Let’s get straight to the point: Ubiquinol is the active form of CoQ10, making them both the same.
To understand this better let’s take a few steps back and review the concept of precursors. Biology is full of them.
The biological world uses a lot of chemicals. So much so that scientists had to introduce a new field of study to accommodate all the research that goes into studying chemical behavior in a living environment- biochemistry.
Most of these chemicals are organic and some of them have two or more forms. The most common combination of chemical forms is the active form and the precursor.
Let’s take the example of a writing pen. You would have to open the pen cap in order to use the pen. Essentially, a closed pen is a precursor, and the open pen, which performs the writing, is the active form. Activating the precursor can be compared to the act of opening the pen. Inactive form (closed pen would have to be activated (opening the pen) in order to make it active and usable (opened pen).
It's now easy to apply the same logic to ubiquinol and CoQ10. CoQ10 has two forms ubiquinone (inactive form) and ubiquinol (active form). Ubiquinone is the inactive unusable form of CoQ10 (closed pen), while ubiquinol is readily used by the body (open pen).
How does this apply to deciding the best CoQ10 supplements? Check the label on the bottle. If it says ubiquinone, then the company is selling the inactive form of CoQ10. While there is nothing wrong with that, your body will have to activate the supplement before it is able to use it. However, ubiquinol supplements contain the active form of CoQ10. Hence they do not need to be activated before being absorbed and yield faster results.
