• Welcome to Phoenix Rising!

    Created in 2008, Phoenix Rising is the largest and oldest forum dedicated to furthering the understanding of and finding treatments for complex chronic illnesses such as chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), fibromyalgia (FM), long COVID, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS), and allied diseases.

    To become a member, simply click the Register button at the top right.

Running out of CoQ10 pills, how hard will it hit me?

grapes

Senior Member
Messages
362
Perhaps G&E just sell ubiquinone, which is the usual more common form of Q10.

Ubiquinone converts to ubiquinol in the body, assuming that your body biochemistry is working OK. However, I read if you are older, your body finds it more difficult to perform the conversion, so then a ubiquinol supplement might be better.

Ubiquinol is also better absorbed than ubiquinone by a factor of 2.

But I understand that ubiquinol will oxidize to ubiquinone in the air, so you may buy ubiquinol, but once you open the packet, it starts to convert to ubiquinone. Apparently this can be prevented by adding alpha lipoic acid to ubiquinol. Furthermore, alpha lipoic acid can actually be used to convert ubiquinone to ubiquinol — see here.


Now that is interesting if ALA added to the ubiquinol will stop that conversion because of exposure to air. I've wondered what I was going to do with the ubiquinol powder after it arrives for that reason. Am also facing adding it to oil. Will check out your link! My problem is that I'm not at all sure I convert ubiquinone to ubiquinol thanks to the rare mutations I have which seem to have become activated.
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
@grapes I'd like to try the ubiquinol form of Q10 myself, to see if I get better results than from the usual ubiquinone form I take. I don't really get much benefit from Q10 anyway though. Maybe next time I order from AliExpress I will get ubiquinol instead, and then preserve it by adding some alpha lipoic acid.

Careful with alpha lipoic acid if you have not tried it before: quite a few ME/CFS patients react very badly to even small doses of ALA. I don't have this problem myself: I can take high 600 mg doses of ALA without issue.

One theory is that those who react badly to ALA have high mercury loads in their body (ALA is a mercury chelator that can cross the blood-brain barrier, and thus mobilizes any mercury in the body). However, there is not much evidence to support this mercury theory of the bad reactions to ALA, although it sounds plausible.
 

grapes

Senior Member
Messages
362
@grapes I'd like to try the ubiquinol form of Q10 myself, to see if I get better results than from the usual ubiquinone form I take. I don't really get much benefit from Q10 anyway though. Maybe next time I order from AliExpress I will get ubiquinol instead, and then preserve it by adding some alpha lipoic acid.

Careful with alpha lipoic acid if you have not tried it before: quite a few ME/CFS patients react very badly to even small doses of ALA. I don't have this problem myself: I can take high 600 mg doses of ALA without issue.

One theory is that those who react badly to ALA have high mercury loads in their body (ALA is a mercury chelator that can cross the blood-brain barrier, and thus mobilizes any mercury in the body). However, there is not much evidence to support this mercury theory of the bad reactions to ALA, although it sounds plausible.


I have definitely found I get much better results from ubiquinol, and notice nothing from ubiquinone. Yes, I'm aware of the mercury issue with ALA. Hair testing says my mercury levels are perfect, but I've heard it can hide deep in the cells. So who knows.
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
I have definitely found I get much better results from ubiquinol, and notice nothing from ubiquinone.

Most interesting. Well that's definitely an encouragement for me to switch to ubiquinol the next time I stock up on Q10.
 

pamojja

Senior Member
Messages
2,384
Location
Austria
Made the experience years ago, that always with physical or mental stress I would get angina-like chest pains. When slowly increasing CoC10, I found out, above 160 mg/d would stop it, and half that dose with Ubiquinol. So for me the Ubiquinol is only worth it when it isn't more than the double price of Ubiqunone.
 

Hip

Senior Member
Messages
17,824
Made the experience years ago, that always with physical or mental stress I would get angina-like chest pains.

That could be due to atherosclerosis, depending on your age. When a small bit of plaque from the wall of the blood vessel breaks off, it can temporarily block blood flow to the heart, causing angina chest pain.
 

mrmichaelfreedmen

Senior Member
Messages
156
Location
Australia
@grapes I'd like to try the ubiquinol form of Q10 myself, to see if I get better results than from the usual ubiquinone form I take. I don't really get much benefit from Q10 anyway though. Maybe next time I order from AliExpress I will get ubiquinol instead, and then preserve it by adding some alpha lipoic acid.

Careful with alpha lipoic acid if you have not tried it before: quite a few ME/CFS patients react very badly to even small doses of ALA. I don't have this problem myself: I can take high 600 mg doses of ALA without issue.

One theory is that those who react badly to ALA have high mercury loads in their body (ALA is a mercury chelator that can cross the blood-brain barrier, and thus mobilizes any mercury in the body). However, there is not much evidence to support this mercury theory of the bad reactions to ALA, although it sounds plausible.

Ubiquinol is much better. Normal coq10 does nothing for me.