SuppVersity - Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone

Athletes from various sports train at the Olympic Camp, where the CoQ10 study was conducted. As unfortunate as it may sound, the number of "next big things" in the area of performance enhancing (legal) substances - at least in large parts - a line-up of supplemental non-starters. Against that background it is all the more surprising that today' SuppVersity article features not one, but two already available supplements that could in fact make a valuable contribution to your workout regimen. And while we are going to take a brief look at the latest research on the ergogenic effects of beet root juice later, we will start out with a study the results of which did actually surprise me - in a positive sense, that is. Reduced CoQ10 (ubiquinol) increases peak power in trained athletes (Alf. 2013)  -- While previous studies on the efficiacy of CoQ10 demonstrated at best inconclusive and statistically, but mostly practically insignificant benefits, the latest study from t...

Image 1: Susan Kokesh, blogger and the Crazy Running Mum at the Sierra Nevada ultra-endurance run a 52.4 miles "double marathon"   in September 2010; I probably would not even have survived this torture - respect! As a health conscious physcial culturist, you are probably aware that the vitaminesque nutrient CoQ10, which, due to its ubiquitous presence in all living beings, is also known as ubiqinone , plays a fundamental role in cellular bioenergetics . It is a necessary cofactor in the mitochondrial electron transport chain (i.e. your cell's way of "breathing", its respiratory chain) and is therefore essential for the production of ATP, the fundamental energy unit your cells are operating on. In that, CoQ10 works as a mobile redox agent that shuttles electrons and, interestingly, also protons (those little blue and red balls from Bohr's atom model ;-) in the electron transport chain. Within the health and fitness community, it is however better known...