New Drug Old Dog

I have been telling patients to take CoQ10 since the late 1990s, and the cardiology establishment in this country has spent most of those years telling me I was wrong. A new headline this week claims a “new drug” cuts heart failure risk in half. The new drug? CoQ10. The “n” was 420 people, presented at a major European cardiology meeting. Real numbers, real study.

Predictably, American thought leaders shrugged and said the data does not change their practice. Wait for more studies. The reasoning was that a decade of CoQ10 trials in the United States failed to move the needle in heart failure.

Here is the truth. The American trials were rigged to fail. Three reasons.

1. The dose was too low. Typical American studies use 100 mg a day or less. The European study used 300 mg.
2. The format was inferior. American studies use ubiquinone. Ubiquinol is the reduced, more bioavailable form. The Japanese have been using it as a prescription agent for years.
3. Blood levels were rarely checked. In the non-American studies that worked, levels were measured to confirm patients actually got there.

I do not read Japanese, but I do read the abstracts. Ubiquinol in Japanese cardiology has decades of supporting data. The fact that it outperformed ACE inhibitors in this study should be a quiet scandal. ACE inhibitors are a major revenue line and do not come anywhere near a 50% mortality reduction in late stage heart failure. If a pharmaceutical company patented the CoQ10 molecule, changed it slightly, and gave it an unpronounceable name, American cardiologists would be writing scripts for it tomorrow.

So should you wait until you have heart failure to take CoQ10?

I have not. Around age 40, the human mitochondria, the power plants inside your cells, begin to lose the ability to make reduced CoQ10 on their own. The balance of inflammation and oxidative stress inside the mitochondria starts to drift. That drift contributes to the aging of cells and, eventually, to the aging of you.

Heart failure is, in part, the long downstream consequence of mitochondrial aging. It does not start with the symptoms. It starts decades earlier. I take 400 mg of pharmaceutical grade CoQ10 every day. I have for several years.

Athletes and weekend warriors

CoQ10 was tested in athletes training for the London Olympics. At 300 mg a day, a 2.5% increase in power output was reported. That sounds small until you remember it is the gap between a gold medal and an empty trophy case. A separate study in recreational athletes, the “weekend warriors”, showed an 8% increase in power output. That you will actually feel in the gym or on a bike.

This pretty well answers the standard anti-supplement objection, “Yeah, but does it do anything for healthy people?” Read in the appropriate paternal medical tone. The data says yes.

What to look for on a label

• Ubiquinol, not ubiquinone, especially if you are over 40.
• At least 200 to 300 mg per day in the studied range, taken with a meal that has some fat.
• A formula that lists the actual milligrams, not a proprietary blend.

If you want my combined athletic and recovery formula, Regenerizer pairs the same ubiquinol with L-carnitine, malic acid, and low dose DHEA. It has been around since 2002. It is still in the cabinet because the data on each piece has only gotten stronger.

The medical system stays focused on disease instead of staying healthy. That is the part I will never get used to.

Doc