Pick up two bottles of CoQ10 at any pharmacy. The front labels say the same thing. The Supplement Facts panels do not. One says ubiquinone; the other says ubiquinol. The price difference between them is not marketing; it is chemistry.
Same molecule, two forms
CoQ10 helps your cells make energy, and to do that job it switches back and forth between two forms: ubiquinone and ubiquinol. In your blood, almost all of the CoQ10 is ubiquinol. Ubiquinone is the stable, crystalline, inexpensive form that is easy to make in a factory; your body has to change it into ubiquinol before it can use it. Ubiquinol skips that step. It is the form your body can use right away.
What the comparison showed
In a small published crossover in twelve healthy adults, four weeks of 200 mg a day of each form in sequence, plasma CoQ10 rose from roughly 0.9 to 2.5 micrograms per milliliter on ubiquinone and from 0.9 to 4.3 on ubiquinol. That is a real study at exactly the dose in Mega Restore. It is also a small one, and I will say the other half out loud: at least one trial in older adults found the difference between the forms was not statistically significant, and formulation matters at least as much as form. Ubiquinol costs roughly three times as much per milligram to put in a capsule. We chose it anyway, because on the balance of the evidence it is the better bet, and because I would rather show you the whole picture than only the flattering half.
The dose question is bigger than the form question
What surprises people is how little CoQ10 most combination products contain. A well-known direct-to-consumer D3 + K2 + CoQ10 formula delivers 40 mg of ubiquinol. The human studies use 100 to 300 mg. Whether you choose ubiquinol or ubiquinone, read the number next to it first. The form is the fine print; the dose is the headline.
Mega Restore is 200 mg ubiquinol, 5,000 IU vitamin D3 and 300 mcg vitamin K2 as MK-7 in one daily capsule. $89.99 for a 90-day supply, free U.S. shipping. See the full label and buy.
*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.
