A large part of your body is made up of connective tissue. Cartilage is a kind of connective tissue and one of its components is collagen. It is thought by consuming collagen, one can provide nutrients for chondrocytes to synthesize cartilage. Recent research tracing the uptake of orally consumed hydrolyzed collagen found that a large portion of it ends up in cartilage compared to connective tissue in the rest of the body.
The distribution of the labeled gelatin in the various tissues was similar to that of labeled proline with the exception of cartilage, where a pronounced and long-lasting accumulation of gelatin hydrolysate was observed. In cartilage, measured radioactivity was more than twice as high following gelatin administration compared to the control group.1
One review article summarized:
Four open-label and three double-blind studies were identified and reviewed; although many of these studies did not provide key information – such as the statistical significance of the findings – they showed collagen hydrolysate to be safe and to provide improvement in some measures of pain and function in some men and women with OA or other arthritic conditions2
1https://jn.nutrition.org/content/129/10/1891.short
2https://informahealthcare.com/doi/abs/10.1185/030079906X148373
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