What CoQ10 actually is
Most women first hear the word CoQ10 in a television commercial, usually one aimed at people taking a cholesterol medication. Dr. Martin says he was studying it back in the 1970s, long before the advertising, and the first thing he wants you to know about it is where it comes from.
Dr. Martin, The Doctor Is In, Episode 753Let me tell you something, your body makes CoQ10. It makes it. What? Yeah. Well, CoQ10 comes out of your mitochondria. Your body makes CoQ10 and CoQ10, it's part of your energy.
Inside each of your trillions of cells sit the mitochondria, which he calls the battery packs. Your blood carries food to the cell, and the battery packs turn it into ATP, the fuel your body runs on. CoQ10 is part of that machinery.
Why it matters more after 60
Two things tend to happen to a woman in her sixties. Her lipid panel often drifts up after menopause, which is when many women are first offered a statin. And energy becomes the complaint. Dr. Martin points out that low energy is still the number one reason people go to see their doctor.
Both run through the same battery packs, and the drug many women start in their sixties is one he says goes after them directly. If your doctor has raised a statin with you, should a woman over 60 take a statin? covers his wider view.
Where your body gets it
He asks his audience to guess which foods your body uses to make CoQ10, and then answers his own question.
Dr. Martin, The Doctor Is In, Episode 753You get CoQ10 from the animal kingdom. Eggs, CoQ10. Meat, steak, vitamin S, CoQ10, and cheese, CoQ10. Do you know that you do not make CoQ10 when you have salad, ladies. You don't. Now, I'm not saying don't eat salad.
He is not telling you to throw out your vegetables. He is telling you the salad is not where your CoQ10 comes from, and that a woman who cut back on red meat and eggs for her cholesterol may have cut back on the very foods her body uses to make it. For a closer look at the red meat question he gets asked about most, see is chicken healthier than beef?
"The last thing on earth you want to do is destroy your CoQ10"
Dr. Martin, The Doctor Is In, Episode 753What statins do to it
The episode opens on a study he had just read about statin drugs, the cholesterol lowering medications sold as Lipitor, Crestor and Zocor. The headline, as he reads it, was that statin drugs destroy your mitochondria.
Dr. Martin, The Doctor Is In, Episode 753What they're showing in this study is that it destroys your mitochondria. Okay? Those little battery packs not good.
If the drug damages the battery packs, he says, it takes their CoQ10 down as well. That is why commercials now tell people on a statin to take CoQ10. The reason that advice exists is the drug itself.
Your heart is a muscle
This is the part of the episode he says gives him a headache, and it is the reason the topic matters for a woman whose doctor is worried about her heart.
Dr. Martin, The Doctor Is In, Episode 753If statin drugs, meant to lower cholesterol, destroy the mitochondria in your cells, especially muscle cells. Muscle cells. It destroys the CoQ10 in the mitochondria of muscle cells.
Your heart is a muscle, he reminds you, a pump that beats around a hundred thousand times a day. And it has wiring of its own.
Dr. Martin, The Doctor Is In, Episode 753You've got an electrical grid up here. Neurons, nerves, neurotransmitters, and your heart has an electrical grid and muscle. It needs CoQ10 to work properly.
When he asks why so many people live with atrial fibrillation, his answer is the wrong fuel and not enough CoQ10 for the heart's grid. It is why he calls steak the best food for your heart. On his view of how cholesterol came to be blamed, read the whole cholesterol thing is a hoax.
CoQ10 and low energy
His first book was on chronic fatigue, and he wrote about the mitochondria in it. The people he saw were producing barely enough fuel to get out of bed.
Dr. Martin, The Doctor Is In, Episode 753A lot of people were surviving on fumes, not fuel, fumes. What's the first thing that we did? We changed their diet.
His prescription is not complicated, and he says it in one breath near the end of the episode.
Dr. Martin, The Doctor Is In, Episode 753You have to start with getting your ATP up, not down, getting your CoQ10 up, not down, getting your cholesterol up, not down.
The problem, he says, is the fuel: bread, pasta, cereal, sugar and food cooked in vegetable oils. If tiredness is the thing you notice most, his wider take is in chronic fatigue in women over 60.
Should you take it as a supplement?
He says CoQ10 is not something he talks about much as a supplement, because his first answer is that your body makes it from the right food. He also says he puts CoQ10 in one of his products, and that he has a reason. The reason runs through this episode: something is taking your CoQ10 away.
For a woman over 60 already on a statin, eat the eggs, the meat and the cheese, know what the drug does to your battery packs, and talk it through with your doctor.
Dr. Martin, The Doctor Is In, Episode 753Now, look, I never tell a person, I don't, not to take medication. I don't do that. I'm not your doctor. Okay? But I'm an educator.
Common questions
Should a woman over 60 take CoQ10?
Dr. Martin's first answer is food: your body makes CoQ10 from eggs, meat and cheese. He says it becomes a bigger concern when something is draining it, and the main thing he names is a statin drug.
Do statins lower CoQ10?
He says they do. On this episode he discusses a study reporting that statin drugs destroy the mitochondria, and with them the CoQ10 those battery packs produce, especially in muscle cells.
What foods have CoQ10?
He names the animal kingdom: eggs, meat, steak and cheese. He says you do not make CoQ10 from salad, and that vegetarians and vegans struggle to make enough.
Why does the heart need CoQ10?
The heart is a muscle with its own electrical grid, and he says it needs CoQ10 to work properly. He links low CoQ10 to the rise in atrial fibrillation.
When your CoQ10 is being drained
He says the last thing on earth you want to do is destroy your CoQ10. Martin Clinic's Ubiquinol gives you the active form of CoQ10 your cells use for energy.
60-day money-back guarantee. Formulated in clinic.These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Always consult your healthcare practitioner before starting a new supplement, especially if you are pregnant, nursing, taking medication, or have a medical condition.
