Aging and Energy

When your cells can’t make enough energy, you feel it. It’s a pretty good description of getting older. And that’s no coincidence. They go together.

But you don’t have to go through that.

Nature, in its wisdom, has provided us with a nutrient that can triple … even quadruple … your energy in just a few days.

It works by massively increasing the number of cellular “engines” you have. Then it protects those engines and keeps them humming along.

The engines I’m talking about are your mitochondria. They’re tiny, independent cells within your cells. Their job is to take nutrients and make energy for you. Not just energy to run around but also for pumping blood, blinking, and even reading the menu and deciding what to order.

But the same thing happens to mitochondria over time that happens to an old car engine. Oxidation (in a car it’s called rust) breaks down the engines so they don’t run as well, or produce as much power. You also have fewer of these engines as you age, and they’re undersized, and degraded.

Unless you do something about it, you get all the consequences of aging I just described. Slowing down like that is one of the things that bothers my patients the most about aging.

But when I introduce them to PQQ, everything changes. I love PQQ because it combines the two things that I have most specialized in; anti-aging and energy production. PQQ can reverse the energy loss that happens as you age, and keep your cells young and robust.

In one study, published in the Journal of Nutrition, researchers fed mice a diet supplemented with PQQ. The mice grew a staggering number of new mitochondria in just 8 weeks.1

But PQQ is a powerful antioxidant as well, which is not

very well known even in the anti-aging community. A new study gave five men and five women a single dose of around 10-15 mg (depending on their body weight) of PQQ. Then researchers measured changes in their antioxidant capacity. Over the next two days, PQQ significantly reduced their markers for oxidative stress.

Even better, in a second part of the study, the people got daily PQQ for three days. All of them had increases in metabolites showing their mitochondria were working much more efficiently.2 They got more energy with less effort. Which means PQQ is like a whole-body energy tune-up.

Plus, PQQ works harder and for longer than any other antioxidant. It’s so stable and strong it works for thousands of antioxidant cycles.3 Other related antioxidants, like the ones in green tea, break down quickly. But PQQ keeps right on protecting you hundreds of times longer.

No one else is talking about PQQ, and it’s mostly because they don’t know about it. It’s brand new, and unless you’re reading scientific journals you won’t have heard of it. They’re certainly not teaching this in nutrition classes, and you’re certainly not going to find out about it from your doctor.

Once you know how important it is, it is possible to get some through food. Right now no one is getting enough through food because they don’t know it’s there, or what to eat. But it is possible. It’s in a few, specific foods, and here’s what they are:

  1. The food with the most PQQ is natto. Natto is the Japanese fermented soy product (without all the processed soy waste like there is in Western soy foods).
  1. Eggs are the next best food for PQQ, which is one of the reasons eggs are a perfect food.
  1. The herb parsley has some PQQ.
  1. Kiwi, a fruit with lots of healthy fat, also has a small amount of PQQ.
  1. Green tea has PQQ in it, too, to go along with its other health benefits.
  1. Beyond that, you get some in green peppers, and whiskey.

Also, you can get PQQ in supplement. But here’s what you need to know:

  • Most supplements only use a 5 mg dose, but you need 10 mg. PQQ is expensive, and many supplement makers want to get away with giving you either lower quality or a lower dose.
  • It’s also a good idea to combine it with CoQ10, which is the fuel mitochondria use.
  • If you take CoQ10, make sure you get the kind your body absorbs best, ubiquinol.

To Your Good Health,
Al Sears, MD
Al Sears, MD

1. Stites T, Storms D, Bauerly K, Mah J, Harris C, Fascetti A, Rogers Q, Tchaparian E, Satre M, Rucker R. “Pyrroloquinoline quinone modulates mitochondrial quantity and function in mice.” J Nutr. 2006;136(2):390-6.
2. Harris C, Chowanadisai W, et. al. “Dietary pyrroloquinoline quinone (PQQ) alters indicators of inflammation and mitochondrial-related metabolism in human subjects.” J Nut Biochem 2013;Vol 24, Issue 12 , Pages 2076-2084.
3. Rucker R, Chowanadisai W, Nakano M. “Potential Physiological Importance of Pyrroloquinoline Quinone.” Alternative Medicine Review 2009;Volume 14, Number 3.