Beauty.

Standardised actives for skin, hair, and antioxidant defence.

Beauty supplementation has a small set of well-studied actives: hydrolysed collagen peptides, reduced glutathione, and antioxidant-rich plant extracts. EX1's Beauty catalog ships each at the dose that human trials, not animal models, evaluated.

Why this category matters

Hydrolysed collagen peptides are short-chain collagen fragments enzymatically processed for oral absorption, supporting endogenous collagen synthesis at the skin and joint level.

Whole-protein collagen is too large to absorb intact. Hydrolysis breaks it into di- and tri-peptides that the gut absorbs and the body uses as a building-block signal for collagen synthesis. The dose that produces measurable skin endpoints in trials is 10 g/day of hydrolysed peptides.

A randomised double-blind trial of oral hydrolysed collagen peptides at 10 g/day reported support for skin elasticity and dermal hydration markers in adult women over 8 weeks.

Source: Nutrients.

How to choose a beauty supplement

Read the hydrolysed peptide grams, not total powder weight
A scoop of collagen powder is mostly peptides. Confirm the per-serving peptide milligrams and the average molecular weight (lower is better for absorption).
Type I and III for skin; Type II for joints
Skin and hair use Type I and III collagen. Cartilage uses Type II. Marine collagen is naturally Type I and III; bovine and porcine vary by source.
Vegan: choose a plant-source collagen builder, not a marine product
Vegan formulations supply amino acids, Vitamin C, biotin, and silica that the body uses to synthesise its own collagen. They do not contain collagen.
Glutathione: reduced (GSH) form, with Vitamin C as cofactor
The reduced form is the active form. Vitamin C recycles oxidised glutathione back to the active state, which is why most glutathione trials stack the two.