CoQ10 and Statins- Benefits of CoQ10

I’ve mentioned CoQ10 in a previous post, but I want to discuss more specifically the importance of CoQ10 and statin drugs.

One of the best benefits of CoQ10 is for those individuals who are taking statin type drugs (such as Lipitor) to lower their cholesterol. I’m not interested in discussing the controversies over whether or not these drugs are actually effective for preventing heart disease- not in this post, at least.  What is clear, is that although these drugs do seem to be effective in lowering a person’s cholesterol levels, they also have the nasty side effect of dramatically reducing that same individual’s levels of a vital nutrient called CoQ10.

CoQ10 and Statins

How does that link work?  What is it about a statin drug that also greatly depletes this nutrient as well?  The answer lies in the mechanism of how a statin works.

The first thing to understand is that the body manufactures its own cholesterol.  Yes, even though cholesterol has been dragged out as some sort of heart disease bogeyman over the last few decades, it’s also true that your body NEEDS cholesterol.  It forms the basis for many vital structures in the body, like cell membranes, certain hormones, and Vitamin D.

So your body makes its own.  Most of that goes on in the liver, but this stuff is manufactured all over the body and then converted into whatever structure is necessary.

We also get cholesterol from dietary sources, as well.  It’s interesting to note that breast milk has a high concentration of cholesterol in it (again indicating it is an important substance for the body).

If a person’s blood chemistry shows excessive cholesterol levels, doctors will often prescribe a statin drug to try to lower those levels.  Here’s the idea behind that.

Statin drugs block a chemical precursor to cholesterol called mevalonic acid; the name isn’t important to remember.  Just recognize that, like anything else, cholesterol is made up of precursors or building blocks.  If I want to make a cake, I need flour and eggs and other stuff.  If I don’t  have any flour, I’m not making any cake.  If I don’t have any mevalonic acid, I’m not going to make any cholesterol.

Once you shut down the body’s own synthesis of cholesterol (or reduce it), those pesky blood test results should fall back into line the way the textbooks tell us they should.  Hooray!  Except, as is generally the case any time you start messing around with the body’s physiology, there’s a nasty side effect.

You see, the exact same chemical precursors that lead to the creation of cholesterol, also lead to the creation of CoQ10.  Like cholesterol, your body makes a certain amount of this stuff itself, and when you shut down the spigot that lets the body make cholesterol, you shut off the CoQ10 supply as well.  If I don’t have flour, not only can I not make cake, I can not make bread, either.

Benefits of CoQ10

So what?  What’s so extra-super special about CoQ10 that we should care about not having it?  Plenty, actually.

There’s two major benefits of CoQ10 that we’re currently aware of:

• It is a vital part of the electron transport chain (hang on, hang on, I’ll get to explaining that, I promise)
• It is a potent antioxidant in the mitochondria, the energy generator of the cell.

Let’s start with the first one:  the electron transport chain.

CoQ10 and Energy

The electron transport chain is a fancy-schwancy name for the way in which the cells of your body create energy.  You see, the cells don’t use glucose (sugar) for energy.  They use a refined form called ATP (adenosine triphosphate, you don’t need to remember that), which is created by… you guessed it… the electron transport chain.

This isn’t as complicated as it sounds.  It’s really just a series of chemical reactions orchestrated by your body to refine one thing into another.  As I like to explain it, if you have a gasoline generator, you can’t just pour crude oil in it and expect it to go vrooom.

No, you need to use a refined product of crude oil called gasoline, and you make that refined produt by doing various chemcial shenanigans to crude oil.  Similarly, your cells use some nifty chemical manuevers to turn glucose into the chemical form they can actually use (that ATP stuff).  CoQ10 is one of the chemicals used in those nifty manuevers.

Just like if you’re missing a key gasoline-refining chemical, you’re not going to be able to turn crude oil into gas, so too if you’re missing CoQ10,  you’re not going to be making much ATP.  And if that sounds bad, it should, considering it’s the main fuel source for every cell in your body.

So, CoQ10 = pretty important.  But wait! There’s more.

Antioxidant Properties of CoQ10

In addition to actively participating in the generation energy in the cell, CoQ10 also acts as an antioxidant at the site of that energy creation.  Here’s what all that means.

That electron transport thing-a-ma-gig happens in a little chunk of your cell called the mitochondria.  It’s not terribly important to remember the name.  But it is important to know that there is a little mini-generator in each and every cell of our body, supplying that cell with the energy it needs to keep chugging along.

Most communities have a central power plant creating a huge amount of electrical energy that is then distributed over wires to individual households.  But imagine if each seperate household had its own generator?  That’s how it works inside your body.

Anyway, like any other piece of machinery, that generator can get rusty and fall apart over time.  In the body, we call it oxidative damage, and we prevent it with… all together now… anti-oxidants.

You’ve probably heard of antioxidants at some point in your life.  I’m not going to go into the details of how antioxidants protect the cell in this article… if you want to know more about that, you can read this article about how antioxidants work.

Suffice it to say that antioxidants kind of work like oiling a steel sword so it doesn’t rust.  There’s lot of different kinds of antioxidants, each of which seems to work best for certain kinds of areas of the body.  CoQ10 acts as a protective antioxidant in the mitochondria.

So not only does it work IN the generator as a part of the energy generation process itself, it also acts ON the generator as an anti-rusting protective agent.  Once again, we see CoQ10 = important.

Consequences of Lack Of CoQ10

Now that you know what CoQ10 does in the body, it’s not to hard to imagine what the result of a severe depletion of CoQ10 would be. Obviously, it’s going to be hard to create energy in the cell.  More specifically, it’s going to be hard to break sugar down into energy.

Additionally, the generators themselves are going to become more vulnerable to that ugly oxidative damage, also known as “rusting”… or, if you prefer, “aging”.  That’s right, oxidative damage is a big part of aging, and if you don’t protect your cell’s generators from it, they will rust up and fall apart, aging at an accelerated rate.

Knowing all that, it probably isn’t too surprising to hear that one of the major side effects of statins is muscle cramps (and other muscle problems).  If your muscle cells can’t create energy for themselves, they’re going to run into problems pretty quickly. I actually worry more about cardiac muscle than skeletal muscle when it comes to this, but hey, that’s just me.

CoQ10 Dosage for Statins

Luckily, CoQ10 is available in supplement form.  Actually, it’s also in most foods, it’s just that it’s in such tiny amounts that you’ll never eat enough to make a difference if you’re taking statins (so don’t even try).

Most people taking statins should at bare minimum take 100 mg a day to counteract the effects of that medication on their body.  If you’re taking a high dose of statins, go for more like 200 mg a day.

CoQ10 is a fat-soluble nutrient, so look for gelcaps filled with oil (soybean oil is a common choice).  There are some companies out there who have come up with a water-soluble way to provide CoQ10, but I suggest sticking with the oil-based, since that’s how it happens in Nature.

Either way, if someone you’re fond of is taking statins, be sure to pass on this article on the link between CoQ10 and statins… the health consequences are pretty stiff!

Stay healthy!