The Drugstore Item I Can't Live Without

I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with my hair, mainly because it was impossibly straight and thin. My older siblings had glossy, thick manes, but I inherited my mother’s stringy strands that had to be teased and shellacked with hairspray to hold even the slightest curl. Living in South Florida, where humidity levels often topped 90 percent, only made that struggle worse.

For years, I tortured my hair with curlers, perms, and crimping irons in search of volume. But after all that heat, chemical treatments, and dye, I ended up with even thinner hair and split ends. My options were limited: wear a baseball cap 24/7, pull my hair back into a bun, buy a wig, or shave my head. Okay, I wasn’t really going to shave my head, and wigs and hats make my head itch, so I stuck with the loose bun. Even then, I kept trying every conditioner, hair mask, and Moroccan oil product on the market. Nothing really worked, and once perimenopause robbed me of the last few decent locks I had left, I was resigned to hiding my stringy mop in hairclips.

One day, my husband came home from the drugstore with a bag of powdered collagen peptides to help reduce the unsightly scrapes and scabs he was getting on his arms from his landscaping job. His skin had thinned considerably over the years, leaving him with brown blotches and scars from outdoor work. I was a bit skeptical, thinking he’d wasted his money, but within a month of sprinkling the powder into his morning coffee, his skin had vastly improved. He still got arm scrapes from the job, but they seldom bled or scarred, healing much faster than they had before. His nails were also growing at a ridiculous rate, requiring a good trim twice a week.

I took a second look at the collagen package and read that it could possibly improve hair growth and thickness. It hadn’t done anything to improve my husband’s near-baldness, but I figured I had nothing to lose by trying it, except a few bucks.

The results? Impressive! I’ve been taking the collagen daily for eight months now, and for the first time in my life, I have thick, shiny, split-end-free locks that even my hairdresser admires. Being able to wear my hair down is so freeing and requires minimal styling.

Most of the time, I let it dry naturally, then give it a quick brush — and it still looks great.

So, what is collagen and how does it work?

“Collagen is a protein that strengthens, supports, and provides structure for everything from bones and muscles to blood vessels and organs,” according to the Cleveland Clinic. “It accounts for 30 percent of the protein in your body.”

We already know collagen supports skin elasticity and may help reduce signs of aging, but it also plays a role in maintaining healthy hair. Collagen delivers amino acids such as proline, glycine, and hydroxyproline, which are needed to create keratin — the same protein hair is primarily made of.