With Valentine’s Day this weekend, I thought it would be good timing to review the best nutritional supplements for the heart.
Some of us are concerned about heart disease and preventing a heart attack and others are concerned about training their hearts to be in the best shape possible. Either way, there are a handful of supplements you can take to maximize your heart potential while at the same time ensuring that your heart beats as efficiently and strongly as possible. So here goes:
CoQ10: this is a vitamin or co-enzyme that is extremely beneficial to the way our mitochondria function. Our mitochondria are essentially our cellular respirators, creating ATP energy from the food we eat. CoQ10 is absolutely critical to proper mitochondrial function. It is estimated that 30% of our energy comes from CoQ10 alone. Since we have more mitochondria in our heart muscle, than any other muscle, it becomes clear the need for CoQ10 for our heart function. And while you can get CoQ10 from some food sources, the best way to ensure adequate CoQ10 supply, is to supplement on a daily basis. I recommend 150-300mg daily. Don’t get caught up in the ubiquinone vs. ubiquinol debate–it seems that both types are well utilized. Also, for anyone who is on a statin medication such as Lipitor or Zocor, you definitely need to take CoQ10 as the statin meds deplete our CoQ10. Unfortunately it seems that once we deplete our CoQ10 levels, it is difficult to get those levels back to healthy levels despite adequate intake. So make sure you start early with CoQ10 intake. We can always measure your individual CoQ10 levels with a simple blood test.
D-Ribose: Ribose, a pentose sugar which is usually supplied by the oxidative pentose phosphate–simply put, Ribose is a naturally occurring sugar that we metabolize. Ribose is needed for this particular metabolic pathway by which we create more ATP. Again, ATP is vital for muscle function and since our hearts are our most efficient utilizers of ATP, it is critical that we make sure our hearts have ample supply of ATP. A great way to ensure this is to add Ribose to your supplement regimen. Ribose comes as a powder that you can mix into water and juice. The optimal dose is 5000mg taken 3x/day. Ribose is used by both people with chronic fatigue and those who are long distance runners as Ribose helps prevent fatigue.
L-Carnitine: L-Carnitine is an amino acid that help shuttle fatty acids into the mitochondria. Fatty acids are critical to supplying ENERGY to our systems; our mitochondria then convert those fatty acids into ATP energy. This is a vastly under utilized system by most people. Optimal dosage of L-Carnitine is 1000-2000mg twice a day.
All of the above supplements are safe and are critical to mitochondrial functioning which is so important for proper heart contraction.
Have a Happy Valentine’s Day!!
PS: We will be getting several dozen new supplements in the next week or so that I will begin to share with you. One of them is a Ribose and Carnitine combination that will be awesome.
Tags: Carnitine, CoQ10, Heart health, Ribose