Crepey skin is not a dryness problem. It's a structure problem. The thin, papery texture that shows up on the arms, neck, and under the eyes happens when the collagen and elastin scaffolding in the dermis starts to fragment faster than your body rebuilds it.
That's why another moisturizer rarely fixes it. Topicals work at the surface. Elasticity lives a layer down, in tissue your body maintains from the inside. What you can influence is the rebuilding side of the equation, and that's where the research on ingestible skincare has gotten genuinely interesting.
Below are the five supplement approaches with real human evidence for skin elasticity, ranked. Our criteria: randomized controlled trials in humans, elasticity or hydration measured as an outcome, and doses you can actually buy. One of these is ours. We'll say so plainly when we get there.
Deep Structural Support (the skincare supplement)
Full disclosure: this one is ours. Judge the evidence, not the ranking.
Deep Structural Support is a skincare supplement: one daily scoop built around the ingredients that keep showing up in the elasticity research, at the doses the trials actually used. It pairs 7,800 mg of hydrolyzed collagen peptides with vitamin C, hyaluronic acid, and keratin peptides, so the collagen you take actually gets used.
In a 12-week clinical trial of hydrolyzed collagen plus vitamin C, participants saw a 22.7% increase in skin elasticity and a 19.6% reduction in wrinkle depth versus placebo. Reilly et al., Dermatology Research and Practice, 2024. Daily use.1
Why it ranks first here: it covers both sides of the crepey-skin equation, structure and hydration, in one formulation, instead of asking you to assemble three or four single-ingredient products and guess at doses. If it doesn't do anything for your skin in 12 weeks, send it back and we refund you. That's the whole arrangement.
22.7% increase in skin elasticity1
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Hydrolyzed collagen peptides (on their own)
The workhorse of the elasticity literature. Multiple randomized, placebo-controlled trials have measured improvements in skin elasticity and hydration after 8 to 12 weeks of daily hydrolyzed peptides.2 If you only take one thing, peptides are a defensible start.
Two honest caveats. The trials behind the strongest numbers generally paired peptides with vitamin C, which your body needs for collagen synthesis. And dose matters more than brand: most positive trials used 2,500 to 10,000 mg per day,3 which is more than many gummies deliver.
Oral hyaluronic acid
Better known as a serum ingredient, but the oral evidence is real: randomized trials have measured improved skin hydration and reduced dryness after daily ingestion.4 Since crepey texture reads worse on dehydrated skin, this addresses the second half of the problem. What it does not do is rebuild structure. Think of it as the hydration lever, not the scaffolding.
Ceramides
Ceramides are the lipids that hold your skin barrier together, and a meta-analysis of oral ceramide trials found significantly reduced water loss and improved hydration vs. placebo, typically over 8 to 12 weeks of use.6 Useful if your primary complaint is dryness and roughness. For elasticity specifically, the evidence is thinner than the first three.
Vitamin C
The quiet prerequisite. Your body cannot synthesize collagen without it,5 which is why so many of the successful peptide trials included it. On its own it will not resurface crepey skin, and most people are not deficient. It earns its spot because the research suggests the combination is what works, not the cofactor alone.
Why crepey skin is a structure problem
From your mid-twenties on, your skin makes less collagen than it used to, and the collagen you keep grows progressively more fragmented. UV exposure and glycation speed this up. Fragmented collagen doesn't spring back. That's the difference between skin that folds and recovers and skin that creases and stays.
In a 12-week trial of hydrolyzed collagen with vitamin C, a formula close to ours, participants saw a 44.6% decrease in collagen fragmentation, the breakdown of the skin's own collagen network, versus placebo. Reilly et al., Dermatology Research and Practice, 2024.1
I'm a strong believer that what you put inside your body matters just as much as what you put on your skin.
