The Many Health Benefits of Coenzyme Q10 and Ubiquinol

Coenzyme Q10 and ubiquinol are two vitally important supplements that many are still unaware of. Risa Schulman, Ph.D., is a biologist and functional food expert who has spent the last two decades researching these and other supplements.

Story at-a-glance

• Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) is used for energy production by every cell in your body. It also helps protect against cellular damage from free radicals

• CoQ10 is especially important if you take a statin drug as statins deplete your body of CoQ10, thereby speeding up progression of heart disease

• Ubiquinol is the reduced form of CoQ10. This is the form your body naturally uses, and research shows ubiquinol is superior for your health in a number of ways, primarily due to its superior bioavailability

26 June 2016

By Dr. Mercola

Coenzyme Q10 and ubiquinol are two vitally important supplements that many are still unaware of. Risa Schulman, Ph.D., is a biologist and functional food expert who has spent the last two decades researching these and other supplements.

"I kind of pulled together my love of human physiology, plant physiology and the environment into a lifelong career, looking at how compounds in plants and various natural products can help us to keep our bodies working optimally," she says.

"My mission is to dig into the science and separate the wheat from the chaff ... and then to get the word out to the public as to what the health benefits are, how they can be used, and what things are useful."

Coenzyme Q10 Versus Ubiquinol

Ubiquinol is the reduced version of coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10, aka ubiquinone). They're actually the same molecule, but when CoQ10 is reduced it takes on two electrons, which turns it into what we call ubiquinol.

In your body, this conversion occurs thousands of times every second inside your mitochondria — the "engine" of each cell in which energy is produced

"The reason it does this flipping back and forth between these two forms of the molecule is that this is part of the process that helps us to change our food into energy," Schulman explains.

"This is very important to healthy functioning, and obviously important for all muscles, in particular your heart muscle, which works hardest of all the muscles."

In addition to converting food into energy, ubiquinol also has a number of additional functions. For starters, ubiquinol is a lipid-soluble (fat-soluble) antioxidant, meaning it works in the lipid portions of your body, such as your cell membranes. It's one of the very few antioxidants that are fat-soluble.

"Vitamin E is one of the other ones that is very well known. But ubiquinol is actually more powerful than vitamin E, because vitamin E cannot completely lodge itself inside the membrane where all the oxidative activity is happening whereas ubiquinol can."

The second thing that sets ubiquinol apart from other antioxidants is that it can regenerate itself. Vitamin E, for example, cannot. In fact, vitamin E is regenerated by ubiquinol. Ubiquinol is also the only fat-soluble antioxidant that's actually generated within your body and doesn't have to be ingested from your food.

Why Ubiquinol Is a Better Choice for Many

Ubiquinol production ramps up from early childhood up until your mid- to late 20s. By the time you hit the age of 30, it begins to decline. Young people are able to use CoQ10 supplements quite well, but older people do better with ubiquinol as it's more readily absorbed.

According to Schulman, some people cannot convert CoQ10 to ubiquinol at all in their bodies, and they definitely need to use ubiquinol or they won't get any of the benefits.

"If someone takes a CoQ10 supplement, the body very quickly will convert it to ubiquinol, because that's the preferred form. It will transport that CoQ10 through the blood, as ubiquinol, into the tissues and eventually into the mitochondria,"she explains.

“But there are some people who lack the enzyme that helps to convert the CoQ10 to ubiquinol. That could be partly due to aging, but it’s also genetic. There’s something called a single nucleotide polymorphism SNP).

There's a particular SNP that's called NQO1. When a person has either one or two copies of this SNP, their ability to convert CoQ10 is either slightly or severely compromised.

What that means, practically, is that if this person takes a CoQ10 supplement ... their body can't convert it in a way that makes it usable. Those people in particular can benefit very much from taking ubiquinol, instead of ubiquinone."

Research has shown that Hispanic and Chinese populations are especially prone to having this single nucleotide polymorphism. There are also genetic tests you can get that can identify whether you have it.

How to Regenerate CoQ10 Naturally

Interestingly, recent research shows you can improve your body's conversion of CoQ10 to ubiquinol by eating lots of green leafy vegetables, which are loaded with chlorophyll, in combination with sun exposure.

Once chlorophyll is consumed it gets transported into your blood. Then when you expose significant amounts of skin to sunshine, that chlorophyll absorbs the solar radiation and facilitates the conversion of CoQ10 to ubiquinol.

You can also improve absorption of CoQ10 by taking it with a small amount of healthy fat, such as some olive oil, coconut oil, or avocado.

Ubiquinol Combats Free Radicals in Your Mitochondria

About 90 percent or more of the reactive oxygen species (ROS) in your body are produced in your mitochondria. Using the analogy of the mitochondria as an engine, the combustion (metabolism) that takes place in there creates exhaust fumes — damaging byproducts.

One of the functions of ubiquinol is to mop up those byproducts. When ubiquinol is lacking, the byproducts remain and begin damaging the cell. Ubiquinol is particularly beneficial for your heart health, a marker for which is C-reactive protein. When C-reactive protein is elevated it suggests you have a heightened risk for heart disease, as it's a marker for inflammation.

Two other markers for inflammation are gamma-glutamyl transferase (GGT), which is an early marker of heart failure, and NT-proBNP. There's an association between the levels of these two markers and ubiquinol as well. When ubiquinol is supplemented, both these markers go down and genes associated with them are downregulated.

The Case for a Healthy High-Fat Diet

Over the past 15 years, scientists have begun to recognize that ROS are not 100 percent bad. They're also important signaling molecules. If you indiscriminately suppress them you can actually run into complications with the Law of Unintended Consequences. In my view, a wise strategy is to simply feed your body a cleaner fuel to suppress excess ROS generation.

To continue the analogy of your mitochondria being an engine, to prevent pollution you want to use a cleaner-burning fuel. Glucose is an inherently "dirty" fuel that generates lots of ROS, whereas healthy dietary fats, including saturated fats, burn much cleaner and more efficiently.

In fact, burning carbohydrates is associated with a 30 to 40 percent increased production of ROS compared to burning fat. It makes a lot of sense that if you produce fewer ROS to begin with, then you don't have to be as careful about supplying your body with antioxidants. (Personally, I have some concern over indiscriminate use of antioxidants, but not necessarily ubiquinol.)

“Counter to how we’ve all been trained to think in the last years, regarding the free radical theory of aging, you don’t want to suppress it all the time,” Schulman says. “In fact, free radicals actually play a very critical positive role in the body because they turn on various very important functions.

Nitric oxide, for example, has free radical properties. It's a critical signaling molecule and is also critical for the health of your arteries. I haven't read anything in the literature regarding whether there's a discriminating or non-discriminating suppression of reactive oxygen species by ubiquinol in the mitochondria.

But my understanding of the biochemistry and the bioenergetics that are happening there leads me to believe that it's more of a random process."

Another strategy you could use to reduce the production of excess ROS involves the timing of your last meal of the day. Many make the mistake of eating a large meal before they go to bed.

By supplying your body fuel at a time when very little is needed leads to the generation of excess ROS that then must be countered with antioxidants. Avoiding food for at least three hours or more before bedtime can take the load off your body by preventing excess ROS production in the first place.

Finally, making sure you are not overloaded with iron is another powerful strategy. Believe me, iron overload is every bit as dangerous as vitamin D deficiency. If you are an adult male or non-menstruating woman then you are at high risk. 

Please make sure you get your ferritin level checked and confirm that the level is below 80 nanograms (ng)/milliliters (ml), preferably between 40 and 60 ng/ml. If it is higher than that then it is imperative that you regularly donate your blood or have therapeutic phlebotomies to get it in that range.

Statin Users Are in Dire Need of CoQ10

At least 1 in 4 American adults over the age of 40 are currently taking a statin drug to lower their cholesterol. Soon that number is expected to reach 1 in 3. Statins work by inhibiting the enzyme HMG-CoA reductase, which is one of the facilitators of your body's production of cholesterol. But statins also impair production of CoQ10, and the resulting depletion can have very severe consequences.

"This is a very important topic," Schulman says. "Many who take statins have the side effects of muscle pain, fatigue and memory loss — to such a point that compliance becomes an issue; people don't want to be on statins anymore. It's been documented and recognized medically that these are real effects and that they're due to the statins. What's actually happening? The way a statin works is that it blocks your body's production of cholesterol.

We're always thinking about cholesterol from the diet ... Most people don't realize that cholesterol in the body comes from two places: from the diet and from your internal production of cholesterol. Cholesterol is quite important to your body, because cholesterol is one of the major components of cell membranes. It's also the precursor for all the sex hormones. It's not all bad. It's just bad when there's too much and that depends on what kind as well."

Besides shutting down your body's ability to produce ubiquinol, statin drugs also shut down the conversion of vitamin K1 to vitamin K2, which is critically important in many body functions, including heart health.

Impairing these three pathways — the production of cholesterol and CoQ10, and the vitamin K1 to K2 conversion — has adverse effects on the production of energy and on cardiovascular health, and here's why: when you reduce your ubiquinol levels, the conversion of your food to energy becomes less efficient, which leads to lower energy, fatigue and muscle pains.

And the longer you're on a statin drug, the more ubiquinol-starved your body becomes and the more severe the side effects become. Recently published papers have also detailed the cardiovascular repercussions of statins. As it turns out, they actually end up causing many of the disease endpoints the drugs promised to prevent. But that's not all!

Statins Severely Compromise Your Metabolism

As mentioned, one of the most rational strategies to reduce ROS production is to burn clean fuel. Ultimately, that results from eating a diet high in healthy high-quality fats. When fat is metabolized, ketones are created — a fat-soluble molecule that is readily burned in the mitochondria without causing the production of excess ROS.

Ketones are produced in the liver, and the enzyme that produces ketones is the same that produces cholesterol, namely HMG-CoA reductase. So when you're taking a statin drug, you also severely diminish your liver's ability to make ketones, thereby compromising your ability to benefit from a clean fuel (fat). In short, your metabolism becomes severely compromised.

Even if you're taking vitamin K2 and ubiquinol, you still have to address the fact that you cannot make ketones, because you cannot take a ketone supplement. Ultimately, this has cardiovascular consequences as well, because your heart is the most mitochondrial-dense tissue in your body. If you deprive your cardiac tissue of fuel, by definition you impair your cardiovascular health.

Ubiquinol Benefits Heart Failure Patients

Heart failure is nearly at epidemic levels. There's a specific physiological condition called diastolic dysfunction where your ventricle hardens. As a result, your heart cannot properly refill with blood during diastole. This can eventually progress to heart failure. Unfortunately, many who have this condition don't even know it. There are markers that can be used to screen for it though, including NT-proBNP and GGT.

"There are a couple of papers out there now that talk about actual physician experience with patients with heart failure. They had some of these patients on CoQ10, and then they ended up switching to ubiquinol because of the better absorption. But the bottom line is that they saw a reversal in the New York Heart Association class.

That's the New York Heart Association's way of rating the severity of the disease. They see reductions in the severity of the disease. They see improvement in the ejection fraction, which is a measure of how well the heart is working in patients ... This is one of the other fantastic benefits of ubiquinol and something that both doctors and patients should know about,"Schulman says.

I personally think all heart failure patients should be on ubiquinol. To me, failure to do so is medical negligence. When it comes to heart health, a more general benefit is that ubiquinol also acts as an antioxidant in your blood, where it prevents the oxidation of LDL cholesterol, thereby helping prevent atherosclerosis. This is another important heart health function of ubiquinol.

Suggested Dosing Recommendations

Dosing requirements will vary depending on your individual situation and needs, but some general guidelines can still be made. As a general rule, the sicker you are, the more you need. According to Schulman, the highest amount she's seen used in a research setting was 600 milligrams (mg) per day, and that was for severely ill people.

If you're just starting out with ubiquinol, start with 200 to 300 mg per day. Within three weeks, your plasma levels will typically plateau to its optimum level. After that, you can go down to a 100 mg/day maintenance dose. This dose is typically sufficient for healthy people. If you have an active lifestyle, exercise a lot, or are under a lot of stress due to your job or "life" in general, you may want to increase your dose to 200 to 300 mg/day.

Remember, if you're on a statin drug you MUST take at least 100 to 200 mg of ubiquinol or CoQ10 per day, or more. To address heart failure and/or other significant heart problems you may need around 350 mg per day or more. Ideally, you'll want to work with your physician to ascertain your ideal dose. Your doctor can do a blood test to measure your CoQ10 levels, which would tell you whether your dose is high enough to keep you within a healthy range.

CoQ10 (or ubiquinol) is also appropriate for those with other chronic diseases besides heart problems, such as diabetes, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), chronic fatigue and autism for example. Ideally, you'll want to split the dose up to two or three times a day, rather than taking it all at once, as this will result in higher blood levels.

Other dosing guidelines, as presented by Dr. Stephen Sinatra (a board-certified cardiologist, and a prominent expert in the field of natural cardiology) include:

Hypertension, 200 mg/day	World class athletes who need extra ATP turnover, 300 to 600 mg/day	Heart transplant or severe congestive heart failure (CHF), 300 to 600 mg/day in divided doses
Arrhythmia, 200 mg/day	Typical athletes, 100 to 300 mg/day	Mitral valve prolapse, a combination of 400 mg magnesium and 100 to 200 mg of ubiquinol

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2016/06/26/coq10-ubiquinol-benefits.aspx

CoQ10 Proven Benefits In Heart Failure Patients

This ten year study conclusively showed that CoQ10 supplementation significantly improves survival for even the most severe heart failurepatients while radically reducing incidences of hospitalization.1

Life Extension Magazine April 2014

REPORT

CoQ10 Proven Benefits In Heart Failure Patients

By Bradley Tompkins

  

The European Journal of Heart Failure has published data from one of the most robust studies to date on coenzyme Q10.

This ten year study conclusively showed that CoQ10 supplementation significantly improves survival for even the most severe heart failure patients while radically reducing incidences of hospitalization.1

This new study shows that CoQ10 supplementation can restore deficient CoQ10 levels in patients with moderate-to-severe heart failure, extend lifespan, and improve quality of life.1

The compelling results from this 10-year-long study found that patients who took 100 mg of CoQ10 three times daily were…

• Significantly less likely to die from heart failure,
• Less than half as likely to die from any cause at all, and
• Half as likely to have a major adverse cardiac event during the study period, compared with control subjects.1

After only three months of supplementation, the researchers detected a trend towards reduced levels of a blood marker of heart failure severity that is released from over-worked heart muscle cells.1,2 At two years, significantly more treated patients had improved measurements of heart function than did placebo recipients.1

This impressive study demonstrates how CoQ10 offers important heart health benefits and how essential it is to cardiac patients. Ideally, the practice of cardiology will soon include CoQ10 as part of their protocol to improve the lives of those living with heart failure.

NEW YORK HEART ASSOCIATION FUNCTIONAL CLASSES OF HEART FAILURE65

Class	Functional Capacity: How a patient with cardiac disease feels during physical activity
I	Patients with cardiac disease but resulting in no limitation of physical activity. Ordinary physical activity does not cause undue fatigue, palpitation, difficulty breathing, or anginal pain.
II	Patients with cardiac disease resulting in slight limitation of physical activity. They are comfortable at rest. Ordinary physical activity results in fatigue, palpitation, difficulty breathing, or anginal pain.
III	Patients with cardiac disease resulting in marked limitation of physical activity. They are comfortable at rest. Less than ordinary activity causes fatigue, palpitation, difficulty breathing, or anginal pain.
IV	Patients with cardiac disease resulting in inability to carry on any physical activity without discomfort. Symptoms of heart failure or the anginal syndrome may be present even at rest. If any physical activity is undertaken, discomfort increases.

Cardiac Bioenergetics

Most people have heard of heart failure, but few understand what it really is.

Contrary to what most people might think, heart failure does not mean that the heart stops beating. Rather, heart failure occurs whenever the heart is unable to pump enough blood to sustain normal function in other organs.3

Your heart is one of the hardest-working organs in your body; it literally never takes a rest. Beat after beat, hour after hour, day after day, for your entire life, your heart contracts and relaxes a little more than once per second, providing the blood flow that every other organ in your body relies on.

That much effort requires a steady supply of energy. And to perform at optimal function—literally without missing a beat—your heart needs to be able to derive that energy from its fuel (primarily fatty acids and glucose) efficiently and with little waste.4-6

In order to support this task, your mitochondria pump out a steady supply of energy derived from food. This is called bioenergetics.7 But your mitochondria don’t work alone. Just as a clean-burning automobile engine is more fuel-efficient and lasts longer than an out-of-tune one, the mitochondria need help maintaining top-level efficiency and performance.

CoQ10 is essential for the heart to maintain sufficient energy management.1,8 But when CoQ10 levels decline, tissues burn fuel inefficiently, eventually producing oxidative damage and ultimately losing their function. When the heart muscle loses its fuel efficiency, heart failure may occur.4,9

Research has shown that CoQ10 levels are lower in patients with heart failure and the lower the levels, the more severe the failure.8,10,11 In fact, heart failure patients with lower CoQ10 levels have up to a two-fold risk of dying compared to those with higher levels.12

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

CoQ10 Benefits: Heart Failure Patients

• Loss of efficient energy management, or bioenergetics, is a root cause of heart failure and many other conditions associated with aging.
• Many patients with heart failure are deficient in CoQ10, a nutrient that optimizes bioenergetics in the heart muscle’s mitochondria.
• A dramatic new study shows that CoQ10 supplementation can restore deficient CoQ10 levels, extending life span and improving quality of life, even in patients with the most severe classes of heart failure.
• CoQ10 supplementation is finding a role in the management of other cardiovascular disease processes, including endothelial dysfunction, hypertension, heart attack, and the ischemia-reperfusion injury that accompanies heart attacks and strokes.
• Aging changes your basic biochemistry; you can restore optimal bioenergetics with CoQ10 supplementation.

CoQ10’s Heart-Healthy Track Record

Over the past 30 years, mounting evidence has been establishing CoQ10 as one of the most vital nutrients necessary for heart health.

CoQ10 has been known to benefit cardiac bioenergetics since the 1970s.13-15 In 1985, a small study found that patients with the most severe levels of heart failure experienced significant improvements in cardiac function and clinical state during CoQ10 treatment.6

Since then, other small studies showed similar improvement in clinical status and heart function testing, typically using doses of 100 to 200 mg/day.9,16 Roughly 75% of patients taking CoQ10 experienced improvements in cyanosis (bluish skin), liver enlargement, lung examinations, difficulty breathing, palpitations, sweating, heart arrhythmias, insomnia, vertigo, and nighttime urination.10,17

Several of the studies demonstrated an improvement in cardiac functional status, as determined by the New York Heart Association, reducing patients’ class levels of heart failure by an average of 0.5 compared with placebo.11,18,19 This means that heart failure patients could move from a strict Class II with limitations on physical activity to a class I-II with fewer or even no limitations resulting in substantial improvements in quality of life.

Other studies over the past 15 years or so showed small but significant improvements in objective measures of heart function, such as ejection fraction (the proportion of blood pumped out of the heart with each beat), stroke volume (volume of blood pumped with each beat), and cardiac output (total amount of blood pumped per minute).14,20

But it wasn’t until mid-2013 that results were published from the first comprehensive, double-blind, multi-center study demonstrating the dramatic, life-saving impact of CoQ10 supplementation in patients withchronic heart failure.

ARE YOU TAKING THE RIGHT COQ10?

Most biochemical compounds exist in more than one form. CoQ10 is no exception. A common form of the substance is called ubiquinone, and, while it has demonstrated biological activity, it is much less bioavailable than ubiquinol.42 Ubiquinolis the so-called “reduced” form of CoQ10. In chemical terms, that means it carries an extra electron. This is important because that electron is what allows CoQ10 to help neutralize, or “reduce,” dangerous reactive oxygen and nitrogen species. Therefore, your CoQ10 supplement should ideally contain the ubiquinol form of CoQ10.

Landmark Study Shows CoQ10 Saves Lives Of Heart Failure Victims!

This new study showed that even in patients with the most severe classes of heart failure, CoQ10 supplementation can restore deficient CoQ10 levels, extending life span and improving quality of life.

The study, begun in 2003, included only the most severely affected patients (those in the New York Heart Association class III or IV).1 In addition to their regular medication, study subjects were randomly assigned to receive either 100 mg of CoQ10 or placebo 3 times daily. Each patient was followed up with a wide variety of outcomes measures for two years.

After only three months of supplementation, the researchers detected a trend towards reduced levels of proBNP, a marker of heart failure severity that is released from over-worked heart muscle cells.1,2 At two years,significantly more treated patients had improved their heart failure class than did placebo recipients.

But the study’s main endpoint measurement was the most dramatic indicator of success. Only 14% of patients in the supplemented group had a major adverse cardiac event (defined as unplanned hospitalization for worsening heart failure, death from a cardiovascular cause, urgent heart transplantation, or artificial mechanical heart support), while 25% of those in the placebo group had a major cardiac event.1 In statistical terms, that produced a “hazard ratio” of 2.0—meaning the untreated patients had twice the risk of a major cardiac event!

Compared with control patients, those taking CoQ10 experienced significantly fewer cardiovascular deaths and hospitalizations for worsening heart failure. The difference in death rate from all causes between the CoQ10 and placebo groups was striking. Subjects on placebo had twice the rate of death compared to those taking CoQ10.1 And, unlike most drug studies, there were significantly fewer adverse events in the supplemented group than in the placebo group.

This study was the first ever to show that CoQ10 supplementation in advanced heart failure improves survival, while slashing hospitalization rates.

It highlights the importance of regular supplementation with this cardiac “fuel additive” for anyone with heart failure or its risk factors, such as endothelial dysfunction, hypertension, and a history of a heart attack. Studies have shown that CoQ10 improves each of these risk factors for heart failure. Let’s look at each in turn.
WHAT CAUSES HEART FAILURE?

Heart failure affects around 5.7 million Americans, and causes or contributes to more than 335,000 deaths each year. Half of those with heart failure die within 5 years of their diagnosis.3

There are many primary causes of heart failure.9,43 The most common include coronary artery disease and high blood pressure but can also include heart attacks, obesity, and diabetes, all of which place excessive demands on the heart muscle, making it work harder and harder just to produce enough blood flow to sustain life at rest. That extra demand for energy uses up CoQ10, resulting in a loss of fuel efficiency precisely when the heart needs every bit of energy it can generate.9

Eventually, the heart muscle simply tires out, becoming enlarged and flabby, squeezing more weakly with each contraction, and pumping smaller and smaller amounts of blood out to the body.

Symptoms of heart failure reflect the diminished blood flow to all of the organs in the body, especially the lungs, kidneys, and liver. Such symptoms commonly include shortness of breath even with normal daily activities, difficulty breathing when lying down, and swelling in the lower extremities or lower back. These symptoms are usually accompanied by substantial weight gain (“water weight”), and generalized fatigue and weakness.44

Eventually, symptoms worsen, requiring frequent hospitalization with increased risk of life-threatening heart arrhythmias and pulmonary edema.44 Even with the best conventional treatment, some people with heart failure, particularly those who in spite of conventional treatment fail to show evidence of clinical improvement, may die within two years.6

CoQ10 Improves Endothelial Function

Chronic oxidative stress is one of the main factors reducing the functioning of the endothelium, the thin layer of cells lining arteries that controls blood flow and pressure.21 Endothelial dysfunction is a major precursor to hypertension, coronary heart disease, and strokes. Since CoQ10 is a unique antioxidant, it makes sense that it would have beneficial effects on endothelial function.

That has proven to be the case. In patients with known coronary artery disease, who are at high risk for heart attack, and who need every bit of functioning endothelium, supplementation with 300 mg of CoQ10 a day significantly improved their natural endothelial antioxidant levels, improved their arterial relaxation, and improved their oxygen utilization.22

Similar improvements were seen in patients with New York Heart Association grade II to III heart failure, who experienced a 9% improvement in oxygen utilization and a 38% improvement in endothelial function when they used the same dose of CoQ10, with no side effects.23

CoQ10 has subsequently shown value in improving endothelial dysfunction caused by diabetes and by high LDL-cholesterol, two major contributors to cardiovascular disease.24,25 In addition, it reduces blood vessel stiffness, a consequence of endothelial dysfunction.26,27

COQ10 SHOWS PROMISE IN CANCER PREVENTION

Low levels of CoQ10 have been correlated with increased cancer risk in some populations.45 This is due in part to the fact that cancer cells are enormous users of energy, perturbing the bioenergetics of surrounding tissue and bathing host cells in free radicals and other destructive byproducts.

Though research is still in its early stages, CoQ10 supplementation is showing real promise in counteracting these effects to slow—and in some cases reverse—cancer’s progression. Here is a synopsis of scientific progress:

• CoQ10 along with vitamin B6 boosted the function of cancer-fighting immune cells.46
• CoQ10 alone or in combination with B vitamins enhanced the efficacy of the anti-breast cancer drug tamoxifen in animal studies, and decreased plasma markers of metastasis and new blood vessel growth in human breast cancer patients.47-50
• CoQ10 suppressed development of pre-cancerous lesions in animal models of colon cancer.51,52
• CoQ10 increased median actual survival by more than 40% in patients with a variety of end-stage cancers.53

It seems all but inevitable that further studies will highlight greater benefits in humans, especially at the level of prevention rather than treatment, an area in which mainstream medicine is sadly lacking.

CoQ10 Lowers Blood Pressure

Oxidative stress and endothelial dysfunction are major causes of elevated blood pressure, which affects about 67 million US adults.28,29 CoQ10 supplementation is showing promise in reducing blood pressure in hypertensive patients, without producing dangerous abrupt drops in pressure.

A multitude of studies have shown that doses of CoQ10 as low as 60 mg twice daily can lower blood pressure by up to 17.8 points systolic (top number) and 7 points diastolic (bottom number).30-32 None of these studies reported significant side effects, and CoQ10 is now recommended by some researchers for use in addition to standard drug treatment for hypertension, especially in elderly patients.33

COQ10 PROTECTS YOUR BRAIN

Your brain receives the largest proportion of total blood flow from your heart; as a result, it has some of the most volatile fluctuations in bioenergetic demands.54 Because of this, CoQ10 is of tremendous importance in maintaining brain health and preventing neuronal damage.

Unfortunately, studies have clearly shown a loss of CoQ10 functioning in the aging brain—with severe deficiencies in those with neurodegenerative disorders such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases, and following strokes.55,56

Fortunately, laboratory studies have shown that supplementing with CoQ10 has multiple brain-protective effects, especially in aging animals. Take a look:

• CoQ10 has been shown to decelerate the aging process in a strain of mice with abnormally accelerated aging.57
• When aging, stroke-prone mice were supplemented long-term with CoQ10, they had smaller volumes of damaged brain, and larger volumes of healthy, functioning brain.58
• In culture dishes, CoQ10 kept brain stem cells alive following periods of oxygen deprivation (as seen in strokes), setting the stage for possible recovery through new cell development.59
• In a mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease, CoQ10 decreased the amount of destructive amyloid beta plaque in brain tissue, while improving the animals’ behaviors.60
• In aging mice at risk for Parkinson’s disease, supplementation reduced the loss of dopamine-producing neurons and raised brain dopamine levels (dopamine is the neurotransmitter that is diminished in human Parkinson’s).61

Preliminary human studies show good results as well—especially in patients with early and mild Parkinson’s disease. CoQ10 at 360 mg/day produced moderate reduction in symptom scores, while1,200 mg/day appeared to slow functional decline in those with early disease.62,63 Studies have shown that up to 3,000 mg/day is well tolerated, with 2,400 mg/day being the highest dose used in studies involving Parkinson’s patients.64

The superior absorption of the ubiquinol form of CoQ10 would allow lower doses to be used. Those with congestive heart failure or neurological conditions should ideally strive for a coenzyme Q10 blood level of over 3.5 micrograms per milliliter (mcg/mL).66

CoQ10 Reduces Heart Attack Damage

CoQ10 is especially valuable in reducing the damage caused by a heart attack. Never is your heart in greater need of efficient bioenergetics than during and immediately after a heart attack. CoQ10 is sharply diminished in heart attack victims. In fact, low CoQ10 levels are associated with an increased risk of dying in post-cardiac arrest patients.34

The main damage in survivors of a heart attack doesn’t come from the loss of blood flow itself (ischemia), but rather from the restoration of oxygen-rich blood to tissues that have lacked oxygen for the critical minutes before circulation is restored (reperfusion).35

CoQ10 reduces the impact of ischemia-reperfusion injury by optimizing the heart muscle’s bioenergetics and providing antioxidant support during this crucial period.36 Supplementation reduces markers of extreme oxidative stress and poor mitochondrial function, while reducing the rates of post-reperfusion arrhythmias and improving heart musclefunctioning.37,38

Studies show that CoQ10 at doses of 100 to 120 mg/day reduced total arrhythmias and other cardiac events, increased left ventricular (main pumping chamber) function, and reduced the death rate from repeat heart attacks.39,40

CoQ10 is powerful enough that it has been given intravenously during bypass grafting procedures, where it improved left ventricular functioning 6 to 10 hours after the operation, compared with control patients, and reduced blood markers of heart muscle damage.37 Similar beneficial effects have now been shown in patients who take 150 to 180 mg of CoQ10 per day for 7 to 10 days prior to elective bypass surgery.41

Summary

Your mitochondria pump out a steady supply of energy derived from the food you supply them with. Like any finely-tuned machine, however, they need help maintaining top-level efficiency and performance.

CoQ10 is the main molecule your body requires to keep mitochondrial energy production, orbioenergetics, running smoothly. Declining CoQ10 levels cause tissues to burn fuel inefficiently, eventually producing oxidative damage and ultimately losing their function.

CoQ10 deficiency and the resulting bioenergetic collapse is the underlying cause of heart failure, one of the largest causes of death and disability in Americans today. Studies show that CoQ10 supplementation at 300 mg/day not only restores normal CoQ10 levels, but prevents progression of heart failure and in fact can reverse that progression and extend survival and improve quality of life.

Similar beneficial effects have now been shown in patients with endothelial dysfunction, hypertension, and coronary artery disease, the precursors of heart attacks and ultimately heart failure.

Since we all require efficient and uninterrupted energy supplies, we all need to be thinking about optimizing our bioenergetic status with CoQ10 supplementation.

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References

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