COENZYME Q10 (UBIQUINONE): The vital nutrient Part 2

High Blood Pressure
Hypertension is a major risk factor for heart disease, but CoQ10’s contribution to overcoming the disorder is worth mentioning separately. In no small part because of the nutrient, some 85 per cent of all people we treat for high blood pressure can end their reliance on antihypertension medications. More than a few studies confirm that dosages of 60-100 mg per day will significantly lower blood pressure readings. This ability accounts for why I occasionally caution people with low blood pressure against taking CoQ10: it might lower their blood pressure even more.

Diabetes
Diabetes is arguably the most common metabolic cause of heart disease. Happily, a daily CoQ10 dose of 60 mg can help reduce high blood sugar within six months. Because hardening of the arteries is a frequently encountered complication of diabetes, CoQ10 is doubly important.

Obesity
Decades spent watching overweight people become slim and trim convince me that the Atkins diet, or another low- carbohydrate eating plan, is the surest way to shed excess weight. CoQ10 lends its weight to reducing yours, researchers think, by facilitating the use of stored fat as fuel. About half of the people with weight problems lack a sufficient amount of the energy nutrient, which may help explain why obese people are prone to both heart disease and diabetes.
CoQ10 s value is plain to see in a study of overweight people following a low-calorie diet. Those who were deficient in the nutrient took a daily 100 mg supplement of the nutrient; the others received no additional nutritional support. After two months the supplement takers had lost 13.5 kilograms – considerably more than the 6 kilograms that their counterparts dropped.

Cancer
The presence of cancer correlates strongly with a reduced amount of CoQ10. Complementary practitioners have long known this, and animal studies reinforce the link. The inverse of this relationship is becoming quite apparent, too, and I’m now convinced that CoQ10 should be a permanent fixture in cancer therapy. If the research conclusions are true for all people we may have found something that can stop certain malignancies dead in their tracks.
Several years ago Danish researchers gave daily 390 mg in supplements (quite a hefty dose) to members of a group of women with metastatic breast cancer. After several months the cancer went into remission for four women. After eleven months one woman’s cancer, which had spread from the breast to the liver, was completely gone, and doctors reported that her health was excellent.
Dosage is apparently the key here. In an earlier trial, the Danish researchers gave 90 mg per day to a different group of breast cancer patients. That amount didn’t reverse the malignant onslaught, although it probably helped to prolong the women’s lives.

Like most other complementary cancer therapies, CoQ10 seems to work by revitalizing the immune system, not by directly attacking a tumour. If that’s true, we’re all the more disadvantaged because of some convoluted regulations imposed on cancer investigators by the US National Cancer Institute. The NCI authorizes research into potentially therapeutic substances only if they are ‘effective agents’. The institute defines ‘effective’ as the ability to kill tumour cells. If a substance opposes cancer in any other way, it doesn’t qualify. CoQ10 (or any other harmless, nontoxic agent that helps our own cancer defences get the job’done) is therefore deemed ‘ineffective’ and intrinsically worthless. This stipulation encourages scientists to work only with radiation therapy and chemotherapeutic drugs, both often futile and lethal treatments.

Other Illnesses
The full therapeutic reach of CoQ10 is still largely unknown. It may not turn out to be a panacea, but many studies suggest a wide world of possibilities. Against Alzheimer’s disease, to use one example, CoQ10 joined iron and vitamin B6 in minimizing symptoms of dementia and slowing progressive memory loss. For some people in the study, symp-toms actually improved enough that researchers diagnosed them as ‘normal’.
Other work suggests a role for the energy enzyme in preventing miscarriages and treating tinnitus, Meniere’s disease, Bell’s palsy, deafness, muscular dystrophy, Huntington’s disease, ulcers and a low sperm count. Seven different clin-ical trials demonstrated its ability to reverse periodontal disease. Because it fortifies the immune system, CoQ10 also enriches my overall treatment of chronic fatigue syndrome. For the same reason, it even may help people infected with HTV.
Fatigue For an everyday advantage, I’ve saved the best for last. Partly because it’s an antioxidant and partly because it helps turn food into energy, CoQ10 is a fatigue fighter par excellence.

It is especially valuable for elite athletes, such as marathoners and triathlon participants, who must perform under prolonged aerobic conditions. This activity generates free radicals capable of damaging the mitochondria, the little energy-generating furnaces inside each of our cells. It is here that CoQ10 exerts much of its protective power. In all probability, athletes who ‘bum out’ prematurely and can no longer perform as they once did are, in fact, victims of a relative CoQ10 deficiency.

People with health problems will notice more of an improvement from using supplements than will elite athletes. When, for example, a group of people with chronic lung disease took 90 mg of CoQ10 for eight weeks, they showed significant normalization of their oxygen levels. In contrast, a similar group of sedentary but otherwise healthy young men gained only a moderate (3-12 per cent) improvement in pulmonary capacity.

In those rare conditions where the mitochondria are the focus of illness, such as mitochondrial encephalomyopathy, CoQ10 administration produces a dramatic reversal of symptoms.

SUPPLEMENT SUGGESTIONS

Our need for CoQ10 supplements can be pronounced, especially after the age of forty, when we begin to make less of the nutrients. The body’s production peaks around the age of twenty, declining to some 60 per cent below that mark by the time we are eighty years old. Low-fat dieters probably have lower than average body stores of CoQ10 because our best food sources are organ meats (such as heart and kidney), other red meats, nuts and unprocessed vegetable oils. Cereal bran and dark green vegetables will provide a lesser amount. Consuming the nutrient with an oil. or a fat improves our absorption, while our own internal production depends on the presence of a sufficient amount of the В-complex vitamins.

I take CoQ10 every day, and I prescribe it readily to anyone who has a health problem related to the heart, blood pressure, metabolism, energy level or cancer. That seems to be just about everyone I treat. In most instances 90 mg a day is the bare minimum required to get a therapeutic response. For cancer protection the usual dose is 200-400 mg a day.
Unpublished studies circulating within the vitamin industry suggest that much of the commercially available CoQ10 is poorly absorbed or assimilated. Products labeled ‘hydrosoluble’ are claimed to achieve significantly higher blood levels. If you find such a product, you may be able to get equivalent results with one-half the dose.