Popular dietary supplement found to provide little health benefits

Washington: A new research has found that popular dietary supplement and antioxidant, ubiquinone which is said to protect cells against damage from free radicals is likely ineffective.

The research conducted by McGill University explained that ubiquinone is usually thought to function as an antioxidant and is recommended for a variety of ills and anti-aging supplement, but is not a crucial antioxidant as consuming it is unlikely to provide any benefit.

The researchers mentioned that ubiquinone also known as Coenzyme Q10 is naturally found in all cells of the body, as it is extracted from nutrients and oxygen by a tiny structures called mitochondria, within cells.

Professor Siegfried Hekimi, a led researcher said that their findings showed that one of the major anti-aging antioxidant supplements used by people couldn't possibly act as was previously believed.

Hekimi added that this dietary supplements cost a lot of money to patients throughout the world, but this could be better spent on healthy food and the best way is to motivate people to undertake appropriate lifestyle changes.

While examining the change after the elimination of ubiquinone and then to restore it at, they surprisingly found that there was no elevated oxidative damage that took place to cell membranes or DNA from free radicals.

Hekimi concluded that they will know try devise some new drugs, to boost ubiquinone levels or help residual ubiquinone to function effectively in defective mitochondria.

The research is published in the journal Nature Communications.