Does CoQ10 Deserve a Spot on Your Longevity Plan?

Is it a no-brainer for mitochondrial health, or an expensive tradeoff that requires careful thought?

If you want to live a long life with few wrinkles, no headaches, no blood sugar problems, no heart attacks, and an incredible sense of well being, you might want to consider supplementing with CoQ10.

After all, CoQ10 supplementation has been shown in trials to improve female fertility, sperm health, and hormones in women with PCOS; blood glucose control, which protects against diabetes, a major killer; it helps lower lipid peroxidation and the inflammatory marker interleukin-6, which helps protect against most chronic disease; it reduces mortality from cardiovascular disease, seems to help with wrinkles and skin elasticity, lowers depression and anxiety, reduces migraines, and improves subjective well being.

On the other hand, we synthesize CoQ10 ourselves.

If we are making enough of our own, isn’t CoQ10 a waste of money?

Further, what is the cause of not making enough, in those who need a supplement? Is supplementing just papering over a bigger problem?

To make matters worse, supplementing mice with CoQ10 across the entire length of their adulthood worsens age-related hearing loss and impairs spatial learning and memory. The human-adjusted dose in this study is the equivalent of 1700 milligrams a day, but standard risk assessment adjustments would indicate caution for long-term use of doses as low as 170 milligrams per day. There are no studies in humans that last this long, so the cautionary impulse from this study has to be taken seriously.

One client of mine benefits a lot from doses in the 100-160 milligram range but gets fatigue from doses of 200 milligrams or higher, but there is no clear dose-response shown for benefits or harms in clinical trials, so we clearly need a way to individualize the dose to each person who needs it.

In fact, there are numerous CoQ10 synthesis mutations requiring doses as high as 3000 milligrams per day, and heterozygosity for these mutations is a lot more common than the homozygosity that gets treated. Meanwhile, that dose could overload numerous biochemical pathways in someone who doesn’t need it, creating all sorts of imbalances.

In fact, an analysis of 26 trials found that 100-200 milligrams per day lowers blood pressure, but that 400 milligrams per day raises blood pressure on average.

Glycemic control shows a similar U-shaped curve, and antioxidant status is best optimized at a dose of only 100-150 milligrams.

By contrast, an analysis of 13 trials found that fatigue responds best when the dose is higher, even up to 500 milligrams a day.

These conflicting results emphasize how essential it is to figure out for each person what dose is needed, and whether CoQ10 is needed at all.

This article covers how to know whether you need CoQ10, what type (ubiquinone, ubiquinol, MitoQ) is best, how to individually tailor the dose to your needs, and how to figure out why you need it and whether you should be looking to solve a different problem.

This article is for Masterpass members. You can subscribe to the Masterpass here.

In this article:

• The Short Answer

• Benefits of CoQ10

• What Is the Best Form of CoQ10?

• Adverse Effects of CoQ10

• What CoQ10 Does and Why It Could Be Helpful or Harmful

• The Best Optimization Tool

• Why Should We Need to Supplement CoQ10 When We Can Make It?

  • CoQ10 In Foods

  • Synthesis of CoQ10

  • CoQ10 Transport

• The Bottom Line