Listen & learn all about collagen – is it good for you? Bad for you? Supplements are not a quick fix-all. Start with food, diet, and then supplement if necessary. We’ve brought in Charlie Bailes, a husband, dad of 3, a crossfitter, a health nut, and most importantly – a collagen expert. We hope to tackle the ins & outs of collagen and how it could help you.
TIME STAMPS
2:16 Why is collagen good, and why some might think it’s bad (jump to section)
4:09 Collagen is not a silver bullet (jump to section)
5:20 Collagen helps the digestive system, repairs connective tissue, & more (jump to section)
7:25 How to find collagen outside of supplements (jump to section)
8:34 How you know if you’re getting enough collagen (jump to section)
10:11 Muscle soreness & collagen (jump to section)
12:10 Collagen’s negative views (jump to section)
14:24 If collagen breaks a fast (jump to section)
18:18 What multi-protein collagen is (jump to section)
23:27 How collagen differs from hemp or whey protein (jump to section)
Transcription Below
Landon Eckles: Hey guys, what is going on? This is Landon, CEO of Clean Juice and your co-host of the Be Organic podcast, which as always, is powered by Clean Juice. We’re excited to have you today as we’ve got an awesome show. We like to bring you fresh content, keep it interesting, and talk about stuff you may have never heard about. We also talk about stuff that can sometimes be a little controversial.
Today we are actually going to be talking about collagen. Some folks out there absolutely love collagen, and some are unsure about it. We are going be talking about the ins and the outs of collagen. And the question is – is it good for you or is it bad for you?
We’ve got an awesome guest for you. As always, I’m going to let Kat, my wonderful co-host, a beautiful wife and chief branding officer of Clean Juice, introduce our awesome guest.
Kat Eckles: Yes, we are so excited to have Charlie Bales on with us today. Charlie is the CEO and founder. CB Supplements is a company specializing in helping people thrive with multi-collagen protein products.
As a collagen expert, he often talks about its nutrition benefits on different podcasts to help people solve various health issues from joint recovery and productivity to even sleeping better at night. He’s also a husband, a dad of three, a CrossFitter, and a health nut. We’re excited to have Charlie on the podcast today to talk about something.
It might be a little controversial for some, even me. Sometimes I get confused and overwhelmed with all the information that there is about collagen. I’m so excited to pick his brain and see if he can change my mind about all this. Charlie, we are so excited to have you today.
Charlie Bales: Thanks so much for having me, all. Looking forward to a fun conversation.
Why Collagen Is Good, And Why Some Might Think It’s Bad
Landon Eckles: Awesome. You’re obviously a big supporter of collagen. Some people are not supporters of collagen. The first obvious question for you is – why do you think it’s good and what are some of the views on why others may think it’s bad? Where does the controversy stem from and how did you get to your side of the table?
Charlie Bales: We’re the collagen company that is going to be very different than most because we’re the company, a supplement company, rather, that believes that one should attain their health from food first. And really supplements are there to do just that. Supplement a healthy lifestyle.
We actually charge forward on some of the criticisms of the supplement industry by agreeing with those who are doing their criticizing that, hey, guess what? We’re the collagen company that says don’t buy our product. Go invest in higher quality food and fix your diet and then we’re here if you can’t do that.
That’s one thing that we do. You’re just not going to hear a guy who’s trying to sell a product say, hey, guess what? Don’t buy our products. And I have said that over and over again to people, and then go into here’s some of the foods that you can actually get collagen from and here’s some of the activities that can help promote collagen production within your body.
That’s the first thing that I would say. It’s a longer answer to discuss the why I became such a big supporter of collagen. I’ll try to give you the cliff notes, the small version, and then see where y’all want to go from there.
Collagen Is Not A Silver Bullet
Collagen, again, it’s not the silver bullet. Another thing that you’re not going to hear a sales guy say about their product all that often. Collagen is a piece of this pie called health. Maybe that pie has eight or 10 pieces. Collagen is just one of them. Protein is a huge piece of it, and collagen is a piece of it.
We can get into that if you want. But that’s why I became a big supporter of it, through my own health journey and having children. As you said in the intro, I’ve got three beautiful, awesome kids. They are eight, six, and two now. The oldest, Viv, had her struggles with health in the early years of her life, and through the process of taking her health back, my wife and I learned all these valuable lessons of cutting out inflammatory foods, getting rid of highly processed vegetable oils, cutting out gluten during certain stages and decreasing that amount, and supplementing with collagen. Collagen is a piece of that.
Collagen Helps the Digestive System, Repairs Connective Tissue, & More
But we believe it’s a strong piece. It has such a range of benefits, coming from the obvious, such as hair, skin, and nails. But it also helps your digestive system function properly and your body fix and repair connective tissue, which means tendons, ligaments, blood vessels, skin, veins, and bones.
It’s what all of this is made of. Once you do that, you achieve a higher level of health. You sleep better, you recover better. It’s actually a really hard product to try because it can do so much. All of those things have happened to myself, to my daughter Vivian, to my wife, to our team, to our 400 plus reviews on the website.
Hopefully that’s a good short answer.
Landon Eckles: That’s actually great. We had a similar journey with our now four-year-old. Our son was really sick for quite some time, and he actually used bone broth. I attribute the bone broth to healing the majority of his issues because he had pretty severe gut inflammation and we know the bone broth is really, really rich in collagen.
It probably was the collagen that ultimately led him into recovery. I’m sure that you can relate on some levels with your daughter as well.
How to Find Collagen Outside of Supplements
Charlie Bales: 100%. It’s awesome that we get to meet and talk about this because our stories are similar where all a parent wants is for their kids to be happy and healthy.
When that gets taken from you at such a young age and the Western medical society doesn’t really help, they just make it worse by steroids and drugging up your kid. You start to take health into your own hands, and that’s exactly what we did.
I know that’s what y’all did, and I’m happy to hear of the success and how the bone broth helps, and it makes perfect sense. That’s actually what I preach to people that go buy bone broth. Go cook your rice and bone broth. Go eat bone in ribeye and get collagen from meat.
Go eat certain organ meat. Go eat a bunch of eggs. Go, go, go. Do things before you need to supplement. If you can’t do that, because some people just don’t want to drink 12 ounces of chicken stock every day, and I get that. I’m even that person some days. That’s why we have a product.
That’s why we created a strawberry lemonade that can be mixed with water that a kid might drink, because I’ve been there and done that with y’all. Trying to get a three- or four-year-old to drink bone broth is almost impossible. Even now with an eight-year-old trying to get to eat the right foods and drink bone broth, whole milk and do these things correctly, it’s still difficult.
Sometimes it’s just easy to take an unflavored scoop of multi-source collagen and mix it with whatever she’s drinking. It’s going to be something healthy, and she has no clue it’s even in it. That’s the beautiful thing.
How You Know If You’re Getting Enough Collagen
Landon Eckles: That’s awesome. I have a question for you. You mentioned first and foremost, let’s get collagen from diet. How do we know if we’re getting enough collagen? Is there a way to test for it or are there symptoms? How do we know?
Charlie Bales: It’s a really good question, and I would say the best answer is just being in tune with your body and observing how you’re feeling. Our fingernails and our toenails tell a very valuable thing if they are growing.
That means the inside of your body is probably doing the things it needs to do. It’s these things that are outward representations of our inward health. If your fingernails and toenails are healthy and growing, that’s great. If your skin is healthy, that’s great. If you’re waking up in the mornings and your joints are hurting, that’s a problem.
If you’re not going to the bathroom every single day, that’s a problem. I’m not talking about number one; I’m talking about number two. It’s all of those things that if your body’s trying to tell you something, if it’s out of homeostasis or if it’s out of this beautiful rhythm that we’re supposed to be in, that’s the best way that I would tell.
You can go get bone density scans. We could probably do a podcast all about the negative repercussions of getting scans, but you can do that as well. I’m more a fan of just listening to your body.
Muscle Soreness & Collagen
Landon Eckles: How do you differentiate because you seem like a really active guy, you’re a CrossFitter. I dabble CrossFit in a lot of other workouts as well. How do you differentiate between just muscle soreness, and you hit it really hard versus I think my body needs something.
Charlie Bales: Ever since I started with this collagen kick, I’ll call it. It’s really become a missing food group in our society.
We just don’t eat enough protein as a society. Because we don’t eat enough protein and most of that protein is boneless, skinless, lean, hardly any fat on it, it is completely deprived of collagen. This may be two or three % if you’re eating a ribeye now. Collagen is this missing food group that ever since I’ve brought it back in, I really don’t get sore anymore, which is just bananas to me. I can go run three miles with a weight vest on and my knees don’t hurt the next day. When I was a catcher in college at 22 years old, my knees hurt every day, but I wasn’t eating the way that I am right now.
I just don’t really get that joint fatigue anymore. When I know that my muscles are tired, that’s when I know I need a rest day. That’s because your muscles are only like one to 10% collagen, it’s primarily other forms of protein.
It’s not collagen. Right? That’s how I notice the difference. But again, I’m very observant of my body. I would beg listeners and people to be more observant of that. Where are you sore? Because if it’s just your forearm, that’s your muscles, that’s fantastic. Be sore.
If it’s your elbow, now we’re talking about something different. That’s probably collagen missing from everything as opposed to muscle protein.
Collagen’s Negative Views
Landon Eckles: That’s a great point. That makes a ton of sense. I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about the haters, right?
Let’s talk about the folks who hate collagen, or they may think it’s bad, or they have a negative view of it. Why do they have this negative view? Where does it come from?
Charlie Bales: I have no clue. It’s a great question. We address a lot of those haters on our website because we believe that it’s our duty and our obligation to our customers to inform them. We want to educate the consumer and we’re going to take on any idea that somebody wants to discuss. I remember there was this crazy article a couple years ago from the University of Missouri that said don’t put collagen in your coffee.
It’s going to completely degrade the product. If that made any sense. Explain to me why a dinosaur bone from 2 million years ago would still be found and completely intact. Collagen melts at about 1600 degrees, so unless you’re drinking coffee, that’s literally on fire.
The article just makes zero sense, but we go way into the weeds with that. We have a 3000-word article debunking this collagen in heat argument. There are extreme haters in the fasting community, which, again, I don’t understand what’s the point because it. If you approach the subject of fasting and intermittent fasting and what breaks it, let’s be collaborative and answer the question, why are you fasting?
What’s your goal? Right? Collagen could be a part of that. Because if your goal is just to lose weight, great. Adding collagen to your black coffee in the morning is going to break your fast, but you’re not going to eat 500 calories of bad food for breakfast. It’s still going to help you accomplish your goal.
A lot of this hate for collagen comes from people not understanding. They just want to pick a fight and we’re not going not pick it. We’re coming from a place of wanting to meet our customers on their health journey and looking to improve it, whether they buy our product or not.
If that means you just come to our website, read something and move on about your life, but you become healthier – that’s our mission. Just to help people get healthier, not to sell products.
If Collagen Breaks A Fast
Kat Eckles: That’s awesome. You mentioned intermittent fasting, which I know you’re a big proponent of and actually that’s how Landon and I both eat.
Landon Eckles: I was doing it maybe 10 years ago before I even knew what it was. I just intuitively would eat that way. It’s funny, I did a podcast on it myself, just talking about how much I love it. Kat’s claim about me is that I’m always six months behind her. Well, this time I was 10 years behind her, but I just feel good when I’m doing it. But again, you talk about how people are kind of iffy about that. I would love to hear your perspective on intermittent fasting and also how collagen is even more beneficial during that fasting period.
Charles Bales: My belief is that you shouldn’t really have to work very hard to do intermittent fasting – that’s our natural way of eating. You just shouldn’t. If you wake up every morning starving, there’s a bigger problem at hand. You’re probably addicted to glucose on some level, or your body is not in a perfect state of homeostasis.
I fast intermittently and don’t even think. WhenI tell people that I’ll go to a CrossFit workout, on hour 14 of being fasted. They say, how in the world do you do that? I don’t even think about it. Honestly, because I’m just not hungry.
I eat when I am hungry, which is usually around lunchtime, early afternoon, and dinnertime. For lack of a better expression, I just kind of follow the 16 eight, because that’s what my body tells me to. Fasting is a great tool and I got to the place where I am now through using it as a tool and through observing how food, and what foods, really do to me and what makes me hungry, what works great.
I found out that my body just loves saturated fat, especially from animals, and if you go listen to Kelly Star and how his body hates saturated fat, it’s amazing how different we all are.
For me, I could eat a ribeye for dinner, and I could not be hungry until the next night if I didn’t need to be. That’s just my body. I’m giving my body what it needs and what it’ll use for the rest of the day. To answer your question about where collagen fits in intermittent fasting.
Again, we have a very long and detailed article on our website where even if you just Google collagen and fasting, we’ll be the number one article, and it answers this question, Does Collagen Break a Fast? Yes, it does, but it’s complicated. Let’s talk about why you’re fasting or what’s the point of it.
If you ask, and we name a lot of these people, if you asked Dr. Jason Fung, if it breaks a fast, he’s going to say yes. If you ask Cynthia Thoro, she’s going to say yes. If you ask Ted Niman, he is probably going to say no. If you ask Kate Shanahan, she’s probably going to say no. It depends on who you ask and what your goals are, as opposed to just this flat out, you have to have black coffee – you cannot put collagen in it, you can’t even put a tablespoon of almond milk in it because it’s going to break the fast.
Well, who really cares? What’s the goal of fasting? If you are waking up hungry, let’s talk about your bigger metabolic issue.
Landon Eckles: It’s a great point. I totally agree with you on everything you said.
It’s always about the why, right? Why are we doing what we’re doing? It’s a great point that most people miss, especially when they’re arguing about something.
What Multi-Protein Collagen Is
Kat Eckles: I’d love to ask you a little bit about your collagen product, because you’ve mentioned a few times that it’s a MultiPro collagen product. I’d love to understand a little bit more about that and why that maybe isn’t your traditional collagen product that you grab anywhere.
Charlie Bales: About 90, 95% of the products on the marketplace are single, particularly bovine collagen, which means they are derived and made from cow skin. That’s what bovine means, which is great.
I’d rather somebody take collagen than not. I’d rather somebody know what bovine is than not. Go buy any product. You don’t have to buy ours. But we believe in a multi sourced collagen. That means that we are making our product from multiple animals, not just cows. We’re also using chicken, the chicken’s egg, and a marine source (a wild caught fish), which is going to be either a freshwater tilapia or a red snapp.
Again, both of those are wild caught. I’ll compare it to eating vegetables. Do you eat just broccoli all day, every day? Or do you eat the whole vegetable garden? Including carrots and celery and squash and green tomatoes and a pepper. I guess those are fruits. Do you know what I mean?
We’re eating all the colors of the rainbow, not just one. That’s why we create a multi-college or a multi sourced collagen supplement because each source, each animal gives you a different benefit. The easiest one to talk about is that the cow and the fish sources are great for types one and three collagen, which are primarily found in skin.
Type two collagen, which is found in the joints, is brought to you by the chicken. It’s just a beautiful example. I would rather somebody take a bovine, that’s a type one and three than nothing. But I’d also rather you drink chicken bone broth to get type two collagen or to get it from the eggshells, type 10 collagen or type five, which is found in the placenta.
It’s pretty important and that’s why we created a multi-source because we wanted to make the most complete product we could, as opposed to just saying, collagen, we’re just going to use whatever cow skin today.
Landon Eckles: I love that. I’m actually on your website right now and I’m just clicking through because it’s really interesting.
I didn’t even know there were different types of collagen. That’s how uneducated I am. But I’m sitting here reading through it. I love how, right on your website, you’ve got type one collagen. You say that. This is the most common type of collagen, makes up 90% of our hair, skin, nails, organs, bones, and ligaments.
You go through 2, 3, 4, 5, 10. It’s really cool how you guys are not just trying to sell products, but you’re really educating the consumer on what collagen is and even the different types and where it comes from. It’s funny, a lot of the customer service emails we get from people, of course most of them are related to our product, but every now and then we’ll get one that’s just a general question, and we answer it. That’s awesome. We’re just trying to help people on their health journey. If that means that you’re going to take our product, great. If it means you’re not, no problem. Because we use bone broth as an ingredient in our product, in order to give type two collagen from chicken, we use chicken bone broth.
We don’t just grind up chicken bones. We want to use the broth so that way we’re getting cartilage and tendons and ligaments and some the joint material, that are called glycosaminoglycans and proteoglycans and glucosamine.
Hopefully I didn’t lose people, but just remember joint luing material.
That’s we’re using bone broth. However, bone broth has histamines in it. There’s a small group that cannot tolerate histamines into their diet whatsoever because their guts are just inflamed right now. We have no problem telling that customer that our product’s not for you.
Go buy Dave Asprey’s brand Bulletproof, which is just bovine from a grass-fed cow, and take that instead. We probably say that once a week, which it’s wild to me that we give business away, but we do it because we’re just trying to improve.
Landon Eckles: You’re authentic and transparent and you know that’s going to win more guests than you turn away by a wide margin. We try to operate our business in the same way. Respect to you on that for sure.
Kat Eckles: I know your products are essentially protein. I think they have somewhere from seven to 10 grams of protein in a supplement. How does this differ from maybe someone’s traditional whey protein or hemp protein that they might be used to taking?
How Collagen Differs From Hemp Or Whey Protein
Charles Bales: It’s such a great question, and the short answer is they start completely different processes in the body. If you have a hemp protein, a whey protein, or just a boneless skinless chicken breast muscle protein, your body sees that and it’s going to go fix and repair muscle tissue.
It’s going to start some building processes, which are all fantastic. I’m a huge advocate of just increasing one’s overall protein intake period. You’ll be in better health if you do that and do not take collagen than whatever the opposite of that is. What collagen does when, when you consume it – there are peptide chains, which I’m sure your listeners know this, but just to back up. What a peptide chain is, is it’s a couple of amino acids that are linked together and what a protein breaks down into amino acids when your body starts to digest it, when that happens and your body sees this very specific peptide chain in collagen, which are certain amino acids and hydroxylated amino acids – that’s glycine, leucine, hydroxyl glycine, hydroxyl proline.
These are some amazing substances that are linked together that are found nowhere else in nature. Aside from animal collagen, there is no such thing as vegan collagen. There’s no such thing as plant collagen. When your body sees that peptide chain, something magical happens, your body sees it and knows it’s time to go fix and repair connective tissue.
That’s probably why your son and why my daughter Vivian’s guts healed. Because guess what the small intestinal lining is made of? It’s made of collagen. When your body fixes and repairs collagen, it’s going to fix and repair joint material, skin, internal organs that are made up of it, and blood vessels.
It’s a beautiful thing that happens that only happens when you consume collagen, which is why we’re the company. We must be that company, but we’re the company that thinks that collagen should be the fourth macronutrient and it’s missing.
Landen Eckles: That’s interesting. Based on what you just said, I’d love to hear from your perspective – who’s typically buying your product? Is it people who are vegetarian that are literally getting no collagen from their diet? Or is it folks who may just be eating a little bit and they want to supplement more. Or is it people who are trying to get a ton because they’re lifting weights and they just want more.
Charlie Bales: Every group that you just mentioned is one of our groups of customers, which is why it’s really hard to advertise our product in a quick ten second segment. It’s easy to go on an hour podcast like this, but to do it very quickly, who do you go to?
We have a lot of elderly people buying our product. Their joints have completely given out and now their joints are back. One of my partners – his parents have a degenerative bone disease, and for the first time ever in their lives, the bone degeneration stalled.
It didn’t get any worse from one scan to the next scan. They’ve been supplementing with our collagen – and I know that’s not a double-blind scientific study. It’s just hearsay, but holy smokes, is that an amazing story, and we’ve got hundreds of those stories of an elderly person who is about to have their hip replaced and now they walk four miles a day. It even happened to my dad, who went to go have back surgery and they opened him up and they said there’s nothing there. We’re good – we’re just going to clean up. And. We’d been drinking bone broth and went with collagen for 18 months prior to it. That’s one big demographic.
Another big one is athletes. It’s why we get our product NSF certified for sport, because we want to sell our product to the best athletes in the world. I’ve talked about joint health for so long. If you’re a professional athlete, you’re getting paid for your joints. We see it as our obligation to help that athlete protect his or her joints.
That’s a huge market for us. And then obviously I have a soft spot for the kids because I think that most kids in our country just eat absolutely horribly. They’re not getting any nutrition from their food process. It’s just bad. What health has done to my family with fixing Vivian’s health and then her two little brothers being the beneficiaries of it.
I love to sell our product to every house in America, just to give to them, because that’s our hope – that the kid will see the pro athlete take the product and they’ll tell their mom to go buy this. Then we’ve just entered the household. Again, we just want to help people with their health.
We have a lot of people that buy our product because they’re losing their hair and they want to clear up their skin or they want better digestion. Everybody you just mentioned, we sell our product to.
Landon Eckles: That’s awesome. That’s great stuff, Charlie. Well, listen, we’re just about out of time, but you’ve been awesome. I love your story. I love how your daughter’s gotten better through this and how you guys are really authentic and transparent around what you do. It’s fantastic.
It’s an awesome story and a cool company that you’re building. Kudos to you. Next time I’m down in the Orlando area, we would love to check you out. We’ll hit a workout together and I’d love to even tour your facility if you’re up.
Charlie Bales: Please, it’d be my honor, I’d love to love to host y’all.
Landon Eckles: Before we sign off, two things. Number one, I’m going to ask you our sign off question that we ask everyone, and that’s – what’s your one tip for living life organically? And then after that, I’m sure folks are going to want to hear where they can find your products and learn more about you, Instagram, etc. What is your one tip for living life Organic?
Charlie Bales: It’s really good question and I knew you were going to ask it. When I think about it, it makes me think about the long term and just playing the long game, playing the infinite game, and investing into the now for the long. Because when you’re growing something organically, it’s a longer process.
The yield is not as big as an inorganic or genetically modified product, but you’re doing it for the long run because the soil, at some point when you’re growing an inorganic product, that soil’s going to die and you’re going to have to move it somewhere else. Whereas an organic product and doing it the right way, you’re investing in the long term. Just look at the long term – look at where you want to be years and years from now. I hammer collagen and bone broth and eat the way that I do and invest in my health with workouts so that I can keep doing it when I’m 60, when my kids are my age because I have two boys and I want to beat them at everything for the rest of my life.
I also just want to be a role model to them. Living a life organically is playing the infinite game, not the short-term game.
Landon Eckles: I’d completely agree with you a hundred percent. Well, thank you for being a fantastic guest.
What a great topic, and congrats on your company. I know I will be checking it out. I’ve already been on your website. I’m going to be purchasing some products but tell our listeners where they can learn more. Charlie.
Charles Bales: Our website is cbsupplements.com. If you want to email us, you can just click the button, contact us.
You’ll probably get my email right there. We’re on all the socials. Instagram’s the biggest one. It’s just @CBsupplements. I’d love to hear from, from anybody. We answer every email. We’d love to hear from the customers and it’s our duty and our obligation to help the world of health for every customer that we can. We’d love to hear from anybody.
Landon Eckles: Thank you Charlie. Appreciate you and what you do. I’m just happy that God created you in this company. Keep doing your thing, man. Appreciate you. Thank y’all very much.
Charlie Bates: Thanks for the opportunity.
Landon Eckles: Thank you so much for tuning in today to Be Organic. We’re so excited for you to become healthier and body and stronger in spirit. If you like what you heard today, please be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcast to never miss an episode, and we’d love to connect with you over on Clean Juices Instagram.
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