Affecting up to 3 percent of adults worldwide, heart failure invariably results in a reduced quality of life and shortened lifespan in those diagnosed with it. Having not understood its primary causes, conventional medicine focuses on the use of pharmaceutical drugs as a means of managing symptoms. In severe cases, as a last resort, heart transplants are carried out. Still unknown to many physicians, however, supplementation with the key micronutrient coenzyme Q10 has shown significant benefits for heart failure patients. Playing a vital role in the production of energy within the mitochondria, the ‘power plants’ of the body’s cells, the concentration of this important natural substance is known to diminish with age.
Studies have demonstrated an inverse relationship between levels of coenzyme Q10 and symptom severity in heart failure. Measuring body reserves of this crucial micronutrient can thus serve as an important indicator of prognosis. Heart failure patients with lower levels of coenzyme Q10 have been shown to have a higher risk of death, for example. Conversely, even in elderly people, high concentrations of this micronutrient are associated with a lower cardiovascular risk.
Long-term supplementation with 300 mg per day of coenzyme Q10 has been shown to significantly improve heart function and prognosis in heart failure patients. Impressively, a meta-analysis of 26 clinical trials involving 2,250 participants found that supplementation with coenzyme Q10 may reduce the risk of death from any cause in patients with heart failure. Particularly notably, the researchers propose that use of coenzyme Q10 has a “high probability of being more cost-effective than standard care alone.”
Additional cardiovascular-related benefits of coenzyme Q10 include reducing high serum levels of triglycerides, lowering blood pressure, and helping improve survival after cardiac arrest.
It has been known for over thirty years now that cholesterol-lowering statin drugs reduce the body’s levels of coenzyme Q10. Studies have shown that this class of drugs can cause a wide variety of side-effects, including muscle pain, fatigue, diabetes, cognitive problems, elevated liver function tests, decreased renal function, hemorrhagic stroke, and others. Given the importance of coenzyme Q10, many researchers believe that its depletion by statins may be directly related to these problems.
Notably, therefore, in 1989 the drug company Merck took out patents (US4933165A and US4929437A) on the use of CoQ10 in combination with statin drugs. However, despite apparently believing that the inclusion of CoQ10 with statins would be of “considerable benefit” to patients, Merck has never marketed any products containing this combination. One can therefore only assume that the company’s main motivation at the time it took out these patents was essentially to prevent others from doing so. The patents have since expired, however.
With conventional medicine unable to eradicate heart failure, and some of the drugs it prescribes for the condition even increasing the risk of death, there is clearly a need for an effective, safe, science-based alternative. The good news is that such an alternative already exists.
As Dr. Rath’s Cellular Medicine discovery reveals, the primary reason why heart failure occurs is a deficiency of the vitamins and other essential micronutrients that provide bioenergy to billions of heart muscle cells. These cells are responsible for the contraction of the heart muscle and for the optimum pumping of blood into circulation. Deficiencies of vitamins and other essential micronutrients impair the pumping performance of the heart, resulting in fatigue, shortness of breath, and other incapacitating symptoms.
In addition to coenzyme Q10, Dr. Rath’s approach to heart failure uses optimum amounts of vitamin C, along with additional micronutrients such as vitamin E, B vitamins, carnitine, and taurine. When used together in the correct doses, this nutrient combination can safely prevent and correct heart failure by optimizing levels of cellular energy in the heart muscle cells.
The bottom line is that enriching your daily diet with a supplementary intake of coenzyme Q10 and other key micronutrients optimizes the functioning of your heart. The pharma industry doesn’t want you to know this, but preventing heart failure is possible.