The Story Behind Rejuvenated Collagen Shots: Empowering Women’s Wellbeing from Within

Collagen is everywhere, but it’s taken decades of work from our founders to change the collective understanding of ingestible beauty.

 ‘I don’t deserve to be here.’

Kathryn Danzey was sick of hearing those words. Early on in her career, the Rejuvenated founder and expert in nutritional skincare would be told that sort of thing by women every time she worked as a beauty and holistic practitioner in aesthetic clinics. ‘I would say, “Of course you should be here,”’ she says. ‘But they’d come back with, “I'm not pretty enough, I'm not thin enough.” And I thought, there's got to be a way to help all these women.’

 Since then, she’s devoted herself to empowering people, from the women who didn’t think beauty treatments were for them, right up to today and the thousands of customers who use Rejuvenated collagen products to improve their health and appearance from the inside out.

The stark fact is, the body’s natural collagen begins to diminish at the age of 25. By the time you’re 60, you've lost 80%. So to keep enjoying all the benefits of this vital substance, every body would benefit from some of Kathryn’s help. ‘I wanted to make a product that could make a real difference to how people looked and felt about themselves,’ she says.

That product would be collagen based. But the unique way of ingesting it came later. Ironically, it was the ‘ladettes’ of the ‘90s that first inspired her to produce a drink in shot form. She had noticed something interesting about these young women. They were framed as being not particularly health conscious – correctly or not – but they did still care about the way they looked. The problem was that their lifestyle probably didn’t do much to create any kind of outer glow.

Zoe Ball, Sarah Cox and their pals gave Kathryn a brainwave. They were pushing a message of female empowerment that could be shifted towards something healthier. She’d already spent many hours over many years formulating what she hoped would be a game-changing collagen drink. ‘I thought, if these young women go out and drink vodka shots, they might also come home and drink collagen shots,’ she says. ‘Then perhaps they’d feel the benefits, start getting interested in other areas of nutrition – and work on other elements of their health.’ Collagen Shots was a way that she could introduce nutrition into the general public – with the associated benefits of general health and wellbeing and avoidance of illness.

It was a long-game plan. But after years of perfecting the formula and eventually launching Rejuvenated Collagen Shots in 2010, Kathryn proved her innovation could last the pace. The product has since won 33 awards and is used by tens of thousands of people around the world – from Hollywood stars to everyday people who appreciate all its benefits – and as a pioneer in the world of nutritional skincare, Kathryn has changed how we think about our health.

Collagen breakthrough

The hard-partying ladettes weren’t the first people to overlook the connection between what we put into our bodies and how it looks on the outside. In fact, when Kathryn first started working in the beauty industry in the 1970s, no one was on board with the idea that diet could change appearance – and mood. 

‘Everybody said it would make no difference. You could eat all the sugar you wanted and it wouldn’t affect your skin at all,’ she says. But Kathryn had first-hand knowledge of the fact that this wasn’t true. ‘Personally, I didn't have great skin, and I found that some foods didn't suit me. I used to research them all the time, and it became clear that what I ate would make a difference,’ she says. ‘I know that is so obvious now, but 40 years ago, it just wasn’t common knowledge.’

At the start of her career, she trained and worked with the president of the French Dermatological Society, developing aesthetic treatments and training doctors and other practitioners. It was then that she began to make the connection between aesthetic and nutrition. Kathryn’s discovery of collagen’s benefits came almost by chance. At that time collagen capsules had just come onto the market, but solely for joint health, and her mother had been prescribed them for her debilitating arthritis. ‘‘When I started taking them, I did notice a difference in my joints,’ says Kathryn, ‘but also in my skin – it was tighter, brighter and more youthful looking. I realised that if I saw these benefits, other women would want them too. When other practitioners stared to notice the difference in my skin, they wanted them in their clinics too.’

At that time her own research was in its early days, but she could see that collagen was on a course to stardom in the skincare world. There was one sizeable problem to overcome, though. All the existing studies said the optimum dosage of collagen was around 10,000mg a day, far more than the 300mg tablets she had. ‘I’d need to be taking 20 to 30 tablets daily, which was obviously impossible. But I imagined how good my skin could be with the correct dose, and I began thinking about how to make that happen, and that’s when the collagen drink idea came to my mind,’ she explains. The girl-power hellraisers provided a spark of inspiration, the wheels were set in motion, and Rejuvenated was born. 

How does collagen work?

Collagen is the most abundant protein in our skin, making up 75% of its structure and playing a vital role in repair and elasticity. From the age of 25, collagen levels naturally decline, leading to looser skin, fine lines and other signs of ageing.

There are plenty of topical collagen products out there, but they struggle to penetrate the skin to the layer where they’d be most useful. However, hydrolysed collagen, when it is broken down into amino acid proteins, can be absorbed through digestion and directed to the skin barrier to restore collagen levels.

Indeed, a meta-analysis of research on hydrolysed collagen supplements published in The International Journal of Dermatology found they improve skin hydration, elasticity and wrinkles within 90 days.

But collagen isn’t just skin deep. ‘It's in our digestive system, muscles, joints, ligaments and all ofl our organs, even our brain and heart,’ says Kathryn. ‘Rejuvenated has many customers who came for the skin benefits but say their digestive system or joints feel so much better.’

It doesn’t just stop there. ‘It supports fascia,’ says Kathryn. ‘That’s the cling-film-like substance that wraps around every part of our body below our skin, and connects it to the rest of our flesh. It’s made almost entirely of collagen. Without fascia, we’d be a sack of bones on the floor, and as you age or if you injure yourself, the fascia becomes brittle. Collagen supplements help with the healthy repair and function of fascia, meaning you have less aches and pains and move more easily’.

The collagen formula

Given her expertise in nutrition, Kathryn was exacting about the production of her first collagen shots, insisting on precise ingredients. Fitting with the early research, every Rejuvenated shot contains 10,000mg of collagen, and is made with hydrolysed collagen protein powder.

‘The shots have been formulated to have a specific low molecular weight,’ she explains, ‘which means they can be absorbed and delivered to where they are needed in the body’. The addition of vitamin C also helps with absorption, and hyaluronic acid hydrates and ‘lubricates’ the skin, connective tissues and joints. ‘It has the ability to hold up to 1,000 times its weight in water, making it an excellent moisturiser for dry and dehydrated skin in particular,’ says Kathryn.

A paper from 2023 found that hyaluronic acid supplements boosted skin hydration in as little as two weeks and could improve skin tone in just a month. An increase in epidermal thickness – a measure of skin health – was noted after just 12 weeks of supplementing.

For extra wellbeing bonus points, Rejuvenated Collagen Shots also include açai berry, a superfood containing more than 19 amino acids, including essential fatty acids for skin health and vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, C and E. It’s also packed with antioxidants that help cellular health by neutralising free radicals.

No constituent of the shots were overlooked. Instead of sugar they’re sweetened with stevia, a natural, no-calorie sweetener that avoids blood sugar spikes and crashes. ‘Sugar suppresses the activity of white blood cells, making us more susceptible to disease and infections,’ says Kathryn. ‘It also causes a process known as glycation, where the sugar molecules attach themselves to collagen fibres, causing them to become brittle and less elastic. The result is hardening and thickening of the skin leading to lines and wrinkles.’

Rejuvenated sources collagen from fish – due to their biocompatibility, fish collagen is easily absorbed. To support the environment, as well as your health, Rejuvenated also uses a diverse range of farmed fish from a renewable resource and wild fish from non-endangered species.

Rejuvenated

After all these years, Rejuvenated remains a family-run company, and one Kathryn is still heavily involved in. And as well as being involved in the day-to-day running of the company, we all live our values and see the benefit of our products in our active everyday lives.

Our work is paying off. The tide on collective attitudes towards skincare has turned and we’ve moved a long way from the wellness-averse ladette culture. Today, collagen supplements have a global market size valued at around £8bn. Kathryn played a huge part in the conversation turning towards inner health looking after outer glow.

‘It’s great to see that understanding of our nutrition, and especially collagen, has become so mainstream,’ says Kathryn. ‘There are so many moments I’m proud of, though one of the most memorable has to be when my friend, a massage therapist, was working on an Oscar-winning actress who showed her packet of Collagen Shots to her because of how much she loved them. Or when we won our first Beauty Shortlist award in 2013 – true recognition from the team known for celebrating the best in natural beauty and wellness.’

As the judges of that prize said, Rejuvenated has always been ahead of the collagen curve.