What is CoQ10? Benefits and Uses

By Dr. Justin Marchegiani

CoQ10, also known as ubiquinone or ubiquinol, is short for Coenzyme Q10. There are a few supplements that just about everyone would benefit from, and CoQ10 makes that list.

What is CoQ10 and What Does it Do?

Not only does CoQ10 work as an antioxidant, helping to break down free radicals, and as a ‘coenzyme’ helping to break down food— it also plays a crucial role in the production of ATP, the energy currency of life.

You may be familiar with mitochondria as “the powerhouse of the cell. In order for our bodies to make use of the food we eat, our mitochondria has to turn food and oxygen into useable energy in the form of ATP. This conversion process requires the presence of CoQ10.

Why is CoQ10 so essential for your health? Evidence is showing benefits for:

• Heart Health
• Reproduction
• Brain Health
• Energy Levels
• Free Radical Damage Protection
• Anti-Aging
• Eyesight Improvements
• Immune System Support
• Reduced Inflammation
• Firmer Skin

Heart Health: While further trials are pending, we’ve seen promising evidence for preventing and treating heart conditions. Studies suggest that taking CoQ10 may be able to prevent recurring heart attacks: In one study, patients who took CoQ10 within 3 days of having a heart attack were able to reduce chest pain and chance of another attack.

Additionally, one review of CoQ10 stated it “has potential for use in prevention and treatment of cardiovascular disease, particularly hypertension, hyperlipidemia, coronary artery disease, and heart failure.”*

Would you benefit from CoQ10 supplementation? Click here to get 1-on-1 support!

Reproduction: In men struggling with infertility, CoQ10 was shown to help by improving sperm count & quality. *

Lowers Inflammation: CoQ10 has shown an ability to lower two markers of inflammation, NT-proBNP and gamma-glutamyl transferase (an early marker for heart failure). Inflammation is commonly referred to the “root of all modern disease,” so lowering inflammation is powerful for preventing autoimmune disease, neurocognitive decline, and other markers of aging.

Firmer Skin: CoQ10 can help with the production of collagen and elastin, the proteins responsible for making your skin flexible and firm. Topical products may not contain enough active CoQ10, so it’s better to get this coenzyme internally.

Energy Levels: We’ve already learned that CoQ10 plays a vital role in the production of cellular energy, or “ATP.” In addition to this vital role, coenzyme q10 has been shown to help with energy levels post-workout. *

Protection From Free Radical Damage: Also known as oxidative stress, free radical damage is a power to be reckoned with, and a major factor of aging. CoQ10 is one of the first antioxidants on the scene when LDL is oxidized, and can even protect membranes against oxidation in the first place.

Brain Health: There is potential for CoQ10 to treat mitochondrial disorders and neurological diseases, such as Parkinson’s and ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis). Additionally, a 2014 study showed that those with higher levels of CoQ10 were 77% LESS likely to develop dementia. *,*

How to Get Enough CoQ10

Some coenzyme Q10 is actually produced naturally in your mitochondria, but natural production tends to decline with age.

Try incorporating more CoQ10-rich foods into your diet. CoQ10 rich foods include:

• Oily fish: salmon and sardines are great choices: remember to chose wild-caught seafood for maximum nutrient profile.
• Grass-fed beef: You also get the benefits of healthy fats and protein.
• Vegetables: Cauliflower, broccoli, and spinach are high in CoQ10 as well as other protective antioxidants. Remember to choose organic!
• Organ meats: Liver and kidney have high levels of CoQ10 (and are sources of a whole host of other rare nutrients!)

An easy way to ensure you’re getting the benefits of CoQ10 daily would be by taking it in supplement form. One pill (100mg) per day is generally a good maintenance dose, though depending on your health status and goals you may take more. For example, if you are trying to prevent or treat brain fog or dementia. Work with your functional medicine practitioner to determine your personal CoQ10 strategy.

Need help solving the underlying cause of your health issues? Click here!

Mitochondrial Nutrients on Fat Burning with Evan Brand | Podcast #206

Mitochondria are often referred to as the powerhouse of the cell. They are the tiny organelles inside cells that are involved in releasing energy from food. Their efficient function very much depends on one’s lifestyle and diet. Watch the video and learn the essential supports to these tiny friends before burning that fat on the gym!

Today’s podcast talks about ways to enhance one’s metabolism, the low-hanging fruits, how vegetarian diets miss out essential nutrients, or why carnitine deficiencies result in decreased ability to use long-chain fatty acids as metabolic fuel. Stay tuned for more and don’t forget to share. Sharing is caring!

Dr. Justin Marchegiani

In this episode, we cover:

00:15    B-Vitamins: The Low Hanging Fruit

06:07    Carnitine

11:39    Free-Form Amino Acids

14:13    Underlying Toxins that Affect Mitochondria

19:08    Functional Medicine that is Results Driven

23:25    CoQ10, Ubiquinol, and Ubiquinone

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Hey there it’s Dr. Justin Marchegiani, welcome back to the podcast. Evan Brand, how we doing today my friend?

Evan Brand: Hey man, happy monday. We’re playing with some new technology to try to make ourselves look pretty, so let’s see how it works.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, you had a new camera on, here I saw my same uhm– more updated uh– HD webcam. We may update that in the future to a 4K one, we’ll see how it goes. But today we wanted to chat about how to enhance your metabolism. What nutrients we can use to enhance your metabolism. So, why don’t we dig in? So, off the bat, we have various energizing nutrients. We have the low hanging fruit which are B-Vitamins. Yeah, B– B-1 which is gonna be thymine, B-2 which is going to be riboflavin, B-3 which is niacin or niacinamide, we have B-5 which is pantothenic acid primarily used by the adrenals, or significantly used by adrenals, B-6 which is P-5-P, or Pyridoxal-5-Phosphate. B-6 is really important for activating and converting a lot of our brain chemicals, amino acids in our brain like serotonin. F– err– 5-HTP to serotonin, to tyrosine to dopamine, adrenaline etc. And we also had B-9, a.k.a. folate, or folic acid. We wanna use activated form, so either calcium folinate, or L– uhm– MTHF which is activated folate. We also have B-12, me– methylated which are gonna be better,  hydroxy adenosyl as well, we wanna avoid the cyano form. So that kind of rounds up a lot of the B-Vitamins. So, first off, the low-hanging fruit for enhancing your mitochondria, enhancing your body’s ability to burn fat, let’s just say it’s the B-Vitamins. Now from a food stand point, really high and high quality meats and– and vegetables, right? So, that’s kind of a low hanging fruits. We really wanna make sure digestion is good for digesting meats and such. And we’re eating a really good kind of a paleo template, lots of vegetables, lots of healthy meats, and we have good digestion, that’s gonna help us off the bat to really maximize our B-Vitamin digestion, absorption and assimilation.

Evan Brand: I was looking at my O-test the other day and I thought, “Dang it!”. I was actually really-really low on B-6. Even though– I guess I have been supplementing for– maybe a few months after my O-test, but I can’t remember when I started it. So I was tryin’ to do the timeline like, will my D’s burning through my B’s quickly, due to working too much, or– what is it, you know, so, we find that B-Vitamins are low all the time. We do know that stress burns ’em up, you and I talk about this all the time with like amino acid metabolism, we talked about burning through neurotransmitters quickly, so– B-Vitamins, same thing, and then Vitamin-C, I would put that in the same category too. We actually test Vitamin-C on the organic acids panel, I would say like 9 out of every 10 people we test are low on Vitamin-C. I actually drink some this morning. I just do a mixed ascorbate powder, with the citrus bioflavonoids, and 25 hundred milligrams all you need in 2 months and you can rebuild your levels.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Wow that’s really good.

Evan Brand: What are you– what are you popping? ___[02:52], what is he swallowing?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh yeah, sorry about that.

Evan Brand: [laughs]

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I should had just turned out my mic so it wasn’t– it wasn’t grabbing it. Uhm– but, it’s B-Vitamins, carnitine, creatine, uhm– ribose, all of the mitochondrial nutrients that we need to help maximizing burning fat for fuel. So–

Evan Brand: Let’s talk about creatine. You– you men– you brought up creatine. Now, you know, people out there may say, “Oh, well creatine isn’t that for your muscles, isn’t that I should be using to increase muscle mass at the gym?”.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. [crosstalk]. It increase growth hormone too. It’s– it’s instantaneous muscle fuel. Uhm– but yeah, it’s– it’s really important for the mitochondria of course. And it– it’s fuel that can be used by the muscle right away. And again, what I like about the creatine is the fact that there is some in– in me, but the problem is not a lot like, 5 or 10 grams that I may get supplementally, you know, maybe a couple hundred milligrams in a mitochondrial support. But if I use creatine before the gym, Im– if I do like a kre-alkalyn or a creatine monohydrate, I’m gonna do 5 or 10 grams, and you don’t have to eat 20 or 30 pounds of meat to get that kind of creatine. So it’s nice to be able to supplement that just because the food wise, you’re not gonna get the same level of concentration. So there’s some really good benefits in there on the supplement side, especially for the lack of having to eat that much meat, it’s impossible.

Evan Brand: Right. Yeah, carnitine, let’s talk about carnitines. So, there’s a ketone and fatty acid section on the organic acid test. So we can kind of look at this and– and we can see whether someone’s been fasting or whether they’d been on like a ketogenic diet. And we can also tell too when there’s metabolism issues or metabolism defects you could call on, on the O-test. Now, what the prescription generally is for this when we see that these markers go high, the prescription could be acetyl L-carnitine, and very helpful for brain fog too. You know, we know– we had a lot of people that say, “Oh, I just don’t have the mental energy or the physical energies”. So they’re mentally tired, so they don’t have the motivation to get things done. That could be in– tied into amino acids but, for this conversation, it could be tied in to carnitine deficiency. And that also, like you mentioned is important for energizing and helping mitochondria, so if you’re a carnitine deficient, you literally, or not making enough energy at the cellular level. And you can replace carnitines supplementally, but as you mentioned, you do want the good meats in the diet. That’s why we see so many vegetarians and vegans, they show low on things like this on the test.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly, and if you look at carnitine, you know, what its job is, you go to any biochemistry textbook, you’ll find something known as the carnitine shuttle. And the carnitine shuttle, it essentially shuttles free fatty acids into the mitochondria. Let me see if I can find uh– my biochemistry– come on, one sec. Let me see if I have it close by. Yeah, I do, right here– here– alright.

Evan Brand: So free acid– so– so that– so this has to come from the diet. You’ve gotta have some free fatty acids coming, so–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, so you need the– so number 1, the carnitine shuttle’s really important because it’s gonna take free fatty acids, and it’s gonna dump it into the mitochondria, right, and then the body’s gonna be able to burn that up for fuel. But the other really-really important part– so carnitine shuttle is 188, 189– so we’re doing this on the fly here guys. We’re keeping it real for ‘ya all, okay? I’ll try to be the– the mayor or real ville here.

Evan Brand: [laughs]

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay.

Evan Brand: I see.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: 189. So, off the bat, we have carnitine right here. This is the mitochondrial matrix.

Evan Brand: Go a little higher, we can’t see it yet.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, sorry.

Evan Brand: There you go.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Oh, you could see it right here, your body is using carnitine right here. So this is the inner mitochondrial membrane. This is the outer, mitochondria membrane. So essentially, you could see carnitine is literally bringing all these good fatty acids inside the mitochondria. So you need carnitine to bring it inside the mitochondria. Now couple of things I wanna highlight here, is to make carnitine– you actually need– right here, check this out.

Evan Brand: Go a little higher if you want us to see– oh, right there. Okay, yeah, we can’t read it, it’s too small.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: [reads], carnitine can be attained from the diet where it’s from primarily in meat products. Carnitine can also be synthesized from amino acids, lysine and methionine, by a systematic pathway from liver, therefore these tissues are totally dependent on carnitine provided by the liver. And then there’s one more part in here that it talks about vegetarian diets are primarily deficient in methionine and lysine.

Evan Brand: Right.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So what does that mean? If you’re vegetarian, it’s a chance that those nutrients are gonna be low, you’re not gonna be able to make, ’cause you’re gonna go take carnitine in from animal products – meat, right? Or you make it from methionine and lysine. And if vegetarian diet are primarily deficient in methionine and lysine then you’re gonna have problem generating ATP, right? Adenosine Triphosphate, that’s the currency the ener— the energy currency in our body. We’re gonna have problem being able to generate that, being on a vegetarian diet.

Evan Brand: And what does that mean? In short, you’re gonna be tired. And this is why you go to your doctor, and they may try to diagnose you with chronic fatigue, or they may try to diagnose you with ADD, or ADHD so they can give you a methamphetamine derivative such as adderall or vyvanse to try to crank up your energy. You may be dependent on coffee to get yourself up and going in the morning. It’s not a coffee deficiency as some may want us to think. Or– you know, my wife, she loves her coffee but I’ll tell her, it’s not– a coffee deficiency, you know, it could be carnitine. What else you got for us?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So– so right here, check this out. So this section right here, it’s called “E”, it’s called carnitine deficiencies. Such deficiencies result in decrease ability to use long chain fatty acids as metabolic fuel, right? So saturated fatty acids, right– the m— the medium chain ones are– coconut oil, those kind of things. The longer ones are gonna be like our– our saturated ones are animal fats. Uhm– but right here, it says, “Secondary carnitine deficiencies may occur for many reasons including patients with liver disease, number 2 is individual suffering from malnutrition. Or– those on on strict vegetarian diets”.

Evan Brand: Boom! There is it.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And it also talks about severe infections, burns, trauma, pregnancy, as other mechanism or means in why you would be low in the carnitine, Isn’t that interesting?

Evan Brand: That’s crazy. Well that first paragraph you read, it said something about how you could source it from lysine and methionine as well but it requires an enzymatic process in the liver. And I thought, well, what about all these people that had toxic livers? They’re probably converting it the way they should–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mmmhhhhmm–

Evan Brand: So someone could say, “Oh, I’m tired”. And they could have meat in teh diet but it could be a liver problem, as well.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. Exactly, so– I wanted to just highlight there. A lot of people think vegetarian diets, you know are– are healthy but you’re missing key important nutrients. We’re not even talking about B-12. We’re talking about, you know, important self rebate– or important amino acids and methionine and lysine. And we’re talking about even B-12 and other essential fatty acids. We– we’re not even getting to Vitamin-A. Now people may say, “Wow you’re getting beta carotene”, yeah, but, you may not be converting beta carotene to Vitamin-A. One mechanism is if– if you see like people that have a little bit orangy kind of palms, that can kinda tell you that– uhm— you’re not converting it. Lower thyroid people have a harder time converting beta carotene to Vitamin-A as well. So, these just things you wanna keep in mind. And, some of the organic acids we’ll look at are ethyl malonate, and suberate, and adipate. These are the big ones that we’ll look at and if we see them go really high, it tends to mean that we’re not– uhm— we don’t have enough carnitine on board to really make this carnitine shuttle mechanism happen optimally.

Evan Brand: Yeah so– so even if– so– so you’re saying if that’s happening, even if the diet does have meat, so let’s say somebody’s following a paleo template–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Mmmhmm–

Evan Brand: You’re saying if we see high on these markers here–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani:  Mmmhmm–

Evan Brand: –we know that carnitine shuttles’s not happening. They’re still gonna be tired regardless of whether they’re paleo or not.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I mean, it’s gonna mean that pe– these people are not generating energy from they’re fat optimally, and that’s important. We wanna make sure we have good fatty acid energy uhm— that’s happening. And also we wanna be able to burn fat for fuel. So if we see people that have carnitine issues and we see weight loss challenges, well then we definitely wanna supplement carnitine, you know, I– I would say between 2 to 5 grams, uhm— daily. We wanna be doing that to really enhance fats kind of breakdown. So for— we have fat loss resistance or fat loss struggles and we see issue with carnitine, you really wanna make sure we’re getting good carnitine on the food, right? Animal products, methionine, lysine, those kind of things. And then we wanna make sure that we supplement that on if– if we have other stressors on top of it, so really make sure that its pathways are working well especially if we see the ethyl malonate, the suburate, the adipate in the organic acids being uh– a little bit more impaired.

Evan Brand: Well let me ask you this, I know you’re a big fan of free-form amino acids. So will this be another good time to throw those in because you mentioned like lysine, methionine in this process, could that help, if you wanted to throw it in along with carnitine?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, I think so. I mean, if you look on the– I think marker 7 through 14, there’s some areas that will correlate or look at the amino acids, and so that’s good to look at. So if we see lower amino acids, we wanna give a free-fatty acid formula. And again, amino acids gonna be low for two reasons, from an absorption reason, from a he— or 3, from an absorption issue, you’re not absorbing it too, you’re not– you’re not eating it, right?

Evan Brand: Yup.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And– and 3, you know, we may even wanna just supplement it on top of it as well. On the s– the stress part. So the stress part is a third one where you’re just burning up ’cause of stress. You’re– your’re just more catabolic.

Evan Brand: And that could be gut stress.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. You’re not eating it, you’re not absorbing it, gut stress is more of your absorption.

Evan Brand: Yeah.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: And then just the overall stress part you’re more catabolic and breaking it down. And so, we would add in additional amino acids if we saw some of those pathways low. And the reason why it’s nice, there are a lot of energy, 50% of the energy that you get from the aminos actually goes into the breakdown. So it’s kind of like–

Evan Brand: Aaah–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: It’s like using a credit card and having a 50% transaction fee, right?

Evan Brand: Ooh–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: You buy something for a hundred bucks, well you get charged a hundred and fifty ’cause of that 50$ transaction fee on top of it. The nice thing about aminos, is– you get uhm— easy absorption ’cause it’s on a free form so it’s already broken down for you, that’s the benefit.

Evan Brand: Ho– how often do you use those and what’s like the typical case when you’re using free form aminos?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: I don’t particularly use free form aminos myself ’cause I don’t have those markers coming back on my organic acids, but the uh– the big aminos that I will use are collagen peptides. Collagen peptides are amino acids primarily from connected tissues and much higher in glycine. Like a free form amino acid product like a ___[13:27], it’s amino acid supreme. It’s kind of more balanced across the board, where obviously connected tissue is higher in glycine, it’s lower in methionine, lower in ___[13:38], lower in uhm— uh– tyrosine but it’s higher on the other aminos, hydroxyproline, proline and glycine. And so I use those primarily, but with patients if I see those pathways coming back, or I see vegetarian issues, we’ll go with the amino acids, we’ll aso go collagen, and then we’ll add in some of these carnitine or like a mitosynergy or mitochondrial support that has a lot of those nutrients in it as well. It’s kind of we–

Evan Brand: Oh, okay. So you could do both. You’re saying could put, you know, somebody who is like an ex-vegan or vegetarian, you may put them on amino acid free form, as well as collagen, correct?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Evan Brand: Cool. That’s awesome. So you mentioned the B’s, you mentioned the C’s, we talked about aminos, we talked about the carnitine shuttle, uh– mitochondrial toxins, I mean, why do these happen in the first place. We’ll use either some type of underlying toxicity that’s affected the mitochondria, so– that could be antibiotics, that could be various toxins that we test for, like gasoline additives, xylene for women wearing perfume, that’s a big, big toxin we see, cosmetics, hair dye, we see a chemical called acrylamide that we can test for, that affects mitochondria. So toxins in general, infections like Justin mentioned in the gut, so, getting your gut checked out for parasites, bacteria, H-pylori, worms, etc., candida overgrowth could all steal nutrients as well. Uh– I had one other toxin in mine. It was the xylene, the acrylamide we see, oh, pesticides, I mean, duhh, that’s easy. I mean–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, pesticides, the antibiotics, right? I would say–

Evan Brand: Lots of chemicals?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: ___[15:06] products. Yup. I think those antibiotics are a big one too, so be careful on that. If we need to use antibiotic we don’t wanna make sure it’s specific and try to maximize the natural herbal compounds first. Uhm– so B-Vitamins, carnitine, creatine, cocutane’s another big one. Cocutanes’ really important, it helped gather all those hydrogens. Better spit out after the uhm— when it goes to the electron transport chain. And through, you know, goes to the krebs cycle electron transport chains, helps gather all those extra hydrogens. Right, we have all these ro— re– reduction reactions that occur uhm— during the kreb cycle which is basically an increase in these electrons that are– and– and the cocutanes gather a lot of them up. And it just spits out more ATP af–after it goes to the electron transport chain. So it’s really important for generating more fuel, more energy.

Evan Brand: My mitochondria showed some– some dysfunction. I got my uh– GPL-Tox chemical test done, and I did have some dysfunction. I wasn’t bad, but I had, I was a– I was a couple point off. I was like in the green, headed towards the yellow. So, I’m doing some of the mitochondrial support nutrients right now. And also, uh– you and I were looking at my blood work. My homocysteine was up a bit too. And that was due to my– uh– folate, B-12, B-6, deficiencies. The B-12 actually looked okay on the O-Test, but the B-6 was a bit low. Folate metabolism looked okay, so, maybe it was just B-6 causing homocysteine to go up, I don’t know. That’s– it [crosstalk] something else.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So– some of this could be genetic, some could be stress-based–

Evan Brand: Yeah.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: So I mean, the best thing is you’re diet’s great and checked out often, “Hey you do your best to manage those stress”. You know, you work with– on the general public, and– and helping them get help this– that– that always can be stressful. And then we just supplement. We make sure we have high quality, uhm— methylated B-Vitamins that are gonna help with that. So we just kinda hit it from all ends.

Evan Brand: Yeah.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Uhm– do you wanna hit a couple questions that are related to this topic?

Evan Brand: Yeah, I’ve been– I’ve been firing the chat up so do you mind uh– bringing them?

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah, so I’m gonna just– if you guys can kind of keep the questions to these specific topics, that’s gonna help. Uh– if not we’re just gonna go through and– and cherry pick ’em. Uhm– “Any supplements or strategies that–“, nope, that’s not gonna be pertinent, sorry. Let me keep on rolling here. “How about P-Protein for a vegetarian diet?”. Yes, P-Protein is really good, you could do P-Protein, you can also add in free form amino acids as well. Those are some g– great options, I think it’s very good. Uhm– Alesson writes in, “I react to all animal proteins, autoimmune disease, etc., ___[17:32] toxic too from iron overload”. Well that’s pretty– it’s interesting, if you’re a female, you should be menstruating unless you know, unless you’re menopausal then it’s totally different. But if you’re cycling female you should menstruating, so having iron overload is pretty hard to do. Now if you’re amenorrhea because your hormones are offline, uh– your iron may also be artificially high ’cause of inflammation. Inflammation can increase uhm— you know, basically iron can act like a reactio— reactive oxygen species, ROS, so it’s like gasoline in the fire. So like an artificially, look like it goes higher, but it’s more of a result of inflammation, so it could be at too. But yeah, you’d wanna do kind of a GAPS, SCD, autoimmune template, maybe elemental diet to kind of get the inflammation under control. For sure–

Evan Brand: Uh– let me add a couple– couple comments to that. You know, I’ve discussed this before with meat. You know, meat gets the– it– it gets the blame, right? Like people will blame the eggs, or they’ll blame the animal protein, but I would go as to far as to say– there’s probably an infection component here which is why you can’t tolerate the meat. So if it’s all meat, I mean if it was red meat, I’d say, well, you know, we have some clients that have had a tick bite and they become allergic to the red meat. But if you’re saying it’s all meat, to me I bet there’s something going on, potentially H-Pylori–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: With the gut. 100%.

Evan Brand: Yeah–

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: They gotta go to the 6-Rs–

Evan Brand: [crosstalk]

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: They gotta go to the 6-Rs. Yeah they gotta remove the bad foods, replace the enzymes, repair the gut lining, the hormones, remove the infection, repopulate, reinoculate, probiotics retest. But in the meantime, pre-digest all that food, get on a really hypoallergenic, easy to– to process diet, and then pre-digest all that food with– with good cooking methods to help.

Evan Brand: Yup.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent. Let’s see here any other questions. Uh– doctor Jack Cruz says “only about one third of energy comes from food”, well, I mean, you know, we’re gonna be tapping in if or more ketogenic or we’re lower carbohydrate, we’ll be tapping in more to our body fat, so there is that, right? Just tapping into our body fat. Uhm– you got about one day’s worth of energy stored in carbohydrate, about 30 days worth of energy stored in fat. So it makes sense to really tap in to that. Uhm– and then regarding– so I guess it depends, right? ‘Cause you– you’re gonna be burning some on your body, some on– some from the food and some of the other food will be building blocks for your muscle, for your mitochondria, like actually, regenerating your body. So, I mean, I guess depends. Err– like– I– I kinda think of like regeneration is like, okay it’s going into the savings account, I think of like burning it’s going into the checking account that’s being spent right away. So we kinda have like our savings account, our checking account for right away, our savings account for regeneration. And then like, we basically have our long term savings which is more tapping into like our fats for fuel, etc. Does that make sense?

Evan Brand: Yeah, are they– are they trying to say like the other part of it like sunlight, I know– you and I have both done multiple podcast. Jack Cruz is in– a mutual friend of ours so we’ve chatted with them plenty of times. You know, sunlight is– is huge. We’re not saying that you– uh– you can ignore that. You still need exposure to sunlight. That’s just the [crosstalk] though.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah. The problem with Jack Cruz is this, alright. From what I understand, Jack does not work with patients on the functional medicine side directly, okay? And I can tell you, I wish it was as simple as, no EMF, get Vitamin-D, eat lots of seafood, avoid inflammatory foods, and everyone was healed. It would make my job a thousand times easier, right? So of course, part of a– a good healthy lifestyle is mitigation of EMF. It’s gonna be “Get sunlight”, it’s gonna be grounding, it’s gonna be doing all those things. I can tell you personally, that very rarely is enough. I wish it was, it’d make my life a thousand times easier. I don’t– you know, I wouldn’t– I wouldn’t invalidate doctor Jack for saying any of the– any of those, I think they’re really helpful and they’re good foundational principles to add into your repertoire but they are not the holy grail, that is not it. You gotta do more than that. Doing that is not gonna fix an infection, it’s not gonna fix, you know, poor digestion, nutrient deficiencies, toxic overload, you need extra support above and beyond that. I think it’s important but not the whole story.

Evan Brand: Yeah, like gasoline additives for example, you know, you could set out naked in the sun for 12 hours, you’re not gonna detox, these– these things that are deeply stored inside of us no matter what you do unless you really start to use some nutrients to focus on that. Or you’re doing something maybe like a near infrared sauna or something else to help penetrate. You– you just can’t get the penetration level that you need from just sunlight alone to help with toxins. And then the infection piece like you said, I had H-Pylori, I had giardia, I needed herbs to clear those things out.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Exactly. Yup. So just keep that in the back of your mind. Again, you know, I don’t have a dog in the fight, I just wanna make my– my tool bag, right? The tools that I utilize to help patients uhm— get bigger and better so I can help more people, like, I don’t have an affinity to use a screwdriver over you know, a wrench, monkey wrench so to speak. I– I don’t care, right?

Evan Brand: Yeah.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Think of like the monkey wrench being like this supplement or that test, or this diet, I– I don’t care I– I’m result driven. A lot of people, they wanna market themselves so they’re– they’re– they need of what they say to be unique ’cause they’re not necessarily results driven, they’re more marketing driven. So, you just kind of keep that in the back of your head.

Evan Brand: Yeah, so to all just add at one last comment, we’ll move on. So if you gp to a lime expert for example, they’re gonna blame everything online. And if you go to a Hashimoto’s expert, they’re saying everything’s your thyroid, you go an adrenal expert, everything is adrenals, adrenal fatigue, adrenal dysfunction, you know, so– we– we try to be specialist and generalist at the same time, meaning, you gotta address all biosystems. So it’s not that these people are wrong, and it’s not that these people are right. It’s that everybody has the piece to the puzzle. Now if you’re business model, selling books on genetics, you need to talk about genetics a lot. If you’re book is on adrenals, you gotta talk about adrenals a lot. But, you’ve gotta have all of it. So why limit yourself, because like you say, it– at the end of the day, all that matters is, did the person get better? Yes or no. If the answer is no, then you’ve got to open up the tool bag to more tools.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: That’s it, a hundred percent. Another question came in here, uhm— CoQ10, ubiquinol, ubiquinone– ubiquinol from ___[23:30] is a reduced form, so it has an extra electron, uhm— ubiquinone uh– obviously doesn’t have that extra electron. Ubiquinones were a lot of the– you know, the research is, uh– ubiquinol it’s– it’s like one less enzymatic kind of conversion so they’re supposed to be a better reaction, a better conversion or absorption. Uhm– if you’re older, not as much studies on the ubiquinol therefore I still use the ubiquinone but I think, ubiquinol could– it– it’s promising and potentially if you’re older, that may make sense but if not, you know, 3 to 500 milligrams of ubiquinone is gonna be helpful. A lot of good research on that, just make sure it’s good quality.

Evan Brand: Especially if you’re taking statins. ‘Cause we know statins deplete CoQ10 and statins are pastel like candies. So if you’re doing one, gotta make sure that’s in the– in the protocol.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yeah you have this uhm— this methylmalonic acid pathway, right? So you have essentially this HMG-COA reductase enzyme, right? And this, it gets to blocked out by statins, so you have like cholesterol, and uhm— essentially this enzyme is what– ugh– let me think–

Evan Brand: I’ve seen the picture. I know exactly what you’re talking about.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: One more step down, it’s actually– you have, this HGM-COA reductase enzyme, and then cholesterol gets made, and then you have all these different important antioxidants like CoQ10, and all these other, the sterol compounds that come off of it. So we have this HMG here, cholesterol here, so it blocks this conversion so you don’t get the CoQ10, you don’t get these other important antioxidants that– that come off of it. Uhm– that’s the problem. Now, insulin is one that actually upregulates that enzyme so it causes more cholesterol. So a lot of people can actually get their cholesterol modulated by just getting inflammation under control, getting insulin under control, by getting their carbs dialed in. But uhm— first thing I would say is, you– you need CoQ10, so if you are using a statin you really have to– you know, really get that addressed on the CoQ10 side. Now we’ll look again in the inflammation and the insulin under control first. You may not even need a statin.

Evan Brand: Yup, well said.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Okay, excellent. Alright anything else you wanna mention here Evan before we go?

Evan Brand: I think that’s it, we’ll just mention the websites so people can reach out if they need help.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Yes.

Evan Brand: You can check out justinhealth— it’s justinhealth.com, you could reach out for consult. Justin works for people around the world, skype, phone, Facetime, whatever you gotta do to get in touch with you, that’s what he does. Same thing for me, my website’s evanbrand.com. We’ve got combined total of 500 and something pieces of content. Uh– just among the podcast alone. So if you all had a specific topic that you wanna see if we’ve covered, just search justinhealth in the topic or evenbrand in the topic, I bet we’ve covered it. And uh– Jack Cruz, you know, uh– we’ve interviewed him, Justin has, I think I’ve had Cruz on my show maybe like three times. The last time we were talking all about 5-G and– EMF and all that and why he feels so good in Mexico, pretty interesting. So, check it out if you want to.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Excellent. Alright Evan, great chatting with you, again, give us subscri— a subscribe, give us a like, hit the bell so you get the notifications here later. And appreciate you guys. Sharing is caring. Any help we’re here for you all. You guys take care. Evan, have a good day.

Evan Brand: See you later, bye.

Dr. Justin Marchegiani: Bye.

References:

https://www.evanbrand.com/

https://justinhealth.com/