How Not to Die: Discover the Foods Scientifically Proven to Prevent and Reverse Disease

by Michael Greger

CoQ10, also known as ubiquinol, is an antioxidant. When ubiquinol extinguishes a free radical, it is oxidized to ubiquinone. To act as an effective antioxidant again, the body must regenerate ubiquinol from ubiquinone. Think of it like an electrical fuse: Ubiquinol can only be used once before having to be reset. That’s where sunlight and chlorophyll may come in. Researchers exposed some ubiquinone and dietary chlorophyll metabolites to the kind of light that reaches your bloodstream … and poof! CoQ10 was reborn. However, without the chlorophyll, or without the light, nothing happened. All along, we’ve been thinking that the main benefit of sunlight was only the formation of vitamin D and that the main benefit of greens was the antioxidants they contain. But now we suspect the combination of the two may actually help the body create and maintain its own internal stock of antioxidants.