From Barbara O'Neill: for collagen production, put on some drops of rose hip oil, followed by some drops of castor oil. The combination stimulates collagen production. Both products are inexensive - you can buy a large rose hip oil on Amazon for something like 20 US. (Beware the tiny bottles you may find at health food stores - about 1/10th the quantity at just about the same price.) Castor oil is even way less expensive. Does this work? It does on my arms, within 2 or 3 days. I was amazed. I would guess that doing the same on any area with insufficient collagen in the skin would have equal benefit. Anyone fearing they might get a hernia could also do this.
Thank you for the info. I have definitely gotten lots of "slight plumping from hydration." Like something missing has been put under the skin. I will see what happens in months.
I had the great privilege to be treated at Shouldice Hospital in Toronto for an inguinal hernia that caused ever-worsening, debilitating, crippling pain. I spent two nights in the world-class facility (one night prior to early-morning surgery for in-processing, and one night following surgery for observation), and walked out pain-free for the first time in months. No mesh. Extraordinary care from the Shouldice team. Of interest to me from Unbekoming’s stack, is that I had been on high-dose statins (80 mg/daily) since 1987, and had undergone triple bypass surgery (at a separate, unrelated hospital) six months prior to my hernia repair. I asked about any correlation between these dramatic, life-altering events, and no one could explain it to me, other than genes and bad luck. It appears my keys were not under the street lamp after all!
100%. The only out-of-pocket expense was for the semi-private room charge for two nights, which was picked up by our family supplemental insurance. It cost me exactly zero! And the facility is unbelievable. Like being in an English manor, complete with expansive gardens. Hard to believe it’s in the very heart of Toronto. Great experience.
I remember my dad telling me that was the best place to get the hernia surgery and I remember it's been over a decade. I've been always telling him like don't go there.
I'm glad you had a positive experience. I strongly believe that our bodies are meant to live healthily for more than 100 years without surgery. I have a hernia too. I will fix it with neprinol, acupuncture and osteo, chiro, cranial sacral
I hope that works for you. I met several guys at Shouldice who had waited as long as seven years to get the surgery, and they were relatively pain free the entire time. Not me. At age 66, following major heart surgery, I was in excruciating pain. It was agony, and I wouldn’t have lasted seven more days, much less seven years. In which case, I would have been rushed to local ER for a mesh implant, with all of its attendant problems. I have no regrets about my Shouldice hernia repair, and only wish I could have gotten in sooner. Good luck to you.
Did you get the covid shots? That's the thing. Some people take care of themselves like their life depends on it and others eat a donut and coffee every morning and a sandwich for lunch and watch tv at night. I'm not saying that's you but I am saying that all I do is research cures since I was 21. So many times I've been in excruciating agony and never once thought to go to a hospital or quack. Ive been able to figure it out. Heck, I've got blood clots coming out of my nose today and I feel like crap but I keep my health in my own hands. I am really glad you don't have mesh.
I strongly believe that the medical system is responsible for all the deaths in my family. Every single one of them. I research cures before anything happens to me or my family so that I'm no victim to the system.
Difficult not to feel that way. The monsters of medicine are after all only guessing and they have about the same success as the weatherman forecasting the weather.
Just this morning my husband spontaneously announced that his umbilical hernia has reduced and is no longer sensitive. This is after about one month of daily applications of DMSO and castor oil. We quit about 1.5 months ago after not seeing any progress. I learned about this remedy from a comment on A Midwestern Doctor.
My husband also has some other conditions that are likely due to dysfunctional connective tissue. Today we are starting on some supplements that I hope will rebuild the tissues.
He has some of the risk factors cited in this post, including about 6 months of statins, a past history of smoking, and service in the US Army fifty years ago (who knows what he was injected with and exposed to!).
I am very grateful for the suggestions we have read here and elsewhere, both in the articles and in the comments.
Wow just wow! Your articles are so informative and much appreciated. My 71yo husband has a hernia (no pain yet) in his stomach and an aortic aneurysm they are monitoring. He was on Lipitor for a couple of years in his late 50’s but has quit them over 14 yrs ago after tons of (me) researching. I will now add this to the list of why he will never take a statin again. Because of course his doctor pushes them at every yearly physical. He already has several of the issues caused by statins- and possible they are from the few years he was on Lipitor. currently controlled- neuropathy, pre-diabetes, depression and now I can add weakened collagen. If he was still taking them I’m quite certain he would have full fledged type 2 diabetes, and be miserable from his neuropathy flares and who knows if that aneurism would be worse! I’m currently seething.
I just had a robot assisted laparoscopic ventral hernia repair with mesh yesterday. I was looking for alternative information on the internet and really didn't find anything.
During the pre-op examination I asked the surgeon if this had anything to do with collagen and he basically made a joke out of it saying that your body is collagen from your ass on up.
He seems like a good person but he obviously has a myopic view about the subject.
Anyway I recently started taking collagen powders and I appreciate the information you shared.
I will do my damndest to strengthen it naturally so I have no repeats.
Thanks for the info, those flouride drugs need to be eliminated! My husband has a hernia at this time and I suspect that those drugs started a cascade of health issues
Fascinating, like all your work. My mom was at Shouldice Hospital, which is reknowned and recognized as the best on earth for non-mesh hernia ops. She was there twice, last time at the beginning of 2020. But none of this checks out for her. My brother was also there and he's also had mesh surgery. I've never had a hernia, but I've been a biohacker since 2004 and I lift.
My mom has been on C/lysine/proline. Not so much glycine. Definitely zinc, but not as much copper. No fluoroquinolones or statins or anything else that can cause problems. A friend has had permanent problems from the former. My mom quit smoking more than 20 years ago. As for my brother, he's irresponsible with his diet and supplements.
Is there something I'm missing?
"The nutritional requirements for collagen synthesis are textbook material. Vitamin C is essential for prolyl hydroxylase and lysyl hydroxylase — without it, collagen’s thermal stability drops from 37°C to 24°C, making it structurally useless at body temperature.³⁵ Copper is required for lysyl oxidase, the enzyme that cross-links collagen fibres to give them tensile strength. Zinc supports collagen remodelling. Proline, lysine, and glycine form the structural backbone."
Thank you — your mother's case is worth looking at carefully because she's done much of what the essay points toward and still had recurrences.
The essay's core claim isn't that supplementation prevents hernias. It's that the question of *why the tissue fails* has never been seriously investigated. Her experience sharpens rather than weakens that claim. She's supplementing, she's not on the damaging pharmaceuticals, she quit smoking twenty years ago — and the tissue still failed. So what else is operating?
A few possibilities worth considering with her case:
The smoking years left a legacy. Collagen damage from smoking accumulates — Knuutinen's data shows suppressed type I and type III production, Morita's work shows elevated MMPs (the enzymes that degrade collagen). Twenty years smoke-free is good, but connective tissue doesn't necessarily recover from decades of earlier exposure. The cumulative damage may have set a baseline that supplementation improves without fully reversing.
Ozdemir's copper and zinc study found that *tissue* levels in hernia patients were significantly depleted even when *plasma* levels were normal. Supplementing orally and seeing normal blood levels doesn't mean the tissue is receiving what it needs. Absorption, transport, and tissue uptake are separate problems. No one has studied what tissue-level repletion actually requires in hernia patients.
The Klinge and Rosch data show the collagen alteration operating at the level of fibroblast function — not just nutrient supply. Some people's fibroblasts produce weaker collagen as a baseline characteristic of their terrain. Nutrition and toxic avoidance improve the conditions without necessarily overcoming a deep-seated connective tissue vulnerability. The terrain includes factors that haven't been investigated because the research was never funded.
The most concrete gap in her protocol: glycine. Every third residue in the collagen triple helix is glycine — it's the most abundant amino acid in the molecule. C/lysine/proline without adequate glycine leaves a significant hole in collagen substrate supply. The Baar study (UC Davis, *American Journal of Clinical Nutrition*, 2017) found that 15g of vitamin C-enriched gelatin before exercise doubled a direct marker of collagen synthesis. Bone broth and gelatin supplementation are the most practical way to address this, and it's the one adjustment that the biochemistry most clearly supports for her situation.
Your brother's case is the more straightforward version — compromised inputs, compromised tissue.
Brilliant!! Thank you for explaining. My mom had a minor surgery. Then when recovering got a hernia. Which was blamed on her being active. She was swimming and *that* caused the stitches to go. Then, when she had hernia repair, she had issues right away. They installed mesh. Late 90s. Right away, her abdomen filled with fluid. We thought the staff had neglected her. Her would opened and her abdomen weeped fluid for at least 4 months. Now I wonder, if she had an allergy to that mesh?? And if the hernia was caused by the antibiotics in thr first surgery?? My 70 year neighbor. She started statins last year. Proud of it too. Has problems walking now. Needs a van and walker chair. Then she had gb failure and surgery. Now, she has a hernia. Hmmm... and there is an 8 month wait for surgery. So she is supposed to limit her activity... for months... which is going to put her in a nursing home. But she's faithfully taken statins!
I have had an inguinal hernia for about 15 years now. 10 years ago, I was scheduled for hernia surgery. Then, 2 things happened. I got lucky in the ER, and a GOOD doctor FINALLY showed me how to self-care, and resolve the hernia myself. This was after literally 15 trips to the ER, with a fully "popped-out" hernia, basically, a softball-sized protrusion! The 2nd thing was the hospital's external lawyer sending me a "cease-and-desist" email, because I was trying to get my medical record corrected. Some quack psychiatrist, who himself later committed suicide, had made a bogus & fraudulent note in my medical record that I had "attempted suicide". So I cancelled the surgery. I lost some weight, upped my daily yoga & exercise, and have had almost NO problem with my hernia since. It's still there. When it even starts to pop out, I simply ease it back in. It's a giant nothing-burger. And, when the surgery was pending, I got swamped with "mesh patch lawsuit" ads from various lawyers looking for some quick cash. The system is NOT "broken", it works exactly as it was designed to do....
Typical medical mafia BS. Either omit information or downright lie to the patient. Today you have to do some reasonable pre-searching before every medical invasion whether it be a drug, test, procedure or operation. The system cannot be trusted.
My wife had a small hernia repair using mesh a few months back. Now I have something more to worry about as far as her future health is concerned. The HHS with its horrid FDA and CDC is a totally failed government entity that should be sent to the guillotine.
The link to the MMP (matrix metalloproteinases, immediately had me thinking about all the fat soluble vitamins. Especially K2, which until just recently, we produced endogenously from our gut microbiome. I often wonder now if we (humanity as a whole) are trapped in an experimental breeding program and we find ourselves in the intervention arm of a toxicology trial.
From Barbara O'Neill: for collagen production, put on some drops of rose hip oil, followed by some drops of castor oil. The combination stimulates collagen production. Both products are inexensive - you can buy a large rose hip oil on Amazon for something like 20 US. (Beware the tiny bottles you may find at health food stores - about 1/10th the quantity at just about the same price.) Castor oil is even way less expensive. Does this work? It does on my arms, within 2 or 3 days. I was amazed. I would guess that doing the same on any area with insufficient collagen in the skin would have equal benefit. Anyone fearing they might get a hernia could also do this.
Layering rosehip + castor oil can:
Deeply hydrate
Reduce dryness and fine lines
Improve skin texture quickly
So, within 2 to 3 days, someone might see:
Smoother skin
Slight plumping from hydration
Better glow
That can feel like “new collagen,” but it’s mostly hydration and barrier repair, not actual collagen rebuilding (which takes weeks to months).
Do you need the rosehips? I thought castor oil may do this on it's own.
Thank you for the info. I have definitely gotten lots of "slight plumping from hydration." Like something missing has been put under the skin. I will see what happens in months.
I had the great privilege to be treated at Shouldice Hospital in Toronto for an inguinal hernia that caused ever-worsening, debilitating, crippling pain. I spent two nights in the world-class facility (one night prior to early-morning surgery for in-processing, and one night following surgery for observation), and walked out pain-free for the first time in months. No mesh. Extraordinary care from the Shouldice team. Of interest to me from Unbekoming’s stack, is that I had been on high-dose statins (80 mg/daily) since 1987, and had undergone triple bypass surgery (at a separate, unrelated hospital) six months prior to my hernia repair. I asked about any correlation between these dramatic, life-altering events, and no one could explain it to me, other than genes and bad luck. It appears my keys were not under the street lamp after all!
Genes and bad luck?...good fricking grief. Well, they gave it their best shot.
Thanks for sharing this Rob. Curious - was this surgery covered under OHIP?
100%. The only out-of-pocket expense was for the semi-private room charge for two nights, which was picked up by our family supplemental insurance. It cost me exactly zero! And the facility is unbelievable. Like being in an English manor, complete with expansive gardens. Hard to believe it’s in the very heart of Toronto. Great experience.
I remember my dad telling me that was the best place to get the hernia surgery and I remember it's been over a decade. I've been always telling him like don't go there.
My experience was incredibly positive. I highly recommend Shouldice Hospital.
I'm glad you had a positive experience. I strongly believe that our bodies are meant to live healthily for more than 100 years without surgery. I have a hernia too. I will fix it with neprinol, acupuncture and osteo, chiro, cranial sacral
I hope that works for you. I met several guys at Shouldice who had waited as long as seven years to get the surgery, and they were relatively pain free the entire time. Not me. At age 66, following major heart surgery, I was in excruciating pain. It was agony, and I wouldn’t have lasted seven more days, much less seven years. In which case, I would have been rushed to local ER for a mesh implant, with all of its attendant problems. I have no regrets about my Shouldice hernia repair, and only wish I could have gotten in sooner. Good luck to you.
Did you get the covid shots? That's the thing. Some people take care of themselves like their life depends on it and others eat a donut and coffee every morning and a sandwich for lunch and watch tv at night. I'm not saying that's you but I am saying that all I do is research cures since I was 21. So many times I've been in excruciating agony and never once thought to go to a hospital or quack. Ive been able to figure it out. Heck, I've got blood clots coming out of my nose today and I feel like crap but I keep my health in my own hands. I am really glad you don't have mesh.
Yes, required by my employer to get the original Covid shot and one booster. Now that I’m retired, never again…
I strongly believe that the medical system is responsible for all the deaths in my family. Every single one of them. I research cures before anything happens to me or my family so that I'm no victim to the system.
Difficult not to feel that way. The monsters of medicine are after all only guessing and they have about the same success as the weatherman forecasting the weather.
You might get away with one hernia repair (inguinal) but if the mesh falls and you need another surgery that could be a problem.
Happened to me, the mesh had also wrapped around the appendix so that had to go too.
This time they sewed everything up along with the warnings of possible Vagus nerve interference, there’s your problem it turned out.
The nerve is now highly prone to inflammation and the list of issues that causes are never ending, it’s a major nerve so no surprise.
I'm there now Geoff.
Sorry to hear that Ron, best wishes
Just this morning my husband spontaneously announced that his umbilical hernia has reduced and is no longer sensitive. This is after about one month of daily applications of DMSO and castor oil. We quit about 1.5 months ago after not seeing any progress. I learned about this remedy from a comment on A Midwestern Doctor.
My husband also has some other conditions that are likely due to dysfunctional connective tissue. Today we are starting on some supplements that I hope will rebuild the tissues.
He has some of the risk factors cited in this post, including about 6 months of statins, a past history of smoking, and service in the US Army fifty years ago (who knows what he was injected with and exposed to!).
I am very grateful for the suggestions we have read here and elsewhere, both in the articles and in the comments.
Wow just wow! Your articles are so informative and much appreciated. My 71yo husband has a hernia (no pain yet) in his stomach and an aortic aneurysm they are monitoring. He was on Lipitor for a couple of years in his late 50’s but has quit them over 14 yrs ago after tons of (me) researching. I will now add this to the list of why he will never take a statin again. Because of course his doctor pushes them at every yearly physical. He already has several of the issues caused by statins- and possible they are from the few years he was on Lipitor. currently controlled- neuropathy, pre-diabetes, depression and now I can add weakened collagen. If he was still taking them I’m quite certain he would have full fledged type 2 diabetes, and be miserable from his neuropathy flares and who knows if that aneurism would be worse! I’m currently seething.
I just had a robot assisted laparoscopic ventral hernia repair with mesh yesterday. I was looking for alternative information on the internet and really didn't find anything.
During the pre-op examination I asked the surgeon if this had anything to do with collagen and he basically made a joke out of it saying that your body is collagen from your ass on up.
He seems like a good person but he obviously has a myopic view about the subject.
Anyway I recently started taking collagen powders and I appreciate the information you shared.
I will do my damndest to strengthen it naturally so I have no repeats.
Thanks for the info, those flouride drugs need to be eliminated! My husband has a hernia at this time and I suspect that those drugs started a cascade of health issues
Fascinating, like all your work. My mom was at Shouldice Hospital, which is reknowned and recognized as the best on earth for non-mesh hernia ops. She was there twice, last time at the beginning of 2020. But none of this checks out for her. My brother was also there and he's also had mesh surgery. I've never had a hernia, but I've been a biohacker since 2004 and I lift.
My mom has been on C/lysine/proline. Not so much glycine. Definitely zinc, but not as much copper. No fluoroquinolones or statins or anything else that can cause problems. A friend has had permanent problems from the former. My mom quit smoking more than 20 years ago. As for my brother, he's irresponsible with his diet and supplements.
Is there something I'm missing?
"The nutritional requirements for collagen synthesis are textbook material. Vitamin C is essential for prolyl hydroxylase and lysyl hydroxylase — without it, collagen’s thermal stability drops from 37°C to 24°C, making it structurally useless at body temperature.³⁵ Copper is required for lysyl oxidase, the enzyme that cross-links collagen fibres to give them tensile strength. Zinc supports collagen remodelling. Proline, lysine, and glycine form the structural backbone."
Thank you — your mother's case is worth looking at carefully because she's done much of what the essay points toward and still had recurrences.
The essay's core claim isn't that supplementation prevents hernias. It's that the question of *why the tissue fails* has never been seriously investigated. Her experience sharpens rather than weakens that claim. She's supplementing, she's not on the damaging pharmaceuticals, she quit smoking twenty years ago — and the tissue still failed. So what else is operating?
A few possibilities worth considering with her case:
The smoking years left a legacy. Collagen damage from smoking accumulates — Knuutinen's data shows suppressed type I and type III production, Morita's work shows elevated MMPs (the enzymes that degrade collagen). Twenty years smoke-free is good, but connective tissue doesn't necessarily recover from decades of earlier exposure. The cumulative damage may have set a baseline that supplementation improves without fully reversing.
Ozdemir's copper and zinc study found that *tissue* levels in hernia patients were significantly depleted even when *plasma* levels were normal. Supplementing orally and seeing normal blood levels doesn't mean the tissue is receiving what it needs. Absorption, transport, and tissue uptake are separate problems. No one has studied what tissue-level repletion actually requires in hernia patients.
The Klinge and Rosch data show the collagen alteration operating at the level of fibroblast function — not just nutrient supply. Some people's fibroblasts produce weaker collagen as a baseline characteristic of their terrain. Nutrition and toxic avoidance improve the conditions without necessarily overcoming a deep-seated connective tissue vulnerability. The terrain includes factors that haven't been investigated because the research was never funded.
The most concrete gap in her protocol: glycine. Every third residue in the collagen triple helix is glycine — it's the most abundant amino acid in the molecule. C/lysine/proline without adequate glycine leaves a significant hole in collagen substrate supply. The Baar study (UC Davis, *American Journal of Clinical Nutrition*, 2017) found that 15g of vitamin C-enriched gelatin before exercise doubled a direct marker of collagen synthesis. Bone broth and gelatin supplementation are the most practical way to address this, and it's the one adjustment that the biochemistry most clearly supports for her situation.
Your brother's case is the more straightforward version — compromised inputs, compromised tissue.
Loving the explanations for a 6-year-old. Thank you!
Brilliant!! Thank you for explaining. My mom had a minor surgery. Then when recovering got a hernia. Which was blamed on her being active. She was swimming and *that* caused the stitches to go. Then, when she had hernia repair, she had issues right away. They installed mesh. Late 90s. Right away, her abdomen filled with fluid. We thought the staff had neglected her. Her would opened and her abdomen weeped fluid for at least 4 months. Now I wonder, if she had an allergy to that mesh?? And if the hernia was caused by the antibiotics in thr first surgery?? My 70 year neighbor. She started statins last year. Proud of it too. Has problems walking now. Needs a van and walker chair. Then she had gb failure and surgery. Now, she has a hernia. Hmmm... and there is an 8 month wait for surgery. So she is supposed to limit her activity... for months... which is going to put her in a nursing home. But she's faithfully taken statins!
I have had an inguinal hernia for about 15 years now. 10 years ago, I was scheduled for hernia surgery. Then, 2 things happened. I got lucky in the ER, and a GOOD doctor FINALLY showed me how to self-care, and resolve the hernia myself. This was after literally 15 trips to the ER, with a fully "popped-out" hernia, basically, a softball-sized protrusion! The 2nd thing was the hospital's external lawyer sending me a "cease-and-desist" email, because I was trying to get my medical record corrected. Some quack psychiatrist, who himself later committed suicide, had made a bogus & fraudulent note in my medical record that I had "attempted suicide". So I cancelled the surgery. I lost some weight, upped my daily yoga & exercise, and have had almost NO problem with my hernia since. It's still there. When it even starts to pop out, I simply ease it back in. It's a giant nothing-burger. And, when the surgery was pending, I got swamped with "mesh patch lawsuit" ads from various lawyers looking for some quick cash. The system is NOT "broken", it works exactly as it was designed to do....
Not a victim, myself...but adjacent experience suffered by an in-law causes me to seethe to this day...
In addition…. Smokers 🧐// dialysis patients🧐//poor nutrition 🧐…. Great article thanks .
Typical medical mafia BS. Either omit information or downright lie to the patient. Today you have to do some reasonable pre-searching before every medical invasion whether it be a drug, test, procedure or operation. The system cannot be trusted.
My wife had a small hernia repair using mesh a few months back. Now I have something more to worry about as far as her future health is concerned. The HHS with its horrid FDA and CDC is a totally failed government entity that should be sent to the guillotine.
The path before me now branches into three.
Anger and rage
Sadness and despair,
To the left and to the right
I do not care.
So middle ahead
Wisdom
or dead.
The link to the MMP (matrix metalloproteinases, immediately had me thinking about all the fat soluble vitamins. Especially K2, which until just recently, we produced endogenously from our gut microbiome. I often wonder now if we (humanity as a whole) are trapped in an experimental breeding program and we find ourselves in the intervention arm of a toxicology trial.
And then there is the whole Hormone D cascade based on outdoor daylight exposure. And here we find ourselves living 90% of our days indoors.