Silica collagen builder (MMST silicon), 60 capsules

There is no greater search than the fountain of youth. Soft, glowing skin, full, shiny hair, strong nails – these are all signs of optimal health and youthfulness. Who wouldn't want to turn back time and look their best?

And that's just what's visible on the outside. However, the structural components inside your body, such as your blood vessels and the physical support for your organs and systems, are even more important to your enjoyment of a healthy and active life.

While there may not be a true "fountain of youth," scientists are learning more and more every day about how the body ages. Best of all, they reveal important clues you can use to slow down the visible signs of cellular aging to maintain your well-being and your active lifestyle.

One of their greatest discoveries of recent years is the power of an essential trace element called silica, or silicon dioxide.

Silica seems to be the missing link to help you look and feel your best – simply by supporting your body’s ability to produce collagen, the protein that keeps your skin, hair and nails looking fresh and youthful, and supports the body’s structural components to their fullest potential.

How Silica Helps Make Your Body Stronger and Healthier*

Silica is responsible for many important biological roles in your body:

• It helps rejuvenate your skin by nourishing and restoring collagen and elastin fibers, and also reshapes the firmness of your skin, helping to reduce the appearance of fine lines.*
• Helps your hair feel thicker, fuller and shinier through its effects on hair follicles and hair strength.*
• Helps nails look and feel stronger by helping to supply the nail bed with vital nutrients and supporting optimal calcium absorption throughout the body.*
• Helps build and maintain strong, dense bones, especially with age, as it helps regenerate new bone and maintain bone thickness and elasticity.*
• Supports healthy joints, cartilage, ligaments and tendons, which are primarily composed of collagen.*
• It supports heart health, the integrity of your blood vessel walls, and healthy blood pressure already within the normal range.*
• Supports a healthy liver and optimal digestion by helping to remove unwanted substances from your tissues.*

So what is silica, or silicon, as it is sometimes called? It is one of the 97 natural building blocks from which minerals are formed. Silicon appears in the periodic table as the symbol Si and has atomic number 14.

Silicon is the second most abundant element on Earth, surpassed only by oxygen. It is found in dust, sand, rocks, and planets as various forms of silicon dioxide or silicates. Over 90% of the Earth's crust is made up of silicate minerals.

In your body, silicon is the third most abundant trace element. As we just learned, it is important for collagen synthesis and for activating enzymes that affect the firmness and elasticity of your skin, as well as the fullness and shine of your hair.*

While some forms of silica, such as crystalline silica, can be highly toxic if ingested or inhaled, dietary silica used in dietary supplements is considered safe when used properly.

Why You May Need a Silica Supplement

Of the 18 foods with the highest silica content, 11 are grain products. Grains like wheat, barley, oats, and brown rice contain silica, a natural building block of collagen.

Gluten-free and low-carb diets are usually healthy choices, but if you limit these foods wisely, you may not be consuming sufficient sources of silica. It is estimated that a gluten-free diet supplies 30% less silica than the average diet.

But diet isn't the only factor you need to consider when deciding whether you need more silica.

Studies question the reliability of food sources. Although there are significant amounts of silica in certain foods, it is sometimes present in an insoluble form, or in a form that you cannot easily absorb in your gastrointestinal tract. Then there's the age issue...

Dietary silica must first be converted to a form called orthosilicic acid, or OSA, before it can be absorbed, which requires sufficient stomach acid. As you age, the pH of your stomach increases because stomach acid production decreases. Less stomach acid affects your ability to convert silica into the correct form that your body can absorb and utilize.

Not only that, your collagen levels also naturally decline with age. You will therefore start to notice more pronounced lines and sagging skin, thinning hair, and increasingly brittle nails.

However, it's not just your hair, skin, and nails that are at risk. Collagen can really determine how you feel and how well your body functions over the years.

Collagen provides structure for your bones, muscles, tendons, joint cartilage, blood vessels, and organs, including your entire digestive system. Simply put, it is the cellular glue that holds all the connective tissues in your body together.

When you're young, your body produces enough collagen to keep tissues supple and your hair and skin looking radiant. However, this changes once you cross the 20-year mark:

• By the age of 40, your body's ability to produce its own collagen decreases by about 25%.
• By the age of 60, collagen production drops to about half of its youthful levels.
• By the age of 80, you have about four times less collagen

The most significant change occurs after menopause. Women typically lose about 30% of their skin's collagen within the first five years, and skin elasticity also decreases by 0.55% each year. Bone mineral density tends to follow a similar pattern in postmenopausal women.

Little-known factors that can accelerate collagen loss

Advancing age certainly plays a role in declining collagen levels, but it is not the only factor. The following dietary, lifestyle, and environmental factors can also affect your body's collagen production and accelerate its loss throughout your body:

• Lack of nutrients (amino acids, vitamins and minerals) needed for collagen synthesis
• Poor health and bowel irregularities can affect nutrient absorption and waste excretion
• Hormonal imbalance of the essential hormones DHEA, estrogen, testosterone, progesterone, and pregnenolone
• Sugar and excess carbohydrates can lead to systemic inflammation contributing to skin damage
• Fluoride in water can damage collagen and affect bone mineral-collagen bonding
• Stress and trauma produce excess cortisol, which increases collagen breakdown and reduces bone formation and bone density.
• Excess free radicals from smoking, air pollution, EMF, Wi-Fi and radiation degrade collagen fibrils and reduce cellular collagen synthesis
• Alcohol damages your liver, dehydrates your skin, and produces skin-damaging chemicals called congeners.
• Caffeine significantly reduces cellular collagen synthesis
• Inactivity reduces collagen turnover, while exercise indirectly builds skin thickness by increasing blood flow, oxygen, and nutrients to the skin.
• Insufficient sleep is linked to higher levels of stress hormones, which can accelerate collagen breakdown.
• Excessive sun exposure can lead to photodamaged skin, which can become resistant to collagen synthesis.

Many of these factors involve free radicals. When an excess of free radicals build up in your skin, say from smoking or excessive sun exposure, they attack your body's collagen.

A decline or deterioration in collagen can manifest in your skin as fine wrinkles, dryness, and sagging, and in the rest of your body in the form of limited mobility and weight-bearing ability, cartilage wasting, and tendon and bone problems.

Silica supplementation can help your body produce and replenish the collagen it needs for your hair, skin, nails, bones, tendons, ligaments, blood vessels, and much more.*

How to Choose the Right Silica Supplement

Naturally, silica is poorly utilized by the human body. It can be very unstable and quickly become inert, leading to low absorption in your body.

When choosing a dietary supplement containing silica, safety and bioavailability – or the body's ability to absorb and utilize the silica – are the most important considerations. Surprisingly, there is a huge difference between silica supplements in their absorption rates, ranging from less than 1% to an extraordinary 64+%.

Horsetail and bamboo are popular choices for silica supplements. The use of horsetail as a medicinal plant dates back to Roman and Greek civilizations and contains high amounts of silica. In fact, horsetail has the highest amount of any plant.

However, usability is a completely different matter for both of these plants. Horsetail and bamboo have low absorption rates, so they offer limited benefits.

MMST - Developed by a world-renowned scientist, this form of silica provides the highest bioavailability

Loic Le Ribault, a leading doctor of science and involved in research for over 50 years, was involved in discovering and perfecting what I consider to be the best form of silica for a nutritional supplement. He developed the original, unique Living Silica™ formula for optimal health and well-being.

The main ingredient in Living Silica™, monomethylsilanetriol (MMST), has long been used as a source of silica around the world, especially in Europe. With an absorption rate of 64% – or two to four times higher than major supplemental sources of silica – it provides easily absorbable silica that your body can use where it’s needed most.

Our Silica Collagen Builder formula, made from MMST, is a plant-based silicon supplement designed to support collagen production and improve nutrient absorption.*

Its patented processing increases the solubility limit of silica and keeps it in a small, monomeric and highly absorbable form.

This patented formulation of microencapsulated organic silica from MMST is made from acacia gum, a natural fiber from the African acacia plant.

Acacia gum offers many biological benefits because:

• It has a low glycemic index and is low in calories.
• It provides natural fiber with prebiotic activity in your gut.
• It is rapidly absorbed into the bloodstream and rapidly excreted in the urine.
• It activates your cellular metabolism.
• It is not subjected to any chemical modifications during processing.
• It is not genetically modified (GMO).

After intestinal absorption, MMST is metabolized into biologically active orthosilicic acid, a form of silicon dioxide that your body can easily utilize.

Magic of Living Silica™ for your skin, hair and nails

The MMST in Living Silica™ supports a balanced metabolism by providing the raw materials needed for your body to create more collagen.

So how does it help your skin, hair and nails?

Fibroblasts are a type of connective tissue cell found in your skin, tendons, and other hard tissues in your body. These cells secrete collagen proteins, which form the structural framework for your tissues.

The Living Silica™ in Silica Collagen Builder activates these collagen-producing fibroblasts, which supports collagen production. Additionally, it activates enzymes that are important in the formation of a collagen network, which helps improve skin firmness and elasticity.*

Because silica is one of the predominant minerals in the composition of your nails, brittle and soft nails may actually mean that you have a silica deficiency. Silica Collagen Builder benefits your nails by supplying orthosilicic acid, one of the compounds of silicon dioxide.

Silica can also improve the appearance of your hair. Many shampoos on the market today are silicone-based, but shampoo can only coat hair and add shine.

Imagine the effects on your hair with a high-quality dietary supplement containing silica that can work from the inside out.

Recent research has shown that silica delivers essential nutrients to your scalp and hair follicles. In one study of 48 women, after nine months of taking 10 mg of silica, participants reported the appearance of thicker, shinier hair.*

Beyond your skin, hair and nails… How Silica Collagen Builder can benefit your entire body

Supplemental silica with a 64% bioavailability, such as our Silica Collagen Builder, has been clinically proven to increase collagen production and help regenerate and restore collagen levels that naturally decline with age.*

Silica Collagen Builder helps your body produce collagen.

Instead of being excreted, the silica in our formula is fully utilized by your body and reaches cells, activating them to produce collagen.*

Optimal collagen levels support many aspects of your health, including:

• Strong, healthy connective tissues throughout the body.*
• Healthy, strong bones, ligaments and tendons.*
• Flexible articular cartilage or joint cushioning.*
• Digestive function.*
• Heart health, including healthy blood vessel walls.*
• Healthy blood pressure levels are already within the normal range.*
• Liver health.*