Minding Your P’s and Double Q’s
By now, you’ve probably heard of COQ-10 and what the supplement can do- boosting energy, speeding recovery, and helping to reduce the effects of certain medicines on your heart, muscles, and other organs. Well, one of the newer supplements on the block is PQQ-10, which some consider the “fountain of youth” for your cells.
PQQ-10 - its scientific name, Pyrroloquinoline quinone – is actually a compound found in plant foods. And, while it’s not currently thought of as a vitamin, some experts believe it could be considered an essential nutrient in the not too distant future.
So, what does it do? PQQ helps grow and develop cells and is an extremely powerful
antioxidant. Research shows that it plays a critical role in nutrition. And, when it’s deliberately omitted from diets in mammals, it impairs growth, compromises immune systems and interferes with the ability to reproduce.
But, what’s considered the most important function of PQQ is what it does to key enzymes involved in producing energy in our cells – called the mitochondria. PQQ not only improves energy production, it promotes the spontaneous generation of new mitochondria within aging cells – and that’s where it gets credit as being a “fountain of youth” – at least, for your cells.
The benefits of PQQ revolve around what it can potentially do for (or block) what happens to us as we age- Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s disease, and many other chronic degenerative illnesses. The current research on PQQ has mostly focused on its ability to protect memory and cognition in both aging animals and humans.
In animal studies, PQQ has been shown to:
reverse cognitive impairment caused by chronic stress and improve performance on memory tests
protect brain cells against damage
protect against the likelihood of severe stroke
prevent the development of a protein associated with Parkinson’s disease
protect nerve cells from a protein linked with Alzheimer’s disease
PQQ is sort of anti-aging armor for our most energy-intensive organs – the brain and the heart. And, it’s been shown to optimize health and function of the entire central nervous system.
So how much and how often? Well- the current recommendation of 10 to 20 mg of PQQ daily is mostly based on what researchers have seen in animal studies. For humans, studies have shown that 20 mg per day of PQQ resulted in improvements on tests of higher cognitive function in a group of middle-aged and elderly people. But, get this – the effects were even more significant when the test subjects also took 300 mg per day of CoQ10.
So, the bottom-line? Minding your P’s and Q’s may just help you (and your cells) have a longer and more productive life.
Jason Stone
Icelandic Fitness
