AMA #19: Collagen vs. Whey Protein, Creatine, Smelling Salts, Stimulants & More

Andrew Huberman, who introduces himself as a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine, opens this AMA by explaining why he is wearing red-lens glasses. The session is recorded at night under bright lights. He says bright light at night suppresses melatonin, "the hormone of sleepiness," and raises cortisol. Blocking short-wavelength blue and green light, he says, offsets both effects. Whether or not listeners use blockers, his general recommendation is to dim lights at night to help the transition to sleep and sleep quality.

He then describes where the episode fits. The AMA belongs to the Premium subscriber channel, which supports the free Monday full-length episodes and the 30-minute Thursday Essentials episodes, both available on YouTube, Apple, Spotify and, for full-length episodes, X. Premium revenue funds research at Stanford and elsewhere that is "largely applied research," aimed at new therapeutics for mental health, physical health and performance. He says the Tiny Foundation and two anonymous donors each match every Premium dollar, so each dollar becomes four dollars of research funding, which is then distributed to investigators at Stanford and other US universities. He promises to share results and tools as studies are completed and published.

The first listener question asks whether bone broth or collagen protein has a distinct health advantage over whey. Huberman points back to his episode with Dr. Layne Norton and starts from the premise that, although protein is one of the three macronutrients, "not all proteins are created equal." Protein sources differ in how easily they are absorbed and in their amino acid content. Protein quality, he says, depends partly on the amount of leucine, an essential amino acid that must come from food.

Whey, along with beef, chicken and eggs, is relatively high in leucine. Collagen protein and "some, not all, bone broths" are relatively low. That makes the first half of his answer confident. If the goal is building muscle, getting stronger, repairing exercise-related muscle damage, or simply engaging protein synthesis, whey is the better choice. He also compares the full essential amino acid profiles, not just leucine, and concludes that whey is superior on both bioavailability and amino acid composition.

He adds that this matters even without hard exercise, because high-leucine dietary protein helps drive "muscle protein synthesis," which he describes as generally good for us and as happening whether or not we train. (In passing, he says people should be doing both resistance and cardiovascular training.) The advantage grows with training intensity. It applies especially to resistance work taken near or to failure, and he notes that this "doesn't even have to be heavy weight" as long as the muscles are stressed hard.

Huberman rejects the idea that collagen and bone broth are therefore worthless. Drawing on his Layne Norton episode and his skin-health episode, he describes the evidence carefully. There are "some data, not a ton," showing that regular collagen intake can improve skin elasticity and appearance. He calls the effects not dramatic but statistically significant compared with controls that got either no collagen or a different protein.

He treats bone broth and collagen together because bone broth is high in collagen. The reported benefits on skin elasticity and appearance come at intakes of 15 grams per day over about two weeks or more. For skin, then, he ranks collagen and bone broth above whey. He adds a practical caveat: these products contain calories from protein, sometimes from fat, and rarely from carbohydrate, so people should check the packaging.