The first time a client asked me about “hydrogen water,” i told her to save her money.
She already had spent $300 on a machine that bubbled gas into an open glass. Three months of drinking it every morning, and she felt exactly the same. My assumption back then was that the whole category was expensive water wrapped in good marketing. (Like most biohacks)
That being said the molecule is real. Her machine was the problem, and almost nobody selling these devices will tell you that.
Since 2007, more than 2 thousand papers have been published on hydrogen gas as a potential therapy, and 81 clinical trials have been registered in humans. That is a serious body of work that shouldn’t just be ignored, for something that most doctors have never even heard of. It is also a body of work that gets described incorrectly almost every single time someone tries to sell you one of these devices.
The story you get on the sales page goes something like this: “Hydrogen is a selective antioxidant. It hunts down the bad free radicals and leaves the good ones alone.” Clean, simple, elegant and repeated so many times that it has become the accepted version of events to many.
That story I just told you has a hole in it big enough to drive a truck through, and the people who found the hole are the same researchers who study hyrdogen for a living.
In this article I want to introduce you to the REALITY of hydrogen therapy, stay tuned for an even deeper dive going over as much of the available research as humanly possible. Consider this the spark notes to the upcoming definitive guide to Hydrogen Therapy.
Free radicals come in two basic flavors: Some damage your tissue. Others carry important instructions your body depends on, which is why blanket antioxidant dosing can backfire
Hydrogen is the smallest molecule in existence. It crosses the membranes without a transporter and reaches the inside of your mitochondria.
I’ll go over the 2007 paper that launched the field proposed that hydrogen directly neutralizes the most destructive free radicals. The claim does not survive the math
The stronger explanation, and I am labeling this as a working hypothesis rather than a settled argument, is that hydrogen acts as a signal that switches on your own antioxidant machinery through NrF2 pathways and quiets inflammaiton through NF-kB
The best human trial on file is a 24 week one in which 60 people with metabolic syndrome saw improved cholesterol, glucose, HbA1c, and inflammatory markers
The largest Parkinson’s trial failed completely
Hydrogen escapes water within minutes. Most delivery methods you can buy deliver almost nothing
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