Why I formulated Heart & Blood Sugar Phix

By Dr Conor Kerley, PhD, cardiovascular and nutrition researcher.

There were five bottles on the kitchen counter and nobody had chosen any of them. This is how they became one, and why it carries the numbers it carries.

People reach a certain age, start reading, and end up with five or six bottles on the kitchen counter. A CoQ10, a B-complex, a D3, something for glucose, each one bought separately on a different week after a different article, each at whatever dose that particular brand happened to settle on. Nobody chose that combination, because it assembled itself: there is no reason why the CoQ10 is 30 mg rather than 200, and no thought given to whether any of it is meant to be taken with food or on an empty stomach or at all. It is six separate decisions made by six marketing departments, sitting in a row beside the kettle, and by the third week of February most of it has been abandoned, not because the person lost interest in their health but because six bottles is an admin job, and admin jobs lose.

I kept seeing it, in family, in friends and in the people who write to us, and it bothered me more than it should have, because I am one of the few people in a position to know what those doses ought to be. That is not a boast about medicine. I have spent fifteen years going through trials in nutrition and the cardiovascular system one at a time, reading the paper, checking the dose, checking who was actually in it, checking what was actually measured, and then deciding whether it changed anything, which usually it doesn't. That work produced more than 20 peer-reviewed publications, a PhD, and research awards from the Irish Heart Foundation, the Irish Cardiac Society, the British Hypertension Society and BACPR, which is recognition for research I did rather than for anything on a shelf. What I have is a decade and a half of arguing with data.

So when I looked at that counter I did not see five products. I saw five numbers, none of which anyone had defended, and I thought the sensible thing was one bottle, two capsules a day with food, finished, with a reason behind every figure on the panel. That is the whole origin story, and it isn't dramatic.

The two numbers on the front

If you look at the panel and wonder why 200 mg of CoQ10 sits beside 200 µg of selenium, it is not a coincidence and it is not a marketing round-number, and it is the one decision in the formula I made before I made any of the others. There is a Swedish trial called KiSel-10 [1]. It gave 443 people aged 70 to 88, living in a rural region where the soil and therefore the food is low in selenium, 200 µg of selenium yeast and 200 mg of coenzyme Q10 every day for four years, and the CoQ10 was not given as one daily hit but as 100 mg twice a day. That same group of people has been followed and re-analysed out to twelve years [2,3]. What the trial measured, what it found, the arguments about it and the rest of the CoQ10 research are all in our CoQ10 review.

I have followed that trial for most of my career, and when it came to putting a number on a label the honest options were two. I could pick a dose that looked good beside a competitor and gesture vaguely at the literature, or I could take the pairing that had actually been tested, at the dose it was tested at, on the schedule it was tested on. So the bottle carries 200 mg of CoQ10 with 200 µg of selenium, which are the same two doses rather than an approximation of them, and it carries them as two capsules, one in the morning and one later, because that is how the trial gave them and because if I am going to copy a protocol I am not going to copy half of it and keep the convenient half.

The rest of the panel

Berberine is in at 450 mg per daily dose, split across the two capsules and taken with food. It is the ingredient I get asked about more than any other, and the trials researchers pay attention to used berberine HCl taken with meals [4]. The with-meals part is not incidental, because that is how those trials gave it and berberine's absorption is poor enough that the schedule is part of the thing rather than the packaging around it. Our berberine review goes through the studies one at a time.

The folate is 400 µg as 5-MTHF and the B12 is 100 µg as methylcobalamin, methylated meaning the vitamin arrives in the form the body already uses rather than one it has to convert first. In a head-to-head study, 5-MTHF raised the amount of folate circulating in the blood better than the same dose of folic acid did, and left less unconverted folic acid behind in the bloodstream [5]. Why that finding is more interesting than the word on the label is set out in What methylated actually means.

The D3 is 50 µg (2,000 IU), which is a sensible daily amount for anyone living at this latitude, and vitamin D contributes to the normal function of the immune system, to the maintenance of normal bones and muscle function, and to the normal absorption of calcium. The K2 is MK-7 at 100 µg, and vitamin K contributes to normal blood clotting and to the maintenance of normal bones. The reason researchers took an interest in MK-7 beyond bone is a three-year trial by Knapen and colleagues, which gave MK-7 to 244 healthy postmenopausal women for three years and measured how quickly a pulse travels down an artery, which is how you tell whether an artery has stiffened, and reported an improvement on it [6].

Zinc is at 10 mg, as zinc picolinate, which is a full day's reference intake rather than a heroic amount, and it is the ingredient on this panel I would most expect people to walk past. Zinc contributes to the normal metabolism of carbohydrates and fatty acids, and to the protection of cells from oxidative stress [8].

Then there are the two nutrients that give the product its name. Thiamine is at 15 mg and chromium at 200 µg. Thiamine contributes to the normal function of the heart, and chromium to the maintenance of normal blood glucose levels [7,8]. Those two are the spine of the thing, and their story, what they do, how we know it and why the heart is where a thiamine shortage announces itself first, is written up in full in Thiamine, chromium, and the chickens in Java.

Put together, that is what Heart & Blood Sugar Phix is: CoQ10, selenium, berberine, methylated B vitamins, D3, K2, zinc, thiamine and chromium in one place. Sixty plant-based capsules, no fillers, two a day with food, a bottle lasting 30 days at €50, which is under €2 a day. No mixing, no measuring, and one thing to remember instead of six.

If you have questions about any of it, ask me. We run a free WhatsApp group and I answer them myself, including the awkward ones, which are usually the good ones. That is the bottle: one on the counter, and a reason for every number on it.

Dr Conor Kerley

References

1. Alehagen U, Johansson P, Björnstedt M, Rosén A, Dahlström U. Cardiovascular mortality and N-terminal-proBNP reduced after combined selenium and coenzyme Q10 supplementation: a 5-year prospective randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial among elderly Swedish citizens. Int J Cardiol. 2013;167(5):1860–1866. PMID 22626835.
2. Alehagen U, Aaseth J, Johansson P. Reduced cardiovascular mortality 10 years after supplementation with selenium and coenzyme Q10 for four years: follow-up results of a prospective randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial in elderly citizens. PLoS One. 2015;10(12):e0141641. PMID 26624886.
3. Alehagen U, Aaseth J, Alexander J, Johansson P. Still reduced cardiovascular mortality 12 years after supplementation with selenium and coenzyme Q10 for four years: a validation of previous 10-year follow-up results of a prospective randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial in elderly. PLoS One. 2018;13(4):e0193120. PMID 29641571.
4. Guo J, Chen H, Zhang X, Lou W, Zhang P, Qiu Y, Zhang C, Wang Y, Liu WJ. The effect of berberine on metabolic profiles in type 2 diabetic patients: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Oxid Med Cell Longev. 2021;2021:2074610. PMID 34956436.
5. Prinz-Langenohl R, Brämswig S, Tobolski O, et al. [6S]-5-methyltetrahydrofolate increases plasma folate more effectively than folic acid in women with the homozygous or wild-type 677C→T polymorphism of methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase. Br J Pharmacol. 2009;158(8):2014–2021. PMID 19917061.
6. Knapen MHJ, Braam LAJLM, Drummen NE, Bekers O, Hoeks APG, Vermeer C. Menaquinone-7 supplementation improves arterial stiffness in healthy postmenopausal women: a double-blind randomised clinical trial. Thromb Haemost. 2015;113(5):1135–1144. PMID 25694037.
7. EFSA NDA Panel. Scientific Opinion on the substantiation of health claims related to thiamine. EFSA Journal. 2009;7(9):1222.
8. Commission Regulation (EU) No 432/2012 establishing a list of permitted health claims made on foods, other than those referring to the reduction of disease risk and to children's development and health.

Last reviewed: 10 September 2026. This article is educational and is not medical advice.