There are lots of examples which contradict this idea, where high doses of supplements, even in those who are not deficient, can have helpful benefits.
And there are many studies that say that high doses of supplements, even in those who are not deficient can cause cancer and have other detrimental effects.More is not necessarily better, and in many cases, more can be toxic. I'm not necessarily saying that CoQ10 is in that category, as I do not know that, all I know is that CoQ10 is not the gating factor for my energy production.
For example, in autism, high doses of B6 can be helpful. In anxiety, megadoses of magnesium taken transdermally can be helpful (because magnesium is an NMDA receptor blocker). In ME/CFS megadoses of B12 by daily injection can help reduce brain fog and increase energy.
And, if you look into the literature, you will find that researcher Susan Owens identified that many children with autism have significant oxalate issues. Oxalates bind minerals, making magnesium unavailable, and they use up B6 to the point that doses of up to 7g per kilogram of body weight are needed to fight the problem and reduce sulfate depletion. Having an oxalate problem, I have found that I need a dose of this magnitude to be able to have enough B6 to do the 200 plus other things that B6 does in the body.
As for B12, testing methylmalonic acid is typically sufficient to tell if one needs B12 or not. And, yes, I find injections of MB12 to be quite helpful at improving brain function and reducing fatigue, and my labs say that I need it.
This is where these notions of nutritional testing being able to tell you everything are flawed. You cannot use nutritional testing to determine which supplements might be beneficial in high doses. You can only use nutritional testing to determine which nutrients you are short of. That can be useful info, but it does not tell you anything more than that. The nutrients tests you take are rather limited.
They may be limited, but they are the best available at this time, and have pointed me to a number of significant issues that no amount of trial and error would have helped me figure out. Finding that I needed molybdenum, citrulline, phospholipids, and other more esoteric nutrients has been extremely useful and has directly impacted my symptoms. This is how I found I needed BCAAs, which have been effective with busting my PEM, and why I found diminishing returns with it, as my body became replete. They are able to help me see how pathways are working, and to look at my biochemistry systemically.
No amount of nutritional testing would have been able to predict that SOC and other ME/CFS patients will benefit from megadoses of Q10. That can only be determined by trial an error.
Actually, Having been to the United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation conference as well as last year's FDA Voice of the Patient session, and communicating with the other patients there in nutrition oriented discussions, I found that other patients with mitochondrial issues are indeed testing and listening to the results of those tests. And, as I have found, they have found that they have complex systems, and that just adding a mega dose of one nutrient is not necessarily the solution to anything, unless they have a specific enzyme deficiency or point problem.
As for ME/CFS, patients have infections which deplete nutrients, patients have genetic mutations that cause them to use nutrients at various rates, patients have environmental toxins like mycotoxins, oxalates, heavy metals, and chemicals that cause greater needs for certain nutrients. And the ME/CFS researchers have found that patients have greater needs for many nutrients than healthy individuals. These nutrients do not work in isolation. I keep hearing you talk about one specific nutrient or one specific drug or one specific intervention making a miraculous change in someone's ME/CFS. I have found this to be false hope, by and large, because for the most part, most of us do not have one single nutritional deficiency, we are needy in several categories of nutrients, and need several cofactors to make each pathway run. And, for myself and working with many other patients, I have seen the results when adding a particular nutrient that is depleted, which makes the rest of the pathway run well until another bottleneck is run into, and then the magical nutrient stops working, waiting for the now new depleted cofactor to be added. And, when that cofactor (I'll pick molybdenum or B1, because I've seen them work very powerfully) is added, improvement happens once again. And, as these different factors are manipulated, other factors change in relation. We are a complex system of systems with multiple interacting pathways, and it is impossible to predict which pathway one specific nutrient is going to go down for the most part.
When, you actually have comprehensive nutrient testing done, and find out what deficiencies you might have, and work with these pathways and supplying nutrients, then you might also understand. But as long as you continue to bang the drum of one specific nutrient at a time, results will be few and far between....
