I have heard about this COQ10 but need some more light on this subject.
All I know is what I can bearly remember and that it has something to do with Oxygen. Is this correct? My Dr. said it was OK to take this, after my asking it was alright, and he said sure. I have been on this now for about a week and it has reduced my muscle pain in my legs from Lipitor. I think I read a thread about this helping another person, but my memory is not to good, so if you can enlighten me, I surely appreciate it.
[removed]
Ed
Last edited by HBMod07; 08-24-2006 at 12:25 PM.
Reason: Posting contact information is NOT permitted
It is good to hear that COQ10 is helping with muscle problems. Here is a brief explanation of why it helps :
COQ10 is made by your liver and is used in the muscle cells to produce energy. When you take a statin, it stops your liver from producing cholesterol. But it also stops the production of COQ10. Which is why muscle pain and weakness is a common side effect of using statins. And why supplementing with COQ10 provides relief.
Cheers,
Mark
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Type 1 since 1977. On Lantus, Novorapid and Actrapid.
I read that a healthy young person produces about 500 mg./day of ubiquinone (CoQ-10.)
Has ANYONE seen any good data showing the effect on the measured CoQ-10 in blood or cells before and after statin administration. What is the percentage lowering? Since this is assumed as GOSPEL on a zillion sites, I'm surprised how difficult it is to find anything quantified. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, because good internet searches are getting harder and harder to do when so many companies are ramming ads in our faces...pages and pages and pages of sales sites for CoQ10!
Yes , I have seen the data.....You are right, it is NOT easy to find. Dr. Salvatore DiMaurro found that Lipitor depleted COq10 within 14 days of initiation. He is also somewhat of an expert on CoQ10.
I searched Dr. DiMauro and found a plethora of references to his treating 7 patients with cerebellar ataxia with doseages of CoQ10 for 300 to 3000 mg/day to get a 25% improvement in a year as measured by balance tests etc. Also several discussions about hereditary ataxia caused by a genetic inability to produce CoQ10 and it's relationship to muscular dystrophy..
Nothing though about normal people taking statins and getting a measured lowering of CoQ10 and the resultant development of muscular problems.
Try the report referenced by the following:
Cholesterol Drugs And The Depletion Of Coenzyme Q10: A Review Of Human And Animal Data.
By Peter H. Langsjoen, MD
Lenin, I'm sorry, I should have told you how to find it. I couldn't find it until i called Dr. DiMauro to talk to him about my mother/s ataxia caused by lipid lowering medications. You can find it if you look up...DiMauro atorvastatin and Coq10. Peter Langsjoen is also an expert in Coq10. Most of his expierence is from hands on effects with his patients. He has alos found that while Zetia does not interfere with the production of Coq10 (just like they say)...it does not allow your body to absord CoQ10 and other fat soluble vitamins (what they don't tell you). In effect the entire time my mother was taking CoQ10 supplements the Zetia was not allowing her to absorb it.
In my research I came upon Langsjoen many many times. I'm afraid I have to put him close to the Wacko fringe. Even giving him credibility, all I see are many "may," "might," "seems plausible" etc. He pretty much clains that CoQ10 cures everything, echo of Pauling.
NO hard data.
I must say, that for something so often reported and accepted as gospel like "statins deplete CoQ10," one might think that there would be a plethora of data or at least ONE good double-blind study. The CoQ10 benefits are beginning to look to me like a really good ad-campaign to sell yet another supplement, a rather pricey one.
Even with my natural skepticism, I must say this lack of evidence really surprised me. It seems almost to rise to the level of the Rask-Pauling hype about ascorbate and amino acids with no real evidence other than conjecture.
I'm really flummoxed by this especially since I have dumped several hundred dollars on this stuff.
Lenin,
Just when I thought it was safe to give the 100mg of COQ10 I have been taking to speed the recovery from my earlier statin experience-most of the credit for my improvement......maybe not? If it's true the body produces about the equivlent of 500 mg on its own-are supplements like this truly necessary? I've just started back on 20 mg of Pravastatin to lower my LDL number...and I'm still consuming 100mg of COQ10 (which cost double of what the statin cost me!) is it worth continuing while on statins to maybe help offset the reduction that statins cause? Just wondering
Lenin, did you do what i said and look up DiMaurro and Atorvastatin? I have also talked to him, and as we all know, not all information is published or readily available. Statins stop the production of Coq10; therfore, you are not getting the supply that your body would normally make. Is it worth taking the Coq10? Or maybe a better question...is it worth trying to lower your cholesterol?
Our body's production of CoQ10 slows down with age. Scientists say it starts happening after the age of twenty, with a more accelerated drop after forty. So it makes sense to me to take a supplement, particularly if you are taking any medications, such as statins.
Although CoQ10 research is ongoing, I would hardly consider Langsjoen a quack. He has participated in CoQ10 studies since the early 1980s, which is more than most doctors can say. To date, Langsjoen has logged more clinical usage of CoQ10 than any other American doctor. He has used it in his own practice, and has noted that 80% of his patients have experienced clinical improvements in four weeks, with maximum improvement in six to twelve months. He says that as their heart function improves, he has to decrease other medications. So Langsjoen, unlike most other medical practitioners, actually has hands-on medical evidence that CoQ10 benefits patients.
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"Men and nations will act rationally when all other possibilities have been exhausted."
For the moment, we'd better leave Rath and Pauling out of this. That's a completely different matter, and one which has been totally ignored by the medical profession. So that's still all up in the air as far as I'm concerned.
I don't recall Langsjoen saying that CoQ10 is a cure-all. He just reported the notable improvements he observed in patients who were given CoQ10, which for many resulted in a decreased need for certain medications.
You can cite all the studies you want about statins, but that doesn't make them some kind of miracle drug, either. They don't cure anything. If anything, they probably only lead to more long-term problems, and their potential for causing short-term side effects are underestimated in my opinion.
In your opinion, which is more important for our overall health and well-being, statins or ascorbate?
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"Men and nations will act rationally when all other possibilities have been exhausted."
Without a doubt, once the minimum amount of ascorbate is taken in with food, statins are FAR more important to health and well being for the large group of people with high and dangerous blood lipids.
If Vitamin C SUPPLEMENTATION or statins were to be removed totally from all markets, I am certain that the damage would be far greater from the removal of the statins. There is zero question in my mind about this.
There is of course a certain mimimum amount of Vitamins C that must be ingested to avoid the deficiency disease, scurvy. For British sailors spending months at sea it was found that some lime juice every day provided it...hence, "limeys." So of course I do not deny that ascorbate is a Vitamin in every sense of the word and necessary for life but with a varied diet of fruits and vegetables, the deficiency isn't likely anymore...even at sea where the only 3 month voayages are on Cunard Vessels with PLENTY of fresh fruit...limeys can get their fill in a waterfall of Margaritas.
Perhaps I am being too hard on Dr. Langsjoen who may be merely a pawn in the hands of the bigger unscrupulous players who use his limited research out of context to trumpet the cure-all, wonder drug aspects of ubiquinone...without a shred of proof.
Without a doubt, once the minimum amount of ascorbate is taken in with food, statins are FAR more important to health and well being for the large group of people with high and dangerous blood lipids.
Well, I can't say that I would agree with that, either, since no one knows what the optimum intake of vitamin C should be. Pauling searched the medical journals for an answer to that, but there is not one single mention of what the optimum intake should really be. True, a mere 10mg will prevent acute scurvy, but so what? I believe....no, I am convinced, that the optimum intake is actually much higher than the RDA. And they keep on raising the RDA for vitamin C. First it was 60mg, then 90mg. Didn't they just raise it again, or at least recommend a higher intake? Nevertheless, I believe that the health of the general public can improve significantly if they increased their intake to levels much higher than the currently recommended RDA. I think that they would remain healthy longer, and not get sick as much. But of course, that would be bad news for doctors and the drug companies, wouldn't it?
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"Men and nations will act rationally when all other possibilities have been exhausted."
Don't you HONESTLY believe that, some 36 years after Pauling's claim of "curing the common cold" with 6 grams of Vitamin C and the sea of claims for this and that cure that have cascaded from the likes of Matthias Rath, Gary Null and several other quacks in the decades since, that SOME evidence supporting the multi-cures claimed for ascorbate would have emerged.
My god, the NIH among a half dozen other double bliinded studies found the effect on a common cold was pure placebo and this was done 25 years ago.
And CANCER: the MAYO clinic did THREE double blind studies debunking any benefit in cancer...using 10,000 mg./day....results: NO BENEFIT.
I mean, really, you are an intelligent man. Why cling to the 30 year old "maybe's" and "might's" when there is hard evidence pointing to crude, hard, money-grubbing fraud with ascorbate claims?
After being thorougly disproved, it is irrational to cling to something that long ago "showed promise." At some point promise should go out the window.
The Ptolmeic structure of the universe once seemed immensely plausible...til Copernicus showed it up as total nonsense.
What is it about Vitamin C that keeps you clinging to what you must KNOW is not true? I'm really curious what your belief is built upon.
I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss the relationship between CoQ10 and statins. There's not even a question that statins have the potential to deplete reserves of CoQ10 in a matter of weeks. Especially since this relationship has already been established by major pharmaceutical companies, including Merck who have two patents for a statin to be combined with CoQ10. Everyone here should be able to check for themselves at the US Patent Office on Patent Number: 4,933,165 Patent Number: 4,929,437.
The effects of CoQ10 depletion are memory loss, muscle pain and weakness etc. Although, whether the bodies own reserves of CoQ10 can be replenished through supplementation might be a better question. Of which, I believe they can. Unfortunately the world's supply of natural CoQ10 is very limited, and the supplementation itself is cost prohibitive.
And while the body creates its own reserves of CoQ10, much less as we age, the same does not hold true for Vitamin C. Meanwhile, Vitamin C has already proven to have cholesterol lowering properties, among many other uses. Interesting to note, our bodies also need Vitamin C to properly synthesize and replenish its own reserves of CoQ10.
Isn't it funny how people will jump on the cholesterol band wagon..while at the same time, they completely blow off CoQ10? I saw that you mentioned the patents again from merck on statins with Coq10. I know that I can read patents, and it seems to me that Merck finds Coq10 vital....they also inform us that statins deplete Coq10. Co Q10 is vital for the heart. Thanks adec, I'm glad that someone else can see the forest for the trees. I also find it incredible that the FDA subcommittee looked at statins and recommended that they not be approved because of their ability to cause cancer in animals in levels equal to or less than those given to humans. The FDA over ruled them. Also, this was before the drugs companies decided to keep pumping up the strengths and dosages of lipid lowering medications.
Well, I may ask the same question about you, just as I've often asked myself that same question about mainstream medicine's vehement bias against vitamin C, which has been going on for as long as I can remember. Yes, their unrelenting bias continues to this day, even though many studies have supported the beneficial effects of this vitamin in a wide range of bodily functions and even in the prevention and treatment of various disorders. Any doctor who advises his patients not to take supplemental vitamin C is just plain stupid!
One book which I would highly recommend is "Ascorbate: The Science of Vitamin C", by Dr. Steve Hickey and Dr. Hilary Roberts. The book is objective, and covers a wide range of good information.
It's interesting that you should mention the Mayo clinic study. This study was led by C. G. Moertel, who was a hostile critic of vitamin C. In this study, they administered 10 grams of vitamin C per day to terminally ill cancer patients in order to determine if there were any benefits in terms of survival time and quality of life. The Mayo clinic study concluded that there was no benefit, which ran contrary to a similar study which had been conducted previously by Pauling and Cameron. Pauling and Cameron reported that patients lived more than four times longer than those subjects which received no vitamin C. So why the disparity? Well, for one thing, at no time did the Mayo team administer vitamin C intravenously, as did Pauling and Cameron. The Mayo team gave only oral doses. This in itself is significant, since much higher blood levels of ascorbate can only be achieved via intravenous doses. Secondly, whereas Pauling and Cameron treated patients indefinitely, the Mayo team treated patients only for an average of seventy-five days, and then stopped treatment completely. The result was that as soon as treatment stopped, the patients began to die rapidly. Whereas only one patient died during the seventy-five days of vitamin C therapy, more than half the patients died within seventy-five days of discontinuing vitamin C.
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"Men and nations will act rationally when all other possibilities have been exhausted."
I have heard about this COQ10 but need some more light on this subject.
All I know is what I can bearly remember and that it has something to do with Oxygen. Is this correct? My Dr. said it was OK to take this, after my asking it was alright, and he said sure. I have been on this now for about a week and it has reduced my muscle pain in my legs from Lipitor. I think I read a thread about this helping another person, but my memory is not to good, so if you can enlighten me, I surely appreciate it.
Ed
OK-- I've heard so much discussion on the subject of COQ10, now lets get down to the nitty gritty of how much of a dose should be taken for muscle loss and weakness in the legs from the thigh down to the calves. I at time can feel pain the muscles in my buttocks.
At certain times my knees go into a partial collapse, like buckling of the knees. As I have stated, the COQ10 HAS HELPED, but I could use some guidance in the amount I should take. My supply is of 100mg. stregth.
