.75 minutes). Total sleep time: increased by an average of 8.25 minutes (95 percent CI 1.74 to 14.75 minutes). Overall sleep quality: improved, with a standardized mean difference of 0.22 (95 percent CI 0.12 to 0.32), which is a small effect. The authors described these effects as modest. They noted that the benefit was smaller than that of prescription sleep medications, but that melatonin's favorable side-effect profile might still give it a role. Seven minutes is real, but it's worth pausing on how small that is. If it usually takes you 40 minutes to fall asleep, melatonin might, on average, make it 33. For chronic insomnia specifically The American Academy of Sleep Medicine's clinical practice guideline on drug treatment for chronic insomnia in adults (Sateia and colleagues, Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 2017, volume 13, issue 2, pages 307 to 349) looked at melatonin as one of many options. Based on trials of 2-milligram doses, it reported that melatonin reduced the time to fall asleep by an average of 9 minutes more than placebo (95 percent CI 2 to 15 minutes), measured in a sleep lab. The guideline's recommendation was: "We suggest that clinicians not use melatonin as a treatment for sleep onset or sleep maintenance insomnia." It was graded as a weak recommendation, meaning the panel was uncertain rather than confident that melatonin doesn't help. But it's a meaningful signal that the leading US sleep medicine body didn't endorse it for chronic insomnia. NCCIH's summary agrees in tone. It says there's not enough strong evidence on the effectiveness or safety of melatonin supplementation for chronic insomnia. It also notes that guidelines recommend cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) as the initial treatment. For jet lag and timing problems This is where melatonin's role as a timing signal makes the most sense. NCCIH says research suggests melatonin supplements may help with jet lag. Small studies found benefits after both eastward and westward flights, though NCCIH notes the evidence is limited. For delayed sleep-wake phase disorder, a condition where someone's internal clock runs late, NCCIH describes a 2018 trial that used melatonin taken one hour before the desired bedtime, combined with a set bedtime. On shift work, NCCIH says studies on whether melatonin helps shift workers were generally small or inconclusive. The pattern across all of this: melatonin's best-supported uses are about shifting timing, and its effect on general sleeplessness is small. What the research shows for magnesium Magnesium's sleep research is much thinner, and we want to be precise about it. The best summary we have The most directly relevant analysis is a systematic review and meta-analysis by Mah and Pitre (BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies, 2021, volume 21, article 125). They searched for randomized trials of oral magnesium for insomnia in older adults. They found only three trials, with 151 participants in total across three countries. Comparing magnesium with placebo: Time to fall asleep: 17.36 minutes shorter after magnesium than placebo (95 percent CI 7.44 to 27.27 minutes shorter). Total sleep time: 16.06 minutes longer, but this was not statistically significant (95 percent CI ranged from 5.99 minutes shorter to 38.12 minutes longer). On paper, a 17-minute improvement in falling asleep is larger than melatonin's 7 minutes. But the authors themselves are clear about how much weight it can bear: Evidence quality: they rated it low to very low. Risk of bias: all included trials were at moderate to high risk of bias. Their conclusion: "the quality of literature is substandard for physicians to make well-informed recommendations." They did say the trial evidence may support oral magnesium for insomnia symptoms, given its low cost and broad safety. But with three small trials, you should treat the 17-minute figure as a hint, not a measurement. There are also limits on who the results apply to. The review focused on older adults, so we can't assume the same effect in younger people. And it can't tell us whether the people who benefited were low in magnesium to begin with, which may be the most important question of all. Why baseline intake probably matters Because magnesium is a nutrient, the most plausible case for a supplement is someone who isn't getting enough from food. That's not a rare situation. According to the NIH Office of Dietary Supplements, national survey data from 2013 to 2016 showed that 48 percent of Americans of all ages consume less magnesium from food and beverages than their Estimated Average Requirement. Men aged 71 and older and adolescents were most likely to have low intakes. The Recommended Dietary Allowances for adults are: Age Men Women 19 to 30 400 mg/day 310 mg/day 31 and older 420 mg/day 320 mg/day If your diet regularly falls short of those numbers, a supplement is filling a real gap, and it's reasonable to think sleep could be one of the things that benefits. If your diet already covers it, the research doesn't give strong reason to expect more magnesium to improve your sleep further. Side by side Putting the evidence together: What it is Melatonin: a hormone that signals darkness and helps time the sleep-wake cycle. Magnesium: a mineral nutrient, a cofactor in more than 300 enzyme systems. Best-supported use Melatonin: shifting timing, such as jet lag. Evidence is limited, but it's the most consistent. Magnesium: correcting low intake. Its direct sleep evidence is weak. Effect on time to fall asleep Melatonin: about 7 minutes in a 19-study meta-analysis, and 9 minutes in the AASM's review of 2-milligram trials. Magnesium: about 17 minutes in a 3-trial meta-analysis in older adults, rated low to very low quality. What the major guidance says Melatonin: the AASM suggests clinicians not use it for chronic insomnia (a weak recommendation). Magnesium: no major sleep guideline recommendation. Timing Melatonin: timing matters, because it acts on the body clock. Magnesium: not well studied. Trials used daily dosing. Biggest practical concerns Melatonin: label accuracy, limited long-term safety data, and accidental ingestion by children. Magnesium: digestive side effects at higher supplemental doses, and an upper limit on supplemental intake. Quality and safety: where they differ most Effect sizes aside, the bigger practical differences between these two show up in quality control and safety. Melatonin: the label may not match the bottle In the US, melatonin is sold as a dietary supplement. NCCIH notes that in several other countries it's available only with a prescription and is considered a drug. That regulatory difference shows up in product quality. A study by Erland and Saxena at the University of Guelph (Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 2017, volume 13, issue 2, pages 275 to 281) tested roughly 30 melatonin supplements from 16 brands. They found: Accuracy: 71 percent did not contain within 10 percent of the amount on the label. Range: actual content ran from 83 percent less than labeled to nearly five times more. Serotonin: about one in four products contained serotonin that wasn't on the label. A 2023 research letter in JAMA by Cohen and colleagues looked at melatonin gummies sold in the US. Of 25 products, 22 (88 percent) were inaccurately labeled. Only 3 were within 10 percent of the declared amount. Actual melatonin content ranged from 74 percent to 347 percent of the labeled quantity. So with melatonin, the dose you think you're taking may not be the dose you're actually taking. That matters more for a hormone, where timing and amount are the whole point. Melatonin: children and safe storage A CDC report (Lelak and colleagues, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 2022, volume 71, pages 725 to 729) tracked melatonin ingestions by people aged 19 and under reported to US poison centers. It found: Total reports: 260,435 from 2012 to 2021. Rise: a 530 percent increase in annual reports over that decade, from 8,337 in 2012 to 52,563 in 2021. Serious outcomes: 4,097 children were hospitalized, and 287 needed intensive care. The CDC recommended that health care providers advise parents on the safe storage and appropriate use of melatonin, and that child-resistant packaging be considered. Gummies that look and taste like candy are an obvious part of the risk. If you keep melatonin at home, store it like a medicine. Melatonin: side effects and long-term data NCCIH lists headache, dizziness, nausea, and sleepiness as reported short-term side effects in adults. It also notes that information on the long-term safety of melatonin supplementation is lacking. For short-term, occasional use such as jet lag, that's less of a concern. For nightly use over months or years, it's an honest gap in what we know. Magnesium: digestive effects and an upper limit Magnesium's main safety issues are different and better defined. The NIH Office of Dietary Supplements sets a Tolerable Upper Intake Level of 350 milligrams per day for adults. This applies only to magnesium from supplements and medications, not from food. The most common side effect of high supplemental doses is diarrhea, often with nausea and abdominal cramping. Some forms of magnesium are more likely to cause this than others, which is part of why the form on the label matters. Serious magnesium toxicity is rare and has generally involved very large doses, typically above 5,000 milligrams a day from laxatives and antacids. Anyone with kidney problems, or anyone taking medications, should talk to a clinician before starting any magnesium supplement. Quality control applies to magnesium too. Any supplement can be mislabeled or contaminated, which is why we publish test results for ours. Our magnesium certificate of analysis comes through our supplier's lab rather than a lab we commissioned directly, and we say so wherever we share it. Can you take both? People ask this a lot. The honest answer is that we're not aware of good-quality trials testing magnesium and melatonin together for sleep. So we can't tell you that combining them works better than either alone. What we can say is that they don't do the same thing, so they aren't redundant in principle. One is a timing signal and the other is a nutrient. But "not redundant" is not the same as "proven to work together." If you're considering combining sleep supplements, especially alongside any medication, that's a conversation worth having with a clinician or pharmacist. Who might reasonably consider which Based on the evidence above, here's how we'd think about it. This isn't medical advice, and persistent sleep problems deserve a proper evaluation. If your problem is timing (jet lag, or a body clock that runs late), melatonin is the more logical candidate. NCCIH says research suggests it may help with jet lag, and timing problems are where its mechanism fits. Timing of the dose matters. Given the label accuracy issues, choosing a product with third-party verification makes sense. If you have chronic insomnia, neither supplement is the first-line answer. The AASM suggests clinicians not use melatonin for chronic insomnia. Magnesium's evidence is low quality. NCCIH notes that guidelines recommend CBT-I as the initial treatment. That's worth knowing before spending months cycling through supplements. If your diet is low in magnesium, a supplement may correct a real shortfall. Almost half of Americans don't meet the Estimated Average Requirement from food alone. Sleep might be one of the benefits, though that hasn't been firmly established. Eating more magnesium-rich foods is an equally valid route. If your diet already covers magnesium, there's little evidence that more will improve your sleep. If you have kids at home, store melatonin out of reach and treat it as you would a medicine. What neither one fixes It's worth ending where most sleep advice should start. A supplement that, at best, shortens the time to fall asleep by somewhere between 7 and 17 minutes is working at the margins. The big levers are things neither bottle can provide: a consistent sleep and wake time light in the morning and darkness at night (bright light at night can block melatonin production) caffeine kept well away from bedtime a cool, dark room for persistent insomnia, proper evaluation and CBT-I Those cost nothing and tend to matter more than any capsule. The honest summary Magnesium and melatonin are both sold for sleep, but they're different kinds of substances doing different jobs. Melatonin is a hormone that signals darkness and helps time your sleep-wake cycle. In a meta-analysis of 19 studies, it shortened the time to fall asleep by about 7 minutes and added about 8 minutes of total sleep. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine suggests clinicians not use it for chronic insomnia. Its most sensible use is for timing problems like jet lag. Its biggest practical issues are label accuracy (in one study, 71 percent of products missed their label by more than 10 percent), limited long-term safety data, and a steep rise in accidental ingestion by children. Magnesium is a nutrient that almost half of Americans don't get enough of from food. A meta-analysis of three small trials in older adults found it shortened the time to fall asleep by about 17 minutes, but the evidence was rated low to very low quality. Its clearest case is correcting low intake. Its main safety issues are digestive effects and a 350-milligram upper limit for supplemental intake. If your sleep problem is about timing, melatonin is the more logical tool. If your diet is low in magnesium, fixing that is worthwhile in its own right. And if your sleep problem is persistent, the most effective answer probably isn't in either bottle. References National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. Melatonin: What You Need To Know. National Institutes of Health. NIH Office of Dietary Supplements. Magnesium: Fact Sheet for Health Professionals. Ferracioli-Oda E, Qawasmi A, Bloch MH. Meta-analysis: melatonin for the treatment of primary sleep disorders. PLoS ONE. 2013;8(5):e63773. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0063773 Sateia MJ, Buysse DJ, Krystal AD, Neubauer DN, Heald JL. Clinical practice guideline for the pharmacologic treatment of chronic insomnia in adults: an American Academy of Sleep Medicine clinical practice guideline. Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine. 2017;13(2):307-349. doi:10.5664/jcsm.6470 Mah J, Pitre T. Oral magnesium supplementation for insomnia in older adults: a Systematic Review & Meta-Analysis. BMC Complementary Medicine and Therapies. 2021;21:125. doi:10.1186/s12906-021-03297-z Erland LAE, Saxena PK. Melatonin natural health products and supplements: presence of serotonin and significant variability of melatonin content. Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine. 2017;13(2):275-281. doi:10.5664/jcsm.6462 Cohen PA, Avula B, Wang YH, Katragunta K, Khan I. Quantity of melatonin and CBD in melatonin gummies sold in the US. JAMA. 2023;329(16):1401-1402. Lelak K, Vohra V, Neuman MI, Toce MS, Sethuraman U. Pediatric melatonin ingestions: United States, 2012–2021. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. 2022;71(22):725-729. doi:10.15585/mmwr.mm7122a1 These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
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Electrolyte Drink Mix vs. Sports Drinks: Reading the Label
Electrolyte Drink Mix vs. Sports Drinks: Reading the Label Pick up a bottled sports drink and a packet of electrolyte powder and turn them both around. The labels look similar enough: a serving size, some sodium, a little potassium, maybe some sugar. But the two products are usually built for different jobs, and the numbers on the back tell you which job each one is built for, if you know how to read them. Most people don't read them. They pick based on the front of the package, which says things like "hydration," "replenish," or "clean electrolytes." None of those words have a set meaning. The back of the package is where the real information is. This post walks through that label line by line: serving size, sodium, potassium, sugar, magnesium, and the marketing language around them. Along the way we'll set each number against what the major position statements actually recommend. By the end you should be able to look at any hydration product and work out, in a minute or two, whether it fits what you're doing. A disclosure up front: we sell an electrolyte drink mix, and we don't sell a sports drink. Keep that in mind as you read. We'll point out where a traditional sports drink is the better tool, because sometimes it is. First, what each product is actually for The terms get used loosely, so it helps to define them by what they contain rather than what they're called. A traditional sports drink is a carbohydrate-electrolyte drink. It combines water, sugar, and a moderate amount of sodium, with a little potassium. It's designed to do three things at once during exercise: replace fluid, replace some of the sodium lost in sweat, and supply carbohydrate as fuel. An electrolyte drink mix, in the way the term is usually used now, is a powder or tablet you add to water. Many of these put more emphasis on sodium and other minerals and contain little or no sugar. They're designed mainly to replace minerals, not to fuel. Neither design is better in general. Each one suits a different situation, and the label tells you which one you're holding. Step 1: Normalize the serving size Before comparing anything, get both products onto the same scale. This is the step most people skip, and it's where most label confusion starts. A bottled drink might list nutrition per bottle or per a fraction of a bottle. A powder lists nutrition per scoop or per stick, but the amount of water you mix it into is up to you. A powder with 500 milligrams of sodium mixed into 500 milliliters of water is twice as concentrated as the same scoop mixed into a liter. The cleanest way to compare is to convert everything to milligrams per liter. Research papers usually report electrolyte concentrations in millimoles per liter (mmol/L), so it also helps to know the conversions: 1 mmol of sodium = 23 milligrams 1 mmol of potassium = about 39 milligrams So a drink described in a study as containing 21 mmol/L of sodium has about 483 milligrams of sodium per liter. Once you do this conversion, published research and the label on your shelf start speaking the same language. Step 2: Sodium, the number that matters most When it comes to electrolytes during exercise, the major position statements focus their guidance on sodium. It's the mineral sweat carries away in the largest amounts that matter for exercise. How much sodium is in sweat? It varies a lot from person to person. The National Athletic Trainers' Association position statement on fluid replacement (McDermott and colleagues, Journal of Athletic Training, 2017, volume 52, issue 9, pages 877 to 895) gives a range for sweat sodium of 10 to 100 mEq/L. For sodium, that's the same as mmol/L, so it works out to roughly 230 to 2,300 milligrams of sodium per liter of sweat. That's a tenfold spread between individuals. The joint position statement on nutrition and athletic performance from the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, Dietitians of Canada, and the American College of Sports Medicine (Thomas, Erdman, and Burke, Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 2016, volume 48, issue 3, pages 543 to 568) puts the average at about 50 mmol/L, or roughly 1 gram per liter, while noting the wide variation. It recommends that sodium be taken during exercise when large sweat sodium losses occur. It specifically mentions: athletes with high sweat rates athletes with salty sweat prolonged exercise of more than two hours Now compare that with a typical sports drink. In a well-known 2016 study we'll come back to below, the sports drink tested contained 21 mmol/L of sodium, about 483 milligrams per liter. The 2015 international consensus statement on exercise-associated hyponatremia (Hew-Butler and colleagues, Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine, 2015, volume 25, issue 4, pages 303 to 320) describes sports drinks as generally containing roughly 10 to 38 mmol/L of sodium, or about 230 to 874 milligrams per liter. The takeaway: a conventional sports drink usually contains less sodium per liter than the average person's sweat does. For a short or moderate session, that doesn't matter. For a long, hot session in someone who sweats heavily or sweats salty, it can mean a drink replaces fluid faster than it replaces sodium. This is the main gap that higher-sodium electrolyte mixes are designed to fill. When you read a label, the sodium number per liter, set against your own situation, is the first thing to check. A quick way to estimate your own needs The NATA statement recommends that physically active people weigh themselves before and after exercise to check how much fluid they've lost. It also says losses should be limited to 2 percent of body mass or less. A rough version anyone can do: weigh yourself before and after a typical session, accounting for anything you drank. Each kilogram lost is roughly a liter of sweat. If you lose about a liter in an hour and your sweat is near the average concentration, you've lost something on the order of 1 gram of sodium in that hour. If you notice white, salty streaks on your clothes or skin after training, you may be at the saltier end of the range. This isn't a lab test, but it turns a vague idea ("I sweat a lot") into a number you can compare against a label. Step 3: Sugar, which is a feature or a bug depending on the job Sugar is where sports drinks and electrolyte mixes differ most, and it's also where most of the online arguments happen. The honest answer is that carbohydrate in a drink is useful in some situations and unnecessary in others. When carbohydrate helps. The joint position statement gives clear guidance on carbohydrate during exercise by duration: Under 45 minutes: not needed. 45 to 75 minutes: small amounts, including a mouth rinse. 1 to 2.5 hours: 30 to 60 grams per hour. More than 2.5 to 3 hours: up to 90 grams per hour. For long sessions, a carbohydrate-electrolyte drink is one of the most convenient ways to hit those targets, because it delivers fuel and fluid at the same time. This is where traditional sports drinks earn their place. There's also an absorption angle. The NATA statement notes that the optimal carbohydrate concentration for fluid absorption is between 3 and 8 percent, and that concentrations above 5 to 8 percent may slow absorption. A 6 percent drink contains 60 grams of carbohydrate per liter. In a standard 20-ounce bottle (about 590 milliliters), that's roughly 35 grams. When carbohydrate is just sugar. The same guidance tells you carbohydrate isn't needed for sessions under 45 minutes. And if you're not exercising at all, sugar in a drink is simply added sugar. For context, the FDA's Daily Value for added sugars is 50 grams. A single bottled sports drink can account for a large share of that. So on the label, the question is simple. Look at the total carbohydrate and added sugars per serving, and ask whether you're doing something long enough and hard enough to use that fuel. If you are, the sugar is the point. If you aren't, it's a cost with no benefit. One more thing about sugar-free mixes. If a mix contains little or no carbohydrate, it isn't fueling you. That's fine for daily use, short sessions, or people eating low-carb. But for a two-hour ride or run, you'll need carbohydrate from somewhere else, whether that's food or a separate fuel source, if you want to follow the position stand guidance. Step 4: The "more hydrating than water" question Many hydration products imply they hydrate you better than water. There's actually a good study on this, and the results are more nuanced than most marketing suggests. Maughan and colleagues (American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2016, volume 103, pages 717 to 723) developed what they called a beverage hydration index. They gave 72 healthy, active men a liter of different drinks over 30 minutes while at rest, then tracked how much urine they produced over the following four hours. A drink that led to less urine was being retained better. They tested still water against 12 other drinks, including: sparkling water cola and diet cola a sports drink an oral rehydration solution orange juice lager coffee and tea full-fat and skimmed milk The results: Better retained than water at two hours: full-fat milk, skimmed milk, the oral rehydration solution, and orange juice. No different from water: the sports drink. Total urine output over four hours after drinking it was no different from water. The composition of those two electrolyte drinks is telling: Sodium Potassium Oral rehydration solution 55 mmol/L (about 1,265 mg per liter) 20 mmol/L Sports drink 21 mmol/L (about 483 mg per liter) 4 mmol/L The drink with substantially more sodium and potassium was retained better than water. The sports drink, with less sodium, was not. Two cautions keep this from being overstated. First, this was a resting study in men, not a study of exercise or performance. Second, retaining a drink better over a few hours isn't the same as it being healthier to drink all day. But it does suggest that, at rest, an ordinary sports drink doesn't hydrate you more effectively than water, and that sodium content appears to be part of what makes a drink better retained. Step 5: Potassium and magnesium, the supporting cast Potassium and magnesium appear on most electrolyte labels, and it's worth knowing how to read those numbers in context. The FDA Daily Values give a useful reference: Sodium: 2,300 milligrams Chloride: 2,300 milligrams Potassium: 4,700 milligrams Magnesium: 420 milligrams When a label lists a percent Daily Value next to each mineral, that percentage is calculated against these numbers. In the Maughan study, the sports drink contained 4 mmol/L of potassium, roughly 156 milligrams per liter. That's a small fraction of the 4,700-milligram Daily Value. That isn't necessarily a flaw, because a drink isn't meant to be your main potassium source. Fruits, vegetables, meat, and dairy are where most potassium comes from. But it's worth knowing that the potassium in a typical hydration product is a modest contribution, not a full day's supply. For magnesium, look at two things: the amount, and the form. Labels usually name the compound, such as magnesium citrate, glycinate, or malate. The amount listed is normally the elemental magnesium, which is the figure you compare against the 420-milligram Daily Value. If magnesium is only named inside a blend without an amount, you can't tell how much you're getting. Step 6: Supplement Facts vs. Nutrition Facts You'll notice that some hydration products have a Nutrition Facts panel and others have a Supplement Facts panel. Bottled sports drinks are typically sold as conventional beverages with Nutrition Facts. Many electrolyte powders and tablets are sold as dietary supplements with Supplement Facts. Both panels list amounts and percent Daily Values for the minerals, and the FDA uses the same Daily Values for both. The practical difference for you is that a Supplement Facts panel can list ingredients inside a proprietary blend. A blend shows a total weight for the group but not the amount of each ingredient in it. For an electrolyte product, that matters. You can't check sodium against your sweat losses, or magnesium against the Daily Value, if the amounts are hidden inside a blend. A product that lists each mineral individually, in milligrams, is simply easier to evaluate. Step 7: Reading the marketing language The front of the package uses words with no fixed definition, so the back of the package has to do the work. "Hydration" or "advanced hydration." These words don't tell you anything measurable. Check the sodium per liter and the sugar per serving instead. "Trace minerals." Many electrolyte products, including ours, use mineral-rich salts like Himalayan or other pink salts as the sodium source. It's worth being honest about what that does and doesn't mean. A 2020 study by Fayet-Moore and colleagues (Foods, 2020, volume 9, issue 10, article 1490) analyzed 31 samples of pink salt sold in Australia. They found that, apart from sodium, the minerals in pink salt did not meaningfully contribute to nutrient intake. More than 30 grams a day, about six teaspoons, would be needed to make any meaningful contribution. That's an amount of salt far beyond any sensible sodium intake. The pink salt samples averaged somewhat less sodium than the white table salt control (about 395,000 versus 428,000 milligrams per kilogram), but the authors didn't consider that difference meaningful at normal amounts. So the honest way to describe a pink-salt-based electrolyte is this: it's a sodium source. Any trace minerals are along for the ride in amounts too small to matter. We don't claim our electrolytes deliver meaningful trace minerals, and we'd be skeptical of any product that does. Testing matters more than the salt's origin. The same study found one pink salt sample, from Peru, with lead at 2.59 milligrams per kilogram. That's above the 2 milligram per kilogram maximum set by Food Standards Australia New Zealand. No other sample exceeded the limits for arsenic, cadmium, or mercury. The lesson isn't that pink salt is dangerous. It's that any mined mineral ingredient should be tested. For our own electrolytes, both flavors were tested separately for heavy metals: Lemon-lime: 0.051 parts per million lead, 0.024 arsenic, 0.003 cadmium, and 0.005 mercury. Raspberry: 0.095 lead, 0.029 arsenic, 0.004 cadmium, and 0.002 mercury. What we haven't yet done is independently verify the exact milligram amounts of sodium, potassium, and magnesium in the finished product. The mineral amounts on our label come from the formulation, and we'll say so clearly until that testing is complete. The safety point most labels don't mention There's one important thing that no amount of sodium on a label can fix: drinking too much. Exercise-associated hyponatremia is a dangerous drop in blood sodium during or after exercise. The 2015 international consensus statement is direct about its main cause. It names the overconsumption of hypotonic fluids relative to the body's exchangeable sodium as the primary cause. It also notes that all sports beverages are hypotonic to plasma, meaning they contain less sodium than your blood, which sits at around 140 mmol/L. And it states that sodium supplementation cannot prevent hyponatremia when someone keeps drinking excessive amounts. In other words, a higher-sodium drink is not a license to drink without limit. The consensus statement recommends using thirst to guide fluid intake as a strategy that should limit drinking in excess. The NATA statement's advice to weigh yourself before and after exercise helps here too. Gaining weight over a session is a sign you've drunk more than you lost. The other side: sodium in everyday life Higher-sodium mixes make sense for heavy sweaters and long sessions. But they're often marketed for daily use by everyone, so it's worth putting sodium in context. According to the FDA, Americans eat on average about 3,400 milligrams of sodium a day. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend that adults limit sodium to less than 2,300 milligrams a day. The FDA also notes that over 70 percent of dietary sodium comes from packaged and prepared foods. For someone eating a typical diet and not sweating much, a daily high-sodium drink adds to an intake that's likely already above the guideline. For someone who eats mostly unprocessed food, trains hard, sweats heavily, or eats low-carb, the picture can look quite different. We covered this in more detail in our post on whether you need electrolytes every day. The label is the same in both cases. What changes is whether its sodium is filling a gap or adding to a surplus. Putting it together: which one, when Here's how the evidence above translates into practical choices. Exercise under about an hour. The NATA statement says activity lasting less than an hour should require nothing other than water. Neither product is necessary for most people. Hard sessions of 1 to 2.5 hours. The joint statement recommends 30 to 60 grams of carbohydrate per hour here. A traditional sports drink is a convenient way to get carbohydrate and fluid together. An electrolyte mix works too if you get carbohydrate from food. Long sessions, heat, heavy or salty sweating. This is where the sodium gap matters. The joint statement recommends sodium during exercise when large sweat sodium losses occur. A higher-sodium mix, or a sports drink with extra sodium from food or another source, makes sense. Carbohydrate needs rise too, up to 90 grams per hour beyond about 2.5 hours. Daily life, low activity. Water is usually enough. A sports drink mostly adds sugar. A high-sodium mix mostly adds sodium to a diet that probably already has plenty. Low-carb or fasting. A sugar-free electrolyte mix can make sense here, since these eating patterns can change how the body handles sodium. We've covered why in an earlier post. Your 60-second label checklist When you pick up any hydration product, check these in order: Serving size. How much water is the serving meant for? Convert to per liter if you're comparing. Sodium per liter. Compare it with sweat sodium, roughly 230 to 2,300 milligrams per liter with an average around 1 gram. Is it enough for your sessions, or more than your day needs? Total carbohydrate and added sugars. Are you doing something long enough to use the fuel? If not, how much of the 50-gram added sugars Daily Value does it use? Potassium and magnesium. Are amounts listed individually in milligrams, and how do they compare with the Daily Values? Proprietary blends. Are any minerals hidden inside a blend without individual amounts? Testing. Does the company show third-party test results, especially for heavy metals if the product uses mined salts? Front-of-pack claims. Ignore "hydration," "advanced," and "trace minerals" until the numbers on the back back them up. The honest summary Sports drinks and electrolyte mixes aren't rivals so much as tools for different jobs. A traditional sports drink is a carbohydrate-electrolyte drink. Its sugar is genuinely useful during long, hard sessions, where position statements recommend 30 to 60 grams of carbohydrate an hour or more. Its sodium is usually modest, often less per liter than average sweat. At rest, a well-designed study found it hydrated no better than water. A high-sodium electrolyte mix fills the sodium gap for heavy or salty sweaters and long sessions. It usually doesn't provide fuel. For people who aren't sweating much, it may just add sodium to a diet already above the guideline. Neither one protects you from drinking too much, and neither one's front label tells you much. The back label does. Convert to milligrams per liter, check sodium against what you're losing, check sugar against what you're doing, and look for individual amounts and real testing. That takes about a minute, and it's the difference between buying a product that fits your day and buying a marketing promise. References McDermott BP, Anderson SA, Armstrong LE, Casa DJ, Cheuvront SN, Cooper L, Kenney WL, O'Connor FG, Roberts WO. National Athletic Trainers' Association position statement: fluid replacement for the physically active. Journal of Athletic Training. 2017;52(9):877-895. doi:10.4085/1062-6050-52.9.02 Thomas DT, Erdman KA, Burke LM. American College of Sports Medicine Joint Position Statement. Nutrition and athletic performance. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise. 2016;48(3):543-568. (Published concurrently in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and the Canadian Journal of Dietetic Practice and Research.) Hew-Butler T, Rosner MH, Fowkes-Godek S, et al. Statement of the Third International Exercise-Associated Hyponatremia Consensus Development Conference, Carlsbad, California, 2015. Clinical Journal of Sport Medicine. 2015;25(4):303-320. Maughan RJ, Watson P, Cordery PAA, Walsh NP, Oliver SJ, Dolci A, Rodriguez-Sanchez N, Galloway SDR. A randomized trial to assess the potential of different beverages to affect hydration status: development of a beverage hydration index. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 2016;103(3):717-723. doi:10.3945/ajcn.115.114769 Fayet-Moore F, Wibisono C, Carr P, Duve E, Petocz P, Lancaster G, McMillan J, Marshall S, Blumfield M. An analysis of the mineral composition of pink salt available in Australia. Foods. 2020;9(10):1490. doi:10.3390/foods9101490 US Food and Drug Administration. Daily Value on the Nutrition and Supplement Facts Labels. US Food and Drug Administration. Sodium in Your Diet. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
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Collagen vs. Whey: Which Protein for Which Goal
Collagen vs. Whey: Which Protein for Which Goal Walk down any supplement aisle and you'll see collagen and whey sitting side by side, both labeled "protein," both promising some version of a stronger, better-looking you. It's easy to assume they're interchangeable. Twenty grams is twenty grams, right? Not quite. Collagen and whey are both proteins in the strict sense, and both count toward the grams on a nutrition label. But they're built from very different amino acids, they behave differently once you swallow them, and they've been studied for very different reasons. Some of the claims attached to each hold up well. Others don't hold up at all. This post goes goal by goal. For each common reason people buy protein (building muscle, holding on to muscle as you age, skin, joints, digestion, simply hitting a daily target) we'll look at what the research says about whey, what it says about collagen, and how strong that evidence really is. A disclosure before we start. Our protein powder is a blend of grass-fed whey concentrate and grass-fed hydrolyzed collagen, and by proportion it's mostly collagen. We don't sell standalone whey or standalone collagen. So we have a stake in both sides of this comparison, and some of what follows doesn't flatter our own product. We'd rather you hear it from us. Why "protein" isn't one thing Protein is made of amino acids. Your body can make some of them itself, but nine of them, the essential amino acids, have to come from food. How useful a protein is depends a lot on how much of each essential amino acid it carries. For muscle specifically, one essential amino acid matters more than the others: leucine. Leucine acts as a signal that switches on muscle protein synthesis, the process your body uses to build and repair muscle tissue. The International Society of Sports Nutrition's position stand on protein and exercise (Jäger and colleagues, Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 2017, volume 14, article 20) recommends that a serving of protein contain somewhere between 700 and 3,000 milligrams of leucine, alongside a balanced spread of the other essential amino acids. That's the lens for everything below. Whey and collagen differ most sharply in exactly these places: leucine and the full essential amino acid set. What whey is Whey is one of the two main proteins in milk, the other being casein. It's the liquid fraction left over when milk is turned into cheese, filtered and dried into a powder. You'll usually see it sold in three forms: Concentrate keeps a little more of milk's fat and lactose. Isolate is filtered further, so it's higher in protein by weight and lower in lactose. Hydrolysate is partly broken down in advance into smaller pieces. Across all three, whey is a complete protein. It contains all nine essential amino acids, and it's one of the richest common sources of leucine. It also digests quickly, which means amino acid levels in the blood rise soon after you drink it. What collagen is Collagen is the main structural protein in connective tissue. It's what gives skin, tendons, ligaments, and bone their framework. Supplement collagen is usually made from animal hides, bones, or fish skin, then hydrolyzed into small peptides so it dissolves easily and digests well. Collagen has an unusual amino acid makeup. Its structure is built around a repeating pattern in which glycine appears as roughly every third amino acid, and it's also rich in proline and hydroxyproline. Those amino acids are central to collagen's own structure. What collagen lacks matters just as much. It contains essentially no tryptophan, which is one of the nine essential amino acids, and it's relatively low in leucine and several others. That makes it an incomplete protein. This has a formal consequence. Protein quality is often scored with a measure called PDCAAS (protein digestibility corrected amino acid score), which grades a protein by its most limiting essential amino acid. Because collagen is missing tryptophan, its score is zero. Under US food labeling rules, the percent Daily Value for protein, when a label shows one, has to be corrected for protein quality using PDCAAS. So collagen can supply plenty of grams of protein while contributing far less to your essential amino acid needs than those grams suggest. None of this makes collagen useless. It means collagen and whey aren't doing the same job. Goal 1: Building muscle Short answer: whey, clearly. This is the comparison with the most direct evidence, and the results point one way. The cleanest recent head-to-head trial comes from van Loon's lab at Maastricht University. Aussieker and colleagues (Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise, 2023, volume 55, issue 10, pages 1792 to 1802) ran a randomized, double-blind trial in 45 recreational athletes, 30 men and 15 women, with an average age of 25. After a session of resistance exercise, each person drank 30 grams of whey, 30 grams of collagen, or a non-caloric placebo. The researchers then measured muscle protein synthesis directly, using stable isotope tracers and muscle biopsies over five hours of recovery. The results: Blood amino acids. Whey raised blood levels of leucine and total essential amino acids more than collagen. Collagen raised glycine and proline more. Myofibrillar protein synthesis (the building of contractile muscle tissue, the part that makes muscles bigger and stronger). This was 0.041 percent per hour after whey, 0.036 after collagen, and 0.032 after placebo. Only whey was significantly higher than placebo. So in young, active people, the same 30 grams of protein did measurably more for muscle when it came from whey. This fits with the broader picture of protein and training. A widely cited meta-analysis by Morton and colleagues (British Journal of Sports Medicine, 2018, volume 52, issue 6, pages 376 to 384) pooled 49 randomized trials with 1,863 participants. It found that protein supplementation during resistance training increased gains in muscle mass and strength. The benefit for fat-free mass leveled off at a total daily intake of around 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight. Those trials mostly used complete, high-quality proteins, which is a big part of why the finding shouldn't be assumed to transfer to collagen. If building muscle is your main goal, total daily protein and consistent training come first. After that, a complete, leucine-rich protein like whey is the better tool per gram. Goal 2: Holding on to muscle as you get older Short answer: whey again, and the gap may matter more here. As people age, muscle tends to respond less strongly to both protein and exercise, a phenomenon often called anabolic resistance. That makes protein quality more important later in life, not less. The most relevant trial was done at McMaster University. Oikawa and colleagues (American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2020, volume 111, issue 3, pages 708 to 718) randomized 22 healthy older women, average age about 69, to take 30 grams of either whey or collagen twice a day for six days. During that time each woman also trained one leg with resistance exercise, so the researchers could compare a trained leg with an untrained one in the same person. They measured both the short-term response and the response over several days. The findings: Short term, whey. Whey increased muscle protein synthesis in both the rested leg and the trained leg. Short term, collagen. Collagen raised it only in the trained leg. Over the six days, whey. Whey significantly increased muscle protein synthesis in both conditions. Over the six days, collagen. Collagen did not raise it significantly above baseline. Head to head. Whey outperformed collagen in every condition measured. The authors concluded that whey is the more effective supplement for supporting muscle retention in older women. For context on how much protein older adults may need, the PROT-AGE study group (Bauer and colleagues, Journal of the American Medical Directors Association, 2013, volume 14, issue 8, pages 542 to 559) recommended an average daily intake of 1.0 to 1.2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight for healthy adults aged 65 and over. They also suggested spreading it across meals in servings of roughly 25 to 30 grams, with about 2.5 to 2.8 grams of leucine each. Collagen on its own struggles to reach that leucine figure. Whey reaches it comfortably. Goal 3: Skin Short answer: the strongest evidence doesn't support collagen here, and whey isn't studied for it. Skin is where collagen marketing is loudest, so it deserves the most careful look. The logic sounds intuitive. Skin is full of collagen, and collagen production declines with age, so eating collagen should help. But collagen you eat doesn't travel intact to your skin. It's digested into amino acids and small peptides first, like any other protein. Whether those fragments meaningfully change your skin is an empirical question, and the answer depends heavily on which studies you count. The most important recent analysis is a 2025 meta-analysis by Myung and Park (American Journal of Medicine, 2025, volume 138, issue 9, pages 1264 to 1277). They pooled 23 randomized controlled trials with 1,474 participants. Taken all together, the trials showed improvements in skin hydration, elasticity, and wrinkles. Then the authors split the trials two ways, by who funded them and by how well they were designed: Trials funded by companies. These showed significant benefits. Trials without company funding. These showed no significant effect on hydration, elasticity, or wrinkles. High-quality trials. No significant effect on any of the three. Low-quality trials. A significant improvement in elasticity only. Their conclusion was that there is currently no clinical evidence supporting collagen supplements to prevent or treat skin aging. It's worth being fair about the limits of that finding. A meta-analysis can only work with the trials that exist, and splitting them into subgroups means each comparison rests on fewer studies. Industry groups have publicly disputed the conclusions. "No good evidence of a benefit" is also not the same as "proven not to work." But if you're buying collagen mainly for your skin, you should know that the effect largely disappears when you look only at the independent and higher-quality research. We've said this plainly elsewhere and we'll keep saying it: we don't think anyone should buy a protein powder, ours included, expecting it to change how their skin ages. Goal 4: Joints, tendons, and connective tissue Short answer: interesting biology, but the evidence is early and the best recent data is underwhelming. This is where collagen has its most plausible rationale. Tendons and ligaments are mostly collagen. Collagen supplements deliver large amounts of glycine and proline, the amino acids collagen is built from. There is early supporting work. Shaw and colleagues (American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2017, volume 105, issue 1, pages 136 to 143) gave eight healthy young men either a placebo, 5 grams, or 15 grams of vitamin C-enriched gelatin, a form of collagen. They took it an hour before six minutes of rope skipping. The 15-gram dose doubled a blood marker of collagen production (the amino-terminal propeptide of collagen I) compared with placebo. That's a meaningful signal. But it was eight people, it measured a blood marker rather than tendon strength or injury, and it has not settled the question. The Aussieker trial described above also measured this directly. Alongside muscle-building protein, the researchers tracked synthesis of muscle connective tissue protein, the collagen-rich framework inside muscle. The rates were: 0.072 percent per hour after whey 0.068 after collagen 0.058 after placebo None of those differences were statistically significant. In the authors' words, neither collagen nor whey further increased muscle connective protein synthesis during the early stages of recovery. That doesn't rule out a benefit for tendons specifically, over longer periods, or in particular situations like injury rehab. Those questions are still being studied. But right now it isn't accurate to say that eating collagen has been shown to build stronger joints or tendons. The honest grade is "plausible, under investigation, not established." Goal 5: Digestion and tolerance Short answer: this is personal, and it's a legitimate reason to choose one over the other. Some people simply don't do well with whey. Whey concentrate contains some lactose, and people who are sensitive to lactose may notice bloating or discomfort, especially with larger servings. Isolate contains much less lactose, which is why it's often the better whey choice for those people. Whey is a dairy protein, so anyone avoiding dairy will avoid it entirely. Collagen isn't a dairy product, and hydrolyzed collagen dissolves easily and tends to be well tolerated. For some people, that's the deciding factor. A protein you can drink comfortably every day is worth more than a theoretically superior one that sits in the cupboard. One caution. You'll see collagen marketed for "gut healing." We aren't aware of good human evidence that collagen supplements repair the gut lining, and we're not going to suggest they do. Choosing collagen because it agrees with you is reasonable. Choosing it to treat a digestive condition is a conversation for a clinician. Goal 6: Simply hitting a daily protein number Short answer: both add grams, but they don't count equally. Many people use a protein powder to close the gap between what they eat and a daily target. Here the important point is that collagen grams and whey grams aren't equivalent. If someone's diet is already rich in complete proteins like meat, fish, eggs, and dairy, they're likely getting enough of every essential amino acid from food. Adding collagen on top mostly adds glycine and proline, and it's unlikely to cause any shortfall. Your body pools amino acids from everything you eat across the day, so not every single item needs to be a complete protein. The risk comes when collagen makes up a large share of total protein and the rest of the diet is light. Then you can hit an impressive number on paper while still falling short on leucine and other essential amino acids. This is the scenario the PDCAAS correction on food labels exists to flag. A practical rule: if a powder is doing a lot of the heavy lifting for your daily protein, make sure most of that protein is complete. If your meals already cover the essentials, collagen grams are a reasonable extra. Can you take both? Yes. There's no conflict between them, and many products, including ours, combine them. Combining them makes sense when you want some of the leucine and complete amino acid profile of whey, plus the glycine and proline of collagen, with the tolerance and texture benefits collagen can bring. The trade-off is simple math. The more of a blend that comes from collagen, the less leucine and complete protein you get per scoop compared with the same amount of pure whey. That isn't hidden or mysterious. It follows directly from the amino acid profiles above. Where our blend fits, honestly Since we sell a whey and collagen blend that is mostly collagen, here's how we'd describe it given the research in this post. What it's suited for: Topping up daily protein for people who already eat complete proteins at meals. People who find large servings of whey hard to digest. People who simply want a protein shake they'll actually drink every day. What it isn't: The most efficient possible product for maximizing muscle protein synthesis per scoop. If that's your single priority, a pure whey isolate does that job better gram for gram. A skin treatment. The independent evidence doesn't support that. A proven joint or tendon supplement. That evidence isn't there yet. If you use our blend and muscle is a priority, the practical step is to make sure your meals carry plenty of complete protein too. That way your total leucine intake is covered by the whole day, not by one scoop. Quick reference: which one for which goal Building muscle with training: whey. Supported by direct head-to-head trials in both younger and older adults. Keeping muscle as you age: whey. Older adults may need more leucine per meal, and collagen struggles to supply it. Skin aging: neither has good independent evidence. Collagen's apparent benefit disappears in unfunded and high-quality trials. Joints and tendons: collagen has a plausible mechanism and early supporting data, but it's not established. Dairy or lactose sensitivity: collagen, or whey isolate if you only need to cut lactose. Topping up daily protein when your diet is already protein-rich: either. Collagen is fine as an extra, not as your main source. The honest summary Collagen and whey share a name and a nutrition label line, but they aren't substitutes. Whey is a complete protein, rich in leucine, and it has the clearest evidence for what most people buy protein for: building and keeping muscle. In head-to-head trials it stimulated muscle protein synthesis better than collagen in both young athletes (Aussieker 2023) and older women (Oikawa 2020). Collagen is an incomplete protein with a PDCAAS of zero. It's rich in glycine and proline and easy to digest. Its most popular claim, better skin, doesn't hold up in independent or higher-quality trials according to the largest recent meta-analysis (Myung and Park 2025). Its most plausible claim, connective tissue support, rests on early and mixed evidence. So start with your goal. If it's muscle, choose whey or make sure complete proteins do the main work in your diet. If it's tolerance, convenience, or extra protein on top of an already good diet, collagen or a blend is a reasonable choice. And whatever you buy, be skeptical of any protein that promises to fix your skin. References Jäger R, Kerksick CM, Campbell BI, et al. International Society of Sports Nutrition Position Stand: protein and exercise. Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition. 2017;14:20. Aussieker T, Hilkens L, Holwerda AM, Fuchs CJ, Houben LHP, Senden JM, van Dijk JW, Snijders T, van Loon LJC. Collagen protein ingestion during recovery from exercise does not increase muscle connective protein synthesis rates. Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise. 2023;55(10):1792-1802. doi:10.1249/MSS.0000000000003214 Morton RW, Murphy KT, McKellar SR, et al. A systematic review, meta-analysis and meta-regression of the effect of protein supplementation on resistance training-induced gains in muscle mass and strength in healthy adults. British Journal of Sports Medicine. 2018;52(6):376-384. Oikawa SY, Kamal MJ, Webb EK, McGlory C, Baker SK, Phillips SM. Whey protein but not collagen peptides stimulate acute and longer-term muscle protein synthesis with and without resistance exercise in healthy older women: a randomized controlled trial. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 2020;111(3):708-718. doi:10.1093/ajcn/nqz332 Bauer J, Biolo G, Cederholm T, et al. Evidence-based recommendations for optimal dietary protein intake in older people: a position paper from the PROT-AGE Study Group. Journal of the American Medical Directors Association. 2013;14(8):542-559. Myung SK, Park Y. Effects of collagen supplements on skin aging: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. American Journal of Medicine. 2025;138(9):1264-1277. doi:10.1016/j.amjmed.2025.04.034 Shaw G, Lee-Barthel A, Ross ML, Wang B, Baar K. Vitamin C-enriched gelatin supplementation before intermittent activity augments collagen synthesis. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. 2017;105(1):136-143. US Food and Drug Administration. Food labeling: nutrition labeling of food. 21 CFR 101.9(c)(7). These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
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