Does ubiquinol change children's brains?

Hi you all,

I was just wondering: Did any of you have pregnancies with and without taking ubiquinol, and do you think it had an influence on your children?

My first-born was naturally conceived, without me taking anything except for normal pre-natal vitamins. And he's lovely but in all respects a perfectly normal kid.
With my second, I was taking ubiquinol for months before getting pregnant, together with heaps of chemistry, as I didn't manage to get pregnant naturally.
My little one has been with us for a couple of months now and, boy, is she clever! Maybe a lot of this is due to being a girl who just usually are quicker with everything, and as she's my second-born, she's also imitating her big brother a lot, so role modelling certainly plays a role too.
But ever since she was born, people have commented on how alert she is, and both DH and me find her terribly intelligent. I know everybody thinks their babies are the prettiest, sweetest, most clever babies on the planet. Still, I think I'm realistic. I don't think my son is more intelligent than the average kid. I don't think my daughter is prettier than the average kid (realistically speaking; to me, she'll always be the cutest baby alive but I know that's hormones). But I really do think she's particularly intelligent (sounds horribly arrogant, doesn't it? Arrrgh). And I've been wondering if it's got anything to do with the ubiquinol, if that's triggered something in her brain.
Has anybody else noticed something similar with their children?

Not that it matters, I was just wondering... 0:-)

I feel like a couple of mine are smarter than the others (the youngest two) but I wasn't taking ubiquinol. I was taking higher dose folic acid since my 3rd had a neural tube defect. But here's the thing - it could be totally coincidence, it could be imitation of the older kid, it could be all sorts of things. I just really think we need to strongly hesitate before assigning cause and effect because without a study, we really can't know, there are just too many variables.

I was quite a bright child and my mother didn't even take prenatals. She smoked constantly and drank and ate junk food. Not to mention Shakespeare, Newton, Einstein, etc. Some kids are just brighter than others (and a lot of kids start out developing quickly and then slow down over time, this was the case for me)

I did not take Ubiquinol and this is totally anecdotal, but I took DHA (which is supposed to be great for brain development) both while pregnant with DS1 and while breastfeeding him. Once he was a toddler and started on cow's milk, I gave him milk with DHA added. Did this help? Honestly I have no idea but he is really smart. In kindergarten they tested his reading skills and he was at a 3rd grade, nearly 4th grade level. At age 5 he was doing multiplication and division and at age 6 was invited to join a chess club and even competed in the school district. Now he's 7.5 and what they're learning in school is so easy for him that he's bored. He's very inquisitive and asks questions that even DH and I are like "huh, I never really thought about that." lol While I could brag about him all day :p, it's hard to say if taking prenatal vitamins and DHA boosted his intelligence. To provide another example, DS2 is 5 and already above his grade level for reading as well but I didn't take DHA religiously with him and with DS3, I didn't take DHA at all and only took prenatal vitamins while pregnant but he's very articulate for a 2 year old. Really I think for kids it's a combination of genetics and environment (such as reading to them, having quality/meaningful interactions, encouraging school studies, etc). Like Atomic said, there's too many variables so I don't think we can ever attribute one supplement to increased intelligence. Yes I do believe some children are just naturally smarter than others, as in they are more inclined to learning new things easily and may have a greater appetite for knowledge. To me, it sounds less like Ubiquinol lending a hand and more like you're doing all the right things to foster your daughter's potential. :)

Dear both,

Thank you so much for your thoughts and observations :bowdown:

Esp what you said last, ksmom, makes me wonder. I think it might be quite true that I'm doing the right stuff with my DD; which, in turn, makes me think that I probably didn't with my DS.
Don't worry, I know you neither said nor wrote this - but it probably really is this way. I wanted a little girl so much and now that she's here, I'm do things with her a lot differently from the way I did them with my DS. It probably is genetics rather than the ubiquinol and if I did these things with him too and encouraged the same things with him as I'm doing with her, he'd most likely have developed the same potential...
Really, really good food for thought; Mummy needed this wake-up call: Thank you so much!

No one is saying anyone was doing the right thing or the wrong thing with their kids or that changed the outcome. I did everything educational with my first, and very little with my last two (especially my 4th boy, who was sandwiched between my GD baby and the girl and was not doted on anywhere near as much as the others :( ) and yet those two are the smartest ones IMO.

Please let's not go down the "this mommy didn't raise her kids right" rabbithole because kids have always been what we think of as "neglected" and yet we have had a lot of incredibly bright people all throughout history. People used to think paying attention to children at all made them spoiled! Most of the human beings who have ever lived - including the very brilliant ones - have been raised without stimulation, without much encouragement, without being surrounded by educational toys, without hearing classical music and watching Sesame Street. It is simply not true that children need to be showered with attention to be highly bright - after all, we've never had any of that stuff before, so it doesn't make much sense that we would have evolved for our kiddos to need alphabet blocks and constant parental interaction for educational achievement.

As for DHA - the point I was trying to make above is totally illustrated by DHA. I never took it with my first two who are both perfectly normal and bright young men. I did take it with my younger three. Like I mentioned, my youngest two are what I consider unusually smart, and my third (again, I took the DHA with him) struggles with school in a way that none of the others do. He's not dumb, he just struggles more than the rest. So if I hadn't had him, I would think "oh gosh clearly taking the DHA makes geniuses" but I DID take the DHA with him! This doesn't mean DHA doesn't help, but it sure doesn't turn a kid magically smart!

SoFull, I'd really like to point something out here and this is from the perspective of having raised 4 boys, two to adulthood, before I had my girl. Girls are notorious for being very articulate earlier on but boys do catch up and have intelligence in different arenas (for example, my 11 year old understands how an engine works and I don't and I'm 50, LOL). My daughter was no exception to that. She talked fairly early on, and my 4th boy, who is by far and away my smartest child, didn't start talking AT ALL till he was three, and then he started off talking in complete sentences (my first boy was also an early talker, however this is probably because I was talking to him all the time, LOL - it still didn't make him a super genius.) My boys were also much more active and wanted to run and play while my daughter will actually sit down with a book and/or play quietly with puzzles and things like that. I didn't want to bring gender into it because we all hate stereotypes, but I wonder if some of your perception is simply picking up on some gender differences that are innate and have nothing to do with a child's potential??

Dear Atomic,

You are definitely right when it comes to DHA (I read the findings that there's no - or only minimal - advantage to it when it comes to intelligence as well; it does seem to help carrying babies to term though) and likewise it's probably the same with ubiquinol. We observe things and then ascribe them to this or that that we did or didn't do even if it's just plain coincidence.

And a lot of what I perceive as smart in my girl is probably really plain down to gender. Although I still maintain that she's a lot more alert and nimble-fingered and can make logical connections so much quicker - but that's partly probably also motherly pride ;-)

When it comes to me personally, however, I really do think ksmom has made a very valid point (without meaning to, it wasn't meant as criticism and I didn't understand it as such): In the past few months, I had to admit to myself that neither holding my baby boy in my arms after birth has lessened my GD, nor has having the girl I've always dreamt off. My little girl is indeed all I had ever wanted, she's made my life complete and I love her to pieces. However, with my son, the gender disappointment is still going strong. It sounds illogical but that's the way I feel, the way it is. I have never really bonded with him, I do not treat them the same way as my daughter, not even remotely. I dote on my little girl and I don't on my boy. I feel rotten to the core because of it but even though I make Herculean efforts, she's the one who can do no wrong, while he's the one I'm so much stricter with, the one I've got less time for, the one I'm paying less attention to. And therefore, it really is true that I am indeed encouraging him less. That's most likely got nothing to do with how intelligent they are and he might be just as normal if I had fostered his talents more and she might be just as bright even if I couldn't care two hoots about her.
But this random comment has triggered something in me that, so far, I had managed to suppress. I'll have to seek help from a professional to get over my GD and the resulting depression that, so far, I had managed to deny. I really am treating my children profoundly differently, and this is incredibly unfair on my boy... However, I'm not sure I will manage to do something about this on my own. I really will look for help and I am very, very grateful for this eye-opener!

Ok. I'm glad it helped you.