Tyler LeBaron discusses molecular hydrogen as distinct from ordinary alkaline-water marketing. This article draws from Ultimate Human Podcast with Gary Brecka and keeps the focus on what can be practiced with clarity, caution, and respect for the evidence.
Transcript sourced from the original YouTube captions. Timestamps link directly to the video.
Alkaline water alone is not going to provide benefits. Even if you subscribe to the benefits that we need to maintain an alkaline body, you can't do it with alkaline water. Everyone thinks that it's the pH, it's the alkalinity driving the benefit. So many people are paying so much extra money to get 8. 10. 4 pH water. Molecular hydrogen is the key to any of the benefits to alkaline ionized water. The mechanism that hydrogen uses to leave the body's production of necessary free radicals alone, reduce the harmful free radicals that we don't need, and allow these cellular homeostasis to return. Hydrogen acts as a therapeutic selective antioxidant. It doesn't change anything with the water, it's just the water becomes the carrier of those substances. So for somebody that's new to hydrogen water, what's the entry point to start consuming hydrogen water? First, I would just consume it daily. When you drink hydrogen water, you you you'll If you've ever spent money on alkaline water, I need you to hear this episode because Dr. Tyler LeBaron, the world's leading molecular hydrogen scientist, author of over 50 peer-reviewed publications, is about to blow up everything you thought you knew. Here's the truth. Alkaline water's benefits have nothing to do with pH, nothing. The clinical research shows that when you remove the dissolved hydrogen gas from alkaline water, every single benefit disappears. It was never the alkalinity,
disappears. It was never the alkalinity, it was always the hydrogen. And what Tyler reveals in this conversation is stunning. In a Japanese clinical trial, adding hydrogen gas to standard treatment improved cardiac arrest survival from 61% to 85%. We're talking about 24 additional lives saved per 100 patients. Tyler explains how hydrogen works as a selective antioxidant, a redox adaptogen that targets only the harmful free radicals while preserving the beneficial oxidative signals that your mitochondria need. This is the science everyone is sleeping on. Don't skip this episode. Hey guys, welcome back to the Ultimate Human podcast. I'm your host human biologist Gary Brecka where we go down the road of everything anti-aging, biohacking, longevity, and everything in between. And every time I have a guest on on the show, I get excited to talk to them about their subject area of expertise. And today's guest is someone I have been really dying to have on the podcast. He is probably solely responsible for my foray into hydrogen water, hydrogen bathing, hydrogen inhalation, all things hydrogen. I have the deepest level of respect for this guest. He is probably the world's leading molecular hydrogen scientist. Um I would argue that. He has published numerous papers in quality peer-reviewed journals. Um he holds a PhD in this area of science and I we are absolutely blessed to have Dr. Tyler LeBaron on the podcast today. And I will say he's also become a good
And I will say he's also become a good friend. And he was teaching me how to arm wrestle this morning. Fully random side sidebar, but we had a great workout this morning. And uh and he was giving out he's a professional arm wrestler, which is you know, that's banging a 90 ° turn from hydrogen studies. Uh and so he was teaching Zach Efron and my son and I and and all the guys how to arm wrestle this morning. So maybe before the podcast is over we'll throw in some arm wrestling tips. Um it's all in the wrist. That's right. It is. I've just heard that. I don't know if that's true or not. So That's all I I've just given you all my arm wrestling knowledge in one sentence. But Tyler, I'm I'm so excited to have you on because I think people when it comes to hydrogen water, um hydrogen tablets, uh bathing in hydrogen, inhaling hydrogen, I think they fall into one or two camps, in my opinion. There are the hardcore skeptics, and then there are the people that have actually gotten familiar with the science. Um, and so I would love for you to just give my audience some background, you know, your your personal story about how you got into this space, because it is kind of random, right? You have a PhD and spend your time researching this smallest, lightest element in the universe, um, and and going so deep in into that science, but but you've done it, you know? Uh, and and so I'd love to hear the backstory of Yeah. what got you interested.
what got you interested. having me on your show. I I really appreciate the opportunity to educate, and it is something I'm very passionate about. Um, I I'm honored that you think so much of me. I do. I really do, man. I really stand on the heads of shoulders of giants. I mean, there's there's a lot of other researchers that are much more expert in their field than I am. I've just been at this for 16 years, and I am really grateful for my mentors, who who and and these I go to these conferences in Asia and Europe, and meet with the other researchers, and I'm just really grateful for for them, and you know, and I I have a lot of interest, like arm wrestling. I'm I'm a wannabe professional. I compete competitively, but there's again a lot who are a lot better than me, and I'm just grateful that I can be on this journey. And with that journey, though, yeah, you know, I came across this whole hydrogen concept back in 2009, and I learned about it because you probably heard about like alkaline ionized water. Yes. Everybody's drinking alkaline water now. Yeah, and which is unfortunate. We'll get to that. But see, I learned about this, and this is I was always interested in science and just health, but this is before I had, you know, any real science training or knowledge. Mhm. And but I there was some papers on this alkaline ionized water, and like, "This is interesting, but I want to understand." I was asking you know, the different people like, "How does this work?" And all the answers were kind of contradicting each other. And then I went to the university and asked my professors, "Well, how does the alkaline water work? You know, why would this help?" And they explained to me that it's not going to
explained to me that it's not going to help. Right. And it wasn't just, you know, making fun of me per se, but explaining logically the reasons why it's alkaline water alone is not going to provide benefits. And that raised the question then, "How is it possible that this water could have any benefits?" Which also raises the question, "First, before we try to figure out how something works, we first need to figure out if it works." Right. And so, that was my my very first foray or or foray into into research is I did a little study, just a pilot study, and I found that drinking alkaline ionized water that was fresh could provide some some exercise benefits. Basically, I had during lactate thresholds running in the The late onset muscle soreness. Yeah, that area. Lactate threshold, they could exercise a little bit longer. And anyways, this gave me some I I guess some push that I should want to research this more and try to understand why. But it was in this investigations and reading more of the literature that I came across this article published in Nature Medicine on hydrogen gas being therapeutic. Now, I didn't understand the significance of that at the time. Mhm. But when I was talking to one of my professors at about chemistry professor, um he had printed that article off. And he he had it and I went to his office I I went to his office all the time. We're always talking about different things and he had printed that off. And he cuz he he said, "I I was really thinking about this whole alkaline ionized water thing and in your write up you you cited this paper."
you you cited this paper." Pulled it off. And handed it to me and he said, "You know, Tyler, I I think there's something here." Mhm. And when he said that, I just I felt something inside of me Mhm. saying this is really interesting. This is something I want to research. I want to understand this because hydrogen gas is so easy to get. It's all over the place. It's not prevalent element in the universe, right? And it's smallest, the lightest, it's highest on the periodic table. Right. It's It's 10% of our body weight is hydrogen. Yeah, a different form of hydrogen. Yes, that's actually a good point cuz we want to talk about and separate between hydrogen gas and the different types of hydrogen. Like a hydrogen ion versus H2. Yes, or the hydrogen that's in compounds. Mhm. And but but let me let let me Yeah, why don't we unpack that first and then then I want to talk about this Nature Medicine paper so we can understand why this is so significant, right? Yeah. And and throughout this podcast, I just want to say through the outset, you know, I am really happy to be here to educate cuz it's something I'm passionate about with my research. And it's exciting to see this field emerging, but but often some of the marketing or excitement outpaces the actual evidence. Yeah. And you know, but if I'm if I don't come and educate, well, then who's going to do the education? They might be talking about things that aren't necessarily true or you know, the hydrogen's going to alkalize your cells or something and that's that's not how it works, right? So I'm I'm really going to try to do my best to to stick to the science and help
best to to stick to the science and help us understand how it it's supposed to work. What does the research actually say? And just people can kind of get ground a little bit more, right? Yeah. Um because I think that the the preliminary evidence is interesting enough that it gives it should give us positively think about it, right? Yeah. And so this Nature article, I don't don't mean to cut you off. What was the subject of the Nature article? Okay, yeah, that's Cuz that is a very serious for those of you that are not familiar with that journal. That is a very significant, highly regarded peer-reviewed journal. You don't just throw papers into nature. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so basically it was with ischemia reperfusion injury. This was specifically in a stroke model. So they did they took these rats and they induced a stroke model. It's called a middle cerebral artery occlusion. So they cut the blood supply to the brain and that's going to cause damage because you have no oxygenated blood going to the brain. Yeah. And then when you let the blood go back to the brain, well now that blood is oxygen-rich and that oxygen-rich blood goes to the brain and it cause what's known as a reperfusion injury. So you have ischemia and reperfusion. And this or an IR injury and this is a major problem with strokes or or anytime you're cutting the blood supply like that. Well, they they used hydrogen gas and they only used 2% hydrogen gas which is important because above 4% hydrogen gas is explosive. Right. But if you keep it below that, then it's not explosive and it still had these therapeutic effects.
it still had these therapeutic effects. Now, you could probably add this in in the show notes and you can look at the figure and you can see the this white portion of the brain, the rat brain and that the white area is the dead area of the brain and that's when no hydrogen gas was given. Or helium gas was also administered and it was no effect. But when only 2% hydrogen gas was given, it would dramatically prevented the brain damage from this stroke model. I mean it's just night and you don't have to be a scientist to look at to look and see. You can see the difference right there. Yeah. And then they what they did then is they to figure out a mechanism is they dissolved the hydrogen gas into cell culture media. Okay, so remember it's just a gas. It's dissolved in the cell culture media and then they added some like mitochondrial toxins and things that would create a lot of free radicals cuz that's what happens during an ischemia reperfusion injury is free radical damage. So they added some toxins in there, create more free radicals and they found that hydrogen gas also was able to reduce the oxidative stress that was going on. Right. So that the article the of this paper was entitled that hydrogen acts as a therapeutic selective antioxidant. Mhm. And it was and able to help prevent this brain damage from this the stroke study. So so going back to my story when my professor you know handed this paper to me and he felt hey there's really something here. That was very exciting to me and seeing how the study it basically ignited the interest in
it basically ignited the interest in hydrogen research I I went and I I looked at all the the studies and everything I could find at the time and there were only 50 or so publications on hydrogen. It's like 1500 now. Yeah yeah exactly around 1500 studies and maybe over 3000 publications in total. And I I have authored over 50 publications on hydrogen you know now you know compared to back in 2009. But maybe we should just break down again the the different forms of hydrogen just so we can make sure everyone's on the same page. Would that be helpful? That'd be very helpful. I I just I think we think about water for example we we already know water is H2O. So water already has hydrogen in it. and that's the biggest blowback that I get when I tell people that you know I drink hydrogen rich water every day and they're like that doesn't make any sense water's hydrogen's already in water. But those those molecules are spoken for. Yes. I mean they're already bound. So this is like H2O plus H2 right? Yeah and and it doesn't change the chemistry of the water. So if we can actually say there's there's several different species or forms of hydrogen exist. And let's just go through them briefly. If you go to the periodic table of elements you'll see that hydrogen is number one right? That's element in school hydrogen's number one. That hydrogen has one proton and one electron and it's all by itself. That's atomic hydrogen. Okay. But if it's just a single electron, it doesn't want to stay by itself. That hydrogen atom is going to want to react with pretty much anything. If it reacts with nitrogen, you can form
If it reacts with nitrogen, you can form things like amino acids or like ammonia, right? And hydrogen nitrogen compounds. Mhm. It can react with carbon to form hydrocarbons like carbohydrates, gasoline, right? All of these types of these are hydrocarbons. Okay. It could react with oxygen to form things like water, H2O, and like what you talked You said mention how these other atoms are are spoken for. Mhm. So you look at the water molecule, there's the oxygen and then hydrogen is a hydrogen is attached to the oxygen. So it looks like Mickey Mouse. There's oxygen and then two hydrogens are attached that oxygen molecule. So they're kind of tied up, right? Mhm. So again, hydrogen can react with, you know, nitrogen, carbon, oxygen, or it could react with another hydrogen atom. And if it did, it would make a hydrogen atom here and a hydrogen atom here, it would make a molecule of hydrogen. So instead of a water molecule, it would make a molecule of hydrogen. Mhm. We call that molecular hydrogen. Great. And this is the diatomic gas. This is what we're talking about. It's odorless, it's tasteless, it's flammable above 4%. Uh th - this is the gas and when you take this gas and you dissolve it into water, you don't change the pH. You don't change the structure of the water or anything. Mhm. So so pH, people get confused because when they hear pH, it stands for in their mind potential hydrogen. Yeah. But what form of hydrogen? That hydrogen in pH is the hydrogen ion. It's the H + ion. Mhm. So if you took Look at that periodic table of elements again, and you have the hydrogen atom,
again, and you have the hydrogen atom, it has a proton and electron. If you take away that electron, Mhm. you just have a proton. Right. That is the hydrogen ion. Ah. That's what makes acid base. Okay. And and everyone thinks that it's the pH, it's the alkalinity driving the benefit. But it sounds like you're going to make the argument that it's the hydrogen driving the benefit. Yes, it's the hydrogen gas. Yeah, hydrogen gas is totally different than alkaline pH. They're totally different concepts. There's no similarity other than we're using the word hydrogen. But, the hydrogen ion is just a proton. The hydrogen gas we're talking about is two protons, two electrons bound together in a covalent bond. That is a strong covalent bond. So, if you dissolve hydrogen gas into water, it's not going to dissociate into protons and electrons. Okay. always hydrogen gas. It also doesn't, you know, like structure the water or do any changes to the water. It's just the water becomes the carrier of that hydrogen gas. So, if you take I see you have like some supplements here like perfect aminos or you know, you see electrolyte powder, let's say. If you were to dissolve those as you do into water, it doesn't change anything with the water. It's just the water becomes the carrier of those substances. In the same way you can take the hydrogen gas, you dissolve it into the water, you drink the water, the water becomes the carrier of that hydrogen gas into the body. Okay. That makes a lot of sense. So, this article initially got you interested and then you went on this foray overseas and you started looking at different research institutions,
at different research institutions, reading about different peer-reviewed papers. You eventually decided to affiliate with one of those and and start doing some of your own research. And and I've read most of what you've published. I've also read other publications, you know, on traumatic brain injuries and post-concussive injuries. Comparing hydrogen soaking limbs in hydrogen immediately after a traumatic event versus the current protocol, which is like the rice protocol, rest, ice, compress and elevate. And you know, it's it's some of these were very small trial trials. Some of them were even N of 1. But, what seems fascinating to me is the number of applications across the so many different categories. Athletic performance, you know, brain health, inflammation, selective antioxidants, PCOS, hormone balance, cardiovascular conditions. I mean, and I want to get into some of those, but so you then affiliate with some of the research institutions overseas. so my I was majoring in biochemistry and for one of the degree requirements we had to complete an internship. And so I thought where did I want to do my internship? I want to do it in hydrogen gas. That'd be amazing. There were a couple places in the USA doing things. There were some places in Pittsburgh, also Loma Linda University, but most of the research was out of Japan and I got some favorable place Actually, NASA was also interested in hydrogen therapy because of radio protective effects. So I actually had
protective effects. So I actually had had some email correspondences with all these groups and they were all you know, willing to work something out, but they weren't doing a lot of active research. So I realized I really needed to go to Japan. Yeah. And and I chose at Nagoya University where Professor Ohno, who I would consider a great mentor of mine, was there and I researched it Yeah, at Nagoya University in neurogenetics and we took hydrogen gas and dissolved it into cell culture media and looked at the effects of hydrogen gas on various cell signaling pathways. And that's when I was able to meet a lot of other researchers. I mean, top experts in in the field like Dr. Ota, for example, is a mitochondrial expert. And that is the foundation Mhm. of human optimization, human performance, longevity, anti-aging, wellness, whatever you want to call it. I mean, most of the really I would say sound research that I think is going to move the needle is already inside the mitochondria. Yeah. You know, 110 trillion of these in our body. Another 10% of our body weight is mitochondria. It's I think uh few people really understand the significance of mitochondrial metabolism and its links to all forms of disease and pathology. At some point, I can't think of a disease ideological pathway that does not operate by either directly or indirectly interrupting mitochondrial metabolism. Yeah, there's the mitochondria is very important and and we know when we make our energy, for example, we make ATP, that adenosine triphosphate, right?
ATP, that adenosine triphosphate, right? That's the energy currency of the cell. And the mitochondria make up like 90% of all that ATP. And you need about as much ATP as you weigh per day. So, if you are 150 lb, you need 150 lb of ATP, you know, turnover cycling. So, your mitochondria has to turn this out, just recycling very very quickly. So, and so, it's it's a core organelle that's not just for energy production, but sensing so many different areas of redox homeostasis and that involves an inflammatory response and that helps to understand actually a lot of the reasons why molecular hydrogen has any biological effect or or therapeutic effects that we're seeing in some of these studies. So, you go over to Japan um and because I know that you actually authored the paper on looking at alkaline water um benefits versus the benefits of Yes, that's that's the key That's the one that blew my mind. This one is a very important one because it's it's not um just a study, but it was it's actually a comprehensive review article of all the studies that have been published at the time on alkaline ionized water, including a paper that I I was involved in and so many groups demonstrated that when you simply remove the hydrogen gas from alkaline ionized water, the benefits are eliminated. Wow. And that blows a a hole in some of the claims that the benefits are alkaline pH. I hope you guys are listening to this. Alkaline water is garbage. Um and I and I'm and I think so many
Um and I and I'm and I think so many people are paying so much extra money to get 8. 10. 4, you know, pH water. If your energy is low during the day, the problem usually started the night before. Sleep affects focus, mood, metabolism, literally everything. And most people never learn how to properly support it. Our free sleep challenge is April 29th and 30th, and it's designed to teach the basics of better sleep in a way that's realistic and easy to apply. If learning how to sleep better feels like the right place to start, we'd love to have you join our challenge on April 29th. Now, let's get back to the Ultimate Human podcast. No, and and I think there's there's correlations. There's no benefit to an alkaline pH itself, but it depends on why it's alkaline. Because if you were to get certain minerals water, for example, a lot of times mineral water is alkaline because it has minerals in them and are on our balance with, say, bicarbonate ions. Mhm. But it ends up being those minerals like some more magnesium, some calcium, some, you know, manganese, you know, another trace minerals. I had mineral salts. Yeah, so so that's good for you, right? But it's not again, to your point, it's not because of the pH. And that and and like our body already buffers the pH very well. And Yeah. in fact, when you range is very narrow in the blood. Yeah, 7. 35, 7. 45 is kind of what what we say. And you know that when you just hold your breath, for example, that urge to breathe, it actually comes because you start to build up acidity. You start to build hydrogen ions, and so you want to exhale out because people can try this. Take um take a straw, for
can try this. Take um take a straw, for example, and and blow into water with pH drops, and you can see that the pH starts to go down because CO2 dissolves in the blood to create carbonic acid. Mhm. And that makes hydrogen ions. So, in the same way, like when you exercise, you break down your your carbohydrates and fats into CO2. The CO2 dissolves into your blood and lowers the pH. So, by you exhaling, you you that CO2, and the pH is able to help to maintain. That's also why sometimes when you're in shock, for example, people will start to hyperventilate. And you you exhale so much CO2, the blood pH starts to go up a little bit too high, and now people can start actually like tweaking their arms or going like skin contortions. You start to raise the pH so high that you start to ionize various proteins, and that now that the cell membrane potential um gets reaches threshold easier. For example, you start to make get muscle contractions the alpha motor neurons, you know, activate your your skeletal muscles. So, you get these use uh contractions, for example. Yeah. And and just those small changes breathe in a bag? Yeah, exactly. Cuz you breathe in the bag, that's you're reabsorbing the CO2. You're you're keeping that CO2 level, so you don't raise that up higher. Right. So, point is, even if you subscribe to the benefits that we need to maintain an alkaline body or something, you can't do with alkaline water. Mhm. Um you you breathing is much more effective, right? Or And even when you look at like say pH of 10. The a pH of 10 is although it's alkaline, it's not really a buffer. That's why just a drop or two of lemon juice brings the pH right down.
juice brings the pH right down. Mhm. In contrast to say baking soda, which is a pH of 8. 1, that can neutralize thousands of liters of alkaline of of acidic water, but it would take thousands of liters of alkaline water to neutralize the same amount of acid. Right. Because of the buffering effect. Right. Okay, so uh so then you you the first paper that you were involved in, um was this the paper that was looking at alkaline water? Yeah, that's one of the Yeah, well, this one of the early ones. We actually looked at um it was an animal study in NAFLD. And we found that we first did an experiment where we're using alkaline ionized water. This is a collaboration and that I was doing out of with some group out of Israel. And there was no benefit. And they were surprised. And I was like, well, what's the hydrogen gas concentration? And like, we got to figure out how to do that. So, they measured the concentration and it was pretty low. It was like. 3 mg per liter or so and it's like well I I think the concentration needs to be higher because the other studies were using a higher concentration. So the next now they can measure hydrogen. It took a long time to do this. This is like several year experiment that we were involved in. Um increase the concentration of hydrogen using different methods and then we were able to do two different groups where we could do a higher and a lower concentration. The low concentration, again, no benefits at all. Even though it had like a negative ORP it was an alkaline pH, all the same properties, no benefits. The higher concentration did have obvious benefits. So that was published back in 2018, 2019 or or so, but we worked on it since like 2014.
so, but we worked on it since like 2014. It's you know been for for quite a while. Actually earlier than that. Um but but the main article is this comprehensive review article. So you can look it up it's called electrolyzed reduced water review one and there's two reviews. There's review one and review two. And they're just comprehensive review to go through any question or any thought you've ever had about this area. Goes through the water microclustering claims, alkaline pH, negative ORP aspects. It It just systematically goes through every one of them and it conclusively demonstrates that molecular hydrogen is the key to any of the benefits if there are any to alkaline ionized water. Right. So you also authored a paper I think which may be in my opinion the most impactful um paper that you've ever authored or co-authored and that was understanding the exact mechanism by which hydrogen acts inside the mitochondria. And and I think it's I don't think most people absorb what it means to be a selective antioxidant versus an antioxidant. So maybe we could talk about what makes something an antioxidant. Um you know, what is oxidative stress and and why do you not want to over suppress it? Um you know, and why could that be dangerous? And what's unique about hydrogen that it restores this redox homeostasis um versus just over suppressing, you know, oxidative stress? So let's do this. Let's go through some history, okay? We're going to go through start with that Nature Medicine publication, and then we're going to talk about the benefits and problems
talk about the benefits and problems with antioxidants in general, and that'll lead us to this target of hydrogen that we recently published. And do that explains everything. So I can tell you're so proud of it. You smile when you say it, dude. You're proud of that one. I read it, too. It was very very well authored. So Well, and I again, it's I'm I'm just one of the authors. I was happy to be involved with that paper, but really the the hard research belongs to the other authors, and I was just grateful to be part of it. Cuz when I was in Japan, I back in 2013 is when I proposed this concept, and we stayed in communication, you know, talking about it and working on it for a long time. This is That's why I'm happy because it's it's over 10 years of work. A lot of effort went into this. Um, but but let's talk about some background information to understand why this is so important. Yeah. If you remember with that Nature Medicine publication, it talked about how hydrogen acts as a selective antioxidant, and that's a key word about that selectivity. Because we don't want just more antioxidants because antioxidants aren't necessarily a good thing, and the research has shown that over and over again. And that's because it turns out we actually need free radicals, all right? So let's just break this down maybe a step back. We know that if you too much oxidation is bad. So if you take like an apple and you cut it in half, it's going to turn brown, right? An avocado turns brown. You have rust, and all that is literally oxidation, right? We are breathing right now, and that oxygen going into our bodies is
that oxygen going into our bodies is oxidizing. It's oxidizing our cells. It's also what's driving life. That's how our metabolism works. It's oxygen as at the complex four of the electron transport chain literally consuming the electrons from our foods, making metabolic water. That process oxidation. But see, sometimes during that process in electron transport chain, that oxygen gets consumed prematurely by electrons. It It gets electrons prematurely, and that creates free radicals. Okay, this is going to be really important. So, I just want to set this up a little bit more in the mitochondria. This is where we're at. We're going deep into the cell, into the mitochondria. And you have what's called the electron transport chain, right? And there's four main complexes, complex 1, 2, 3, and 4. And basically, you get electrons that are passed from complex 1, and then that those get passed to CoQ10, actually ubiquinol, and then they go to complex 3. Electrons from complex 2 to go also go there, they go to complex 3. So, complex 3 is very important. There's even all these electrons. Okay, we're going to come back to this. It's going to be important. So, remember, complex 3 is very important. Yeah. Then the electrons go from complex 3, one electron at time, a little bit dangerous, one electron at a time through cytochrome C, go to complex 4. At complex 4, those electrons typically will combine with oxygen and two hydrogen ions, and you make water. Right. Okay, so you make water inside of Exactly, right? During this process, you make what's known as the proton gradient, hydrogen ion gradient. So, in the inner in the
ion gradient. So, in the inner membrane space of the mitochondria, you put a whole bunch of protons there. It's going to pump it against its concentration gradient, and then those hydrogen ions have to go through the ATP synthase enzyme, some of them called complex 5. But it goes through this enzyme, and it makes ATP. Turns out lots of ATP. Now, as I said, oxygen is a strong oxidizer. So, you inhale, the oxygen's going to bind on your hemoglobins. It has some of the iron, right, on your hemoglobin, so it can bind there. And that's important because you want to kind of sequester oxygen as much as you can in the blood. You don't want to have a whole bunch of oxygen floating freely all over the all all over the place all the time. The hemoglobin goes down, goes into like say a muscle cells and the pH is lower, which is actually going to cause the hemoglobin to slightly shift its confirmation. It's going to allow oxygen to leave the hemoglobin easier. As soon as the oxygen diffuses out, it's immediately gets sucked up by the mitochondria. And complex four and converts into water. That way there's like hardly any oxygen at any time in the cells cuz that oxygen, if it goes in the cell membranes, it's going to cause oxidation. It's going to cause in the cytosol oxidation, free radicals, damage, right? As it goes in the mitochondria, there's electrons in the electron transport chain get right are being transported. But so there's that oxygen could actually consume those electrons to say at complex one or sometimes at complex three or through the semiquinone radical that was created of CoQ10 that that enzyme ubiquinol it can be a ubiquinone radical for example and
ubiquinone radical for example and you can oxygen can get reduced receiving electron. When oxygen gets one electron reduction, it's called superoxide anion radical. Now that radical, it turns out it's beneficial and harmful. So beneficial to a certain level, harmful to a certain level. Yes. Like a lot of species. Hydrogen peroxide is another one, you know, very necessary but it can also be very damaging. Cuz hydrogen peroxide comes next. What happens is there's actually a certain signaling effect that superoxide can do. And then this enzyme superoxide dismutase can convert superoxide to hydrogen peroxide, let's say, or to water. And then hydrogen peroxide also has certain signaling effects it can do. And then there's even a specific aquaporin or protein channel for aquaporin to transverse to do further signaling. And then say like catalase or glutathione peroxidase can get rid of that. So these free radicals are literally produced for specific signaling effects that our bodies literally need in order to have normal mitochondrial function. So, the mitochondria regulates our entire like redox homeostasis. That's the main area. There's other enzymes like the NADPH oxidase or these NOX enzymes and number of other enzymes that make free radicals, but the mitochondria is is very um crucial and and it plays the largest role in making free radicals. But, see our body has developed in ways to create a small amount of free radicals when needed and to do specific signaling. So, when we
to do specific signaling. So, when we exercise, we're breathing more oxygen. We're using more oxygen. So, what happens to the free radicals? They increase. That increase of free radicals in turn signals our body to make more mitochondria, to make our muscles work better, to do a whole bunch of signaling effects. That hormetic stress It's a hormetic stress, exactly. It's the positive response. So, is it fair to say that we actually don't want to over suppress That's that's the point. That's exactly right. You've used this terms redox homeostasis. I want to pause on that for a second because redox homeostasis is this balance between oxidation and reduction, right? And it's and and ideally we want it to be in balance. We don't want to over suppress oxidation. We also don't want to over We don't have too much inflammation or or oxidation either. And with with antioxidants, you really don't know if you're over suppressing it or if you you maybe you just inadvertently hit the target, but um you know, if you're piling a bunch of vitamin C or beta carotene or something like that into the body, um yes, it's an antioxidant, but I think there's a there is a prevailing thought that well, oxidation's bad, more antioxidants must be good. Yeah, you hit the nail on the head and and the only technicality is technically we don't really want to balance, we want homeostasis. And the difference is that balance would mean they're equal and that's that's dead, right? So, we can't say that oxidation is just bad in the same way we can't say reduction is just bad. You need to have both of
is just bad. You need to have both of them. And that's why I like the term redox, because redox means oxidation and reduction. Yeah. And you want to have that homeostasis. So, our body I was going through the whole that whole transport chain because we want to see that we are designed to make free radicals to do certain signaling effects, and then they get our body naturally gets rid of them through our body's natural antioxidants. Right. Now, what happens though with aging, with um environmental toxins, and you know, whatever you what what have you uh or just Exercise, yeah. Or or if you're not exercising, inactivity then your natural body's ability to to produce antioxidants goes down. Your mitochondria become dysfunctional as well. You start to increase more free radicals. You increase free radicals to the point you are now suffering from oxidative stress, right? That's a bad thing. You don't want the stress. You want a hormetic type of effect, but not an excessive amount. Mhm. And so, maintaining again, maintaining redox homeostasis is why it's so important. So, our body contains our own antioxidants, right? Glutathione, we mentioned these, right? There's there's a whole bunch of them. Mhm. And and if you have and all plants do the same thing. That's why if you have like your apples, for example, if they're on the tree, they're not turning brown because they also have antioxidants in them. And that's why when we eat, say, the apples or the carrots, or what have you, we get those antioxidants inside of us. Those these polyphenols that can scavenge some of these antioxida - some of the the oxidants, right? Mhm. Now, it turns out though that when you basically isolate these potent
you you basically isolate these potent antioxidants all of the cells, or you have synthetic forms and you just ingest high amounts of them well, that's going to be problematic, kind of what you pointed out, cuz now we're we're potentially blunting those free radicals that our body specifically produced so that we could have improved mitochondrial function and mitochondrial biogenesis. Right. So, when we look at these studies, we can clearly see that if you're eating a healthy diet of fruits and vegetables and so on, then you have Yeah, your your antioxidant your homeostasis your redox homeostasis everything is is good. It's it's a healthy. But, when you start to perturb that either by doing things that are very oxidatively harmful like say smoking or just environmental toxins or you have low physical activity because low physical activity will result in lower levels of your body's natural antioxidants, okay? And then you have oxidative stress. Right. Also, if you start taking high doses of say synthetic antioxidants, then you start to cause a a disequilibrium or you you Yeah, you blunt those benefits. And so, you can actually see a number of especially in animal studies, but clinical studies as well, a number of them have actually shown that antioxidants might actually blunt exercise training adaptations. Wow. So, you don't get mitochondrial biogenesis. You don't get improved say insulin sensitivity or or you don't if you're blunting the inflammatory response, right? We need these things. We need to maintain the homeostasis. And so, that's why we don't want to just take a bunch of antioxidants. That's why hydrogen is so
antioxidants. That's why hydrogen is so different than any other antioxidant. And I want to talk about this for just a second. This is just basic chemistry Mhm. actually. But, the reason why it's selective is because hydrogen gas does not react with the beneficial free radicals. It only reacts with the harmful ones. That is so incredible that it's that word selective means it's reacting with the harmful free radicals like the hydroxyl free radical and not interacting with the beneficial free radicals and allowing the body to just perform that function on its own cuz I mean there's nothing more intelligent than our own innate you know, system. You know, that electron transport chain was designed for a reason. Um it it innately knows what it's doing. And and it's right there in that same Nature Medicine publication. Again, that's why it's such a landmark paper. Yeah. They they took, say, nitric oxide, superoxide, hydrogen peroxide, and hydroxyl radical formation through the Fenton reaction. And you can And they added vitamin C or hydrogen gas. And you can see that vitamin C neutralized everything. The good, the bad, everything. Right. C is great. It's going to get rid of the bad, but high amounts could also get rid of the good. Right. Okay. Hydrogen gas, when you put that with, um, say, superoxide or these other free radicals, there was no reaction. It That's so awesome. It's thermodynamically possible, but it's kinetically infeasible based upon the these rate constants. See, the hydroxyl radical is so reactive Mhm. that it'll react with anything. Yeah. Anything that's in its vicinity. really the only free radical that I'm
really the only free radical that I'm aware of that has no known benefit in the body. Pretty much. mean, it's I mean, Maybe by accident. Okay, cuz I ostensibly we'd want to take that as close to zero as possible. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It just because it reacts so quickly with with anything, and that's going to cause, you know, DNA damage and all sorts of problems. All the other ones can kind of be regulated, and your body have a natural detoxification systems for that, like the superoxide dismutase enzyme, right? And all these other ones. So, in this So, we're going through some of this history. We first see the hydrogen is selective because it can only react with the most oxidative or strongest radicals, the most most harmful ones, right? Yeah. And it's small enough, it can actually get into the mitochondria. Yeah. Whereas again, these other larger antioxidants, maybe like vitamin E, which is more it's larger, but it's also more, uh, lipophilic. So, maybe it can't, you know, easily transfuse into into the cytosol and then go into the mitochondria or different areas. Hydrogen gas can do that. Um, whereas vitamin C is more, uh, more water-soluble. So, it's going to have a harder time going through the cell membrane. It has to go through a transporter protein. Hydrogen gas again, there's no problem. It can diffuse very easily into the mitochondria and there it can help with this with these free radicals and and acts selective antioxidation. There are three ways that hydrogen is helping with this this antioxidative process and that's one of them is it's only going to react with the most toxic hydroxyl radicals if it reacts with them at all.
it reacts with them at all. Yeah, I hope people are picking up on the fact that that you know, how profound that is because it is the only selective antioxidant that I've ever been able to find in any kind of research, you know, um you know, anti - antioxidants are you know, abundant but selective antioxidants, the mechanism that hydrogen uses to leave the body's production of free radicals, necessary free radicals alone, reduce the harmful free radicals that we don't need um and allow this this cellular homeostasis to return. I mean, you just can't overemphasize how unique hydrogen is in that way. Yeah. And that's actually as cool as that is, that's a minor mechanism by which it exerts these antioxidant effects. Really? The other big one is because you it's able to regulate your body's innate or natural antioxidant defense mechanisms. Wow. Because so, it can even bring redox up. That's right. Yeah, it So, so you have like your natural um antioxidants, right? Glutathione, superoxide dismutase. These are all regulated by this transcription factor, the NRF2 pathway, the NRF2 keep one pathway. What happens, this is a protein that's in the cytosol and when you get oxidative stress that's happening, then you get oxidation of this uh keep one factor basically and then the NRF2 can diffuse into the nucleus. There it binds to the DNA and then you get this basically just transcription of your body's natural
transcription of your body's natural antioxidants. So it starts to protect itself. Exactly. Catalase, glutathione. They all start to increase. Yeah, NRF2 regulates over 200 different cytoprotective proteins and enzymes. Wow. And this is the other cool thing. it's mind-numbing. Hydrogen is only going to upregulate NRF2 when the cell needs it. So if you have a cell, and we published studies on this, demonstrating that um hydrogen can regulate upregulate NRF2, but only if there was a stress. Wow. the cell is if you take hydrogen gas and you put in a cell culture and you measure NRF2 levels from a healthy cell, you don't see any NRF2 protein changes. You might see some changes in mRNA, but just because you see something in the mRNA doesn't mean it's actually at the protein level. But but in general, you don't see any real changes at the protein level. But if you were to add a say environmental toxin, some stressor or something that would normally uh cause oxidative damage in the cell, and then you administer hydrogen gas, that's when you see the rescuing effect of hydrogen. Wow. So hydrogen is able to go to the individual cells, knock on the door, and say, "Okay, how are you doing? How's your redox homeostasis? What do you need? Do you need the NRF2 upregulated or not?" Mhm. And so it's only going to basically upregulate the NRF2 pathway in the cells that are suffering from not having enough NRF2 where you want to bring those say glutathione levels up higher. Yeah. So this this is a key mechanism because again, yes, superoxide, hydrogen peroxide, these are
superoxide, hydrogen peroxide, these are all good, but again, only if you have it at the right concentration and the right location for the right duration. If you start making too many of these because you have a hyperactivated say NOX enzyme system or certain complex of the mitochondria, that's when they becomes problematic. Hydrogen is able to regulate our body's natural antioxidants so our body can naturally detoxify these oxidants before they get too high and to help clear them. It's actually using the innate intelligence of the DNA to regulate that system instead of circumventing the DNA and just suppressing it on its own. Yeah, exactly. It's regulating everything. Yeah. And And That's fascinating. And then there's a third way. I said there's three ways. We've talked about two so far. The third way is that hydrogen, because of its signaling effects, it can actually help to suppress excess oxi - oxidation that's occurring. In fact, it's more of a modulator because in some cases hydrogen is able to if there if there's a um an excessive amount of free radical that are being produced, like say at complex one of the mitochondria or NADPH oxidase enzymes, the NOX enzymes. Um or or um neuronal nitric oxide synthase, where you're getting too much nitric oxide, you know, in the brain is causing nitrosative stress. Yeah. It happens in uh happens in Alzheimer's patients. It happens in uh autistic patients. Um ostensibly because of the gut dysbiosis, but you see very high levels
dysbiosis, but you see very high levels of a nitric oxide, which most people think is, you know, just has a vasodilation effect, which it does, but it can also be a toxic gas. Yes, it It is a free radical. It can be very toxic when you have dysregulation. And that's another key area that hydrogen helps to regulate. See, hydrogen gas doesn't react. If you're not convinced like halfway through this podcast, like I'm I'm going to take some right now. Um Well, I mean, the mechanisms are very interesting, but we we we're still looking at the clinical evidence on this, and it's it's very it the preliminary evidence looks looks very exciting. But But the nitric oxide one is very interesting because again, nitric oxide and hydrogen gas don't react, but hydrogen gas can regulate its production. Yeah. And so, these different enzymes, if they get too high, like for example, you have superoxide that's produced from the NOX enzyme and you have high levels of nitric oxide, if they get if those levels get high, they immediately re - react. I mean, the only thing that slows the reaction is the rate of diffusion and when they do react, you form peroxynitrite, which is a a strong oxidated molecule. So, hydrogen essentially preventing that the that formation because it's able to decrease the amount of free radicals that are produced in the first place. Yeah. So, you have prevention. But it's not more than just prevention because as I said earlier, our bodies need free radicals. So, sometimes the cells need a little boost. And so, in a number of studies, including our own that we're we're going to talk about here in just a second, we can see that hydrogen gas can transiently increase small levels of
transiently increase small levels of free radicals. So, it can increase say superoxide production for just a little bit. It's a small transient level. It's kind of a hormetic stressor. My point is is think about hydrogen's going to do. Go to the cell and this is not really accurate, but I'm just trying to explain this to kind of a layman idea cuz we can look at these cell culture studies on this. So, hydrogen gas goes to this cell, "Oh, you're not producing enough free radicals to have the hormetic stress, right?" So, we increase your superoxide production. Now, that could in turn activate NRF2 and now you can have higher levels of endogenous antioxidant self-defense system. It goes to this So, that's that cell. Right. The same body. We're talking about the same human. Yeah. We're getting and now we're going to the other cell, the other and from different organ or an adjacent cell, who knows. And this one says, "Oh, you know what? You are suffering from oxidative stress. I'm going to decrease the amount of oxid - oxidation that's occurring. I'm going to help suppress or downregulate any NADPH oxidase system. I'm going to help decrease the amount of free radicals that are being produced." All right? And then it can go to another cell and it can say, "Oh, you know, I'm going to modulate your your entire free radical production so you have a better homeostasis, right? Mhm. Or maybe it's going to go into another cell and it's just going crazy. Ischemia reperfusion, you have hydroxyl radicals being produced just like crazy and hydrogen gases if it's there, it can react with the hydroxyl radicals and form water. Yeah. So you have Completely neutralizing the worst free radical in the body.
radical in the body. Wow. I mean, it's I hope mechanistically people are really grasping how incredibly unique that is. It's almost like an intelligent molecule. Right? I mean, it sort of arrives and then assesses and can shift its impact based on really what that redox homeostatic environment needs. Mhm. An improvement in in redox, a reduction in oxidation. And and that's just so fascinating because I think very often we just have to, you know, take these blanket approaches and I did for for years too. I just thought meant more more vitamin C IVs, more, you know, more antioxidants, less free radicals, that's a good thing. But really years ago when I started stumbling upon a lot of your research, talking to you, getting to know you, really going down the rabbit hole of how unique hydrogen is. It's not only a part of my routine every day. I mean, I take it either immediately before or or right after I do every hyperbaric session because you know, I realized that in in hyperbarics, you know, that excess oxygen, that oxygen singlet could be creating oxidative stress. Yeah, and it does. And that's how Hbot tends to work. Yeah. You literally create a hormetic stressor just like exercise. Mhm. And you you want to get the benefits and negate some of the negative effects. So taking hydrogen therapy, there's some research on this, at least in cell culture studies, some very interesting research helping prevent oxygen toxicity. So you're able to get some of
toxicity. So you're able to get some of these benefits. Oxygen is a much stronger molecule, you know, like ozone therapy that people do or or hydrogen peroxide. There's a number of things out there that are are very pretty strong and have serious side effects potentially. Um like H-bot, you know, going too high, going for too long. I mean, oxygen toxicity is a very well-known thing. Yeah. Hydrogen uh seems to help negate or not Negate's probably a strong word, but help to reduce some of those excess side effects so you can still get those benefits. Because to your point, you need to have a this this I want to say balance chemically, but really this homeostasis of oxidation and reduction. And so, that's really where the research is I would say converging in terms of, you know, aging and disease conditions and so on. It's not about oxidative stress or the free radical theory of aging, it's all about redox dysregulation. And as you get older, as you age, as you have environmental toxins and so on, you get a redox dysregulation. Mhm. And the problem is that redox dysregulation can happen not only in the same individual, but even in the same organ, even in the same cell. Right. So, you can have like a one portion of your cell, say the cytosol, that is suffering from an oxidative stress or say the mitochondrion oxidative stress that's going on. There's There's too many free radicals being produced. But yet another area, you're actually lacking reductive potential. What I say like in in the um yeah, endoplasmic reticulum or
yeah, endoplasmic reticulum or something. You're you're not able to fold your proteins correctly. If you can't do that, then you can't you know, protein structure dictates function, right? You need to have the correct redox homeostasis. And so, you can imagine if the cell itself is suffering from a redox dysregulation, how would it be possible that taking a conventional antioxidant that only is unidirectional, it's just an electron donor basically, is going to help that? Well, there have actually been cancer studies with like beta-carotene, I think, where they showed that it went the opposite direction. Yeah, unfortunately, that that's exactly right. They found people who smoked a lot when they ate carrots, they tended to There's a correlation. They tended to maybe live longer and be better. And it just makes sense. Well, yeah, cuz smoking causes a lot of free radicals. Carrots have a lot of beta-carotene, that's an antioxidant, so it's going to neutralize those. But when they decided to do the study, "Hey, let's really determine this." They found that those taking the beta-carotene started dying faster and getting cancer faster than those on the placebo group. Wow. And and maybe we could talk about the mechanism quite a bit, but but maybe maybe it's because, again, you you're not able to directly address the redox homeostasis, the dysregulation, right? Because you're just providing a bunch of antioxidants, but you could still be suffering from a reductive stress in different areas. Yeah. Whereas hydrogen is totally different. You don't have that that same concern. And but but that study, actually, it's another maybe critical thing
it's it's another maybe critical thing for us to think about just logically as well, because on the surface, it can make total sense mechanistically, like, "Hey, carrots are rich in beta-carotene, antioxidant, smoking oxidative stress, we should take it." And that's why we have to be careful when we focus too much on mechanisms, like, "Oh, this is the mechanism that." Because just because we can find a mechanism to support something doesn't necessarily mean that that that's going to be the clinical outcome. Yeah. Because the clinical outcome is going to be a summation of a whole bunch of the mechanisms all together. And it's, you know, I think some of the worst research we do is when we study things in isolation. Um, we look how something, you know, behaves in a laboratory, and we assume when we put it back into the human body, it's going to behave the same way. Right. And very often, nothing could be further from the truth, you know. That's exactly right. And that's also some of my skepticism even with with this area of hydrogen research. Like I'm I'm talking about this cuz I'm passionate about this this area. But and then the mechanisms are are I love biochemistry. I love this I love biochemistry. a second cuz I want to I I want to get into some of the more practical applications, right? I mean Which I know is what people want to hear and and we'll do our best to do that. But it goes to my saying I also have to be cautious because I don't want to be the hypocrite like oh, this is all the things happening in the cell and then what but we really want to know, okay, what's the end point? What do the clinical studies actually show? Right. That's really what matters. If
Right. That's really what matters. If you want protein to build lean muscle but without the caloric impact or need to cut, you need perfect amino. It's pure essential amino acids, the building blocks of proteins in a precise form and ratio that allows for near 100% utilization in building lean muscle and no caloric impact. So we build protein six times as much as whey but without the excess body fat we normally get during bulking. This is the new era of protein supplementation and it's real. If you want to build lean muscle without having to cut, you need perfect amino. Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human podcast. Because you know, anecdotally and observationally, what I have seen from bathing clients of mine in hydrogen gas, my using hydrogen gas myself during during intense exercise like what we did this morning, trying to keep up with my son, his performance in distance racing, you know, he just just did 100 mile race. I truly believe if he wasn't powered by hydrogen water, he wouldn't have completed the seven marathons seven continents in seven days cuz he had never run a marathon. Yeah. You know, I've I've read some of the published research on delayed onset muscle soreness, on lactate thresholds, and again, mechanistically it makes sense, but also practically in the host, it's also making sense. So, maybe we eventually I want to get to how should people take it? How much should they take? Um is it safe for everybody to
take? Um is it safe for everybody to take, you know, hydrogen tablets say uh first thing in the morning, um maybe another one in the afternoon, or take take additional hydrogen if you're exercising intensely. Uh certainly if you're using hyperbarics. Um but where are the broad applications, you know, um does hydrogen water help with hormones and women's health specifically? Um and how does hydrogen um water impact athletic performance? Um So, so I want to finish the mitochondrial story briefly because I'm going to refer back to that as I digest all of these things. Okay. And and the summation of everything is back to the mitochondria, that the mechanism, and to that paper that you mentioned. We published a paper in Redox Biology with my collaborators in Japan. Again, they're they're the real researchers behind this. I'm just happy that I was involved since 2013 actually on this project. Yeah. But this uh Redox Biology is a top journal, but what we found was that hydrogen specifically targets a specific protein in complex three of the mitochondria. So, remember we talked about that electron transport chain? In complex three, there's a specific protein called the Rieske iron-sulfur protein or the Rieske protein. And it transfers an electron one electron at a time. Ubiquinol comes in, gives an electron, and then the Rieske one goes to the Rieske iron-sulfur protein uh pathway. When hydrogen gas targets this protein, it actually stops it from working. Basically, it causes a change in this protein, it
causes a change in this protein, it stops from working. This is a stress. Mhm. This this because you're not able to transfer for proteins. The mitochondria quickly recognizes the stress and you start to see increases in some superoxide levels. So, a slight transient increase in superoxide production. You have an initial drop in ATP levels. That quickly um causes the mitochondria to respond, to regenerate, and rejuvenate its its the mitochondrial function. And then the RISP or the iron RISP iron-sulfur protein levels, they come back up even higher than they were. ATP levels go back. Follow that with exercise. As soon as you start exercising, what's the first thing that happens? You start producing free radicals. Right. Your ATP levels drop immediately, just very quickly. That's why creatine phosphate kicks in very quickly, right? All of these similar things start happening and then later you start having an increase in everything. So, you get the mitochondrial biogenesis. Right? So, one of the main targets of hydrogen gas seems to be this RISP iron-sulfur protein in complex three of the mitochondria. So, mitochondria is a prime target of hydrogen. And based upon that, we can understand why hydrogen is able to regulate redox homeostasis, produce some free radicals when needed, suppress free radicals in other cases, activate the Nrf2 pathway, increase mitochondrial regeneration, rejuvenation, ATP production, all the cellular things that are needed right there in the mitochondria. And now we have a one of the mechanisms of how
have a one of the mechanisms of how hydrogen is specifically does this. Wow. So, now let's go to these these are practical applications cuz I want to refer back to to this that that target. We can understand how hydrogen gas would be doing some of this based upon understanding of the mechanism. Yeah, so so maybe we start with athletic performance, sure, right? Because, you know, vast majority of my audience is exercising on a regular basis. And they're either taking hydrogen water or they're not. I I take hydrogen for all my exercise. Yeah. So, do I. Um and and I absolutely, unequivocally notice a benefit. So does my son. And so does every athlete that I work with. So so there's a couple points. The first one I want to point out is when it comes to athletic performance, that we we call it an ergogenic effect, okay? We first, whatever we do, we first don't want to make things worse. Right. And that is a major concern that a lot of new emerging technologies, supplements, uh, fad concepts come in, where they could potentially negate some of the exercise benefits. We talked about earlier how uh, some in some studies show that taking antioxidants can actually blunt exercise performance, because you're maybe you're blunting those free radicals that you need. Taking NSAIDs, anti-inflammatories, same thing. That could potentially blunt exercise benefits. Mhm. Cold water immersion immediately after Yeah. strength training. one. Yep, exactly. Yeah. So when it comes to hydrogen therapy,
So when it comes to hydrogen therapy, we we can very confidently say actually that hydrogen at least does not negate exercise benefits. It doesn't impair exercise performance. So that's that's number one. If there there if there's a question, maybe you you should really be cautious before you try to do any intervention. Hydrogen doesn't do that, and we can think about the mechanisms. It doesn't react with other free radicals at all. It can't do it. It's only going to regulate the Nrf2 pathway when there's a serious problem going on. Mhm. And then we look at the studies, we look at the the animal studies for example, with exercise, so combinational studies, we actually see that uh, during the control, of course, there's no increase in mitochondrial biogenesis. We look at a marker PGC-1 alpha. This is a peroxisome proliferator activated receptor coactivator 1 alpha. It's Ooh, that was a mouthful. There's going to be a test on this later, so I hope that everybody got that. Well, but this this is a master target we want to activate. Things like AMPK can activate this which AMPK gets activated when you break ATP down to get some AMP levels. AMP can activate AMPK. Calcium is another one that can activate this. We want to activate PGC-1 alpha and exercise does that really well. PGC-1 alpha in turn can increase things like mitochondrial biogenesis and vascular endothelial growth factor and a number of other things. So, hydrogen. When you do exercise and you combine it with hydrogen, you see PGC-1 alpha levels increase.
you see PGC-1 alpha levels increase. Mhm. Actually, they increase even more than exercise alone. Wow. When you do the same exercise with vitamin C, you see PGC-1 alpha levels decrease. Yeah. It's not selective. This is critical to understand. This means that hydrogen is not impairing exercise performance and if anything, it might act as an exercise mimetic to help to improve exercise performance, especially over the long run cuz you see increases in PGC-1 alpha. Wow. So, this is animal studies and we and it makes mechanistic sense based upon the mechanisms I just talked about in these in vitro studies, cell culture. Now, look at the clinical studies. There's a breadth of studies on exercise performance and I've read them in swimmers. I've read elite swimmers. Um I want to say another one in elite soccer players. right. Yeah. Um so, I I've read some of this research and uh it it more discussed like delayed onset muscle soreness, but it also discussed um performance, recovery. Um uh I don't remember if it went into specific mechanisms, but I mean I don't know that I have read a negative research publication on hydrogen. I'll just put it that way. Yeah, it depend it depends on definition of negative. There are a number of papers that show there are no benefit. We published an article, one of my first articles actually, um when I was doing my master's is we we there's a lot of people are saying that their their VO2 max was increasing when they take in hydrogen water. And you know, it was a simple study because we
know, it was a simple study because we know exactly how to measure VO2 max. That's a little more complicated. We'll say VO2 peak for for those who are exercise physiologists. But but we looked at this and we we found that there was no increase in the VO2 peak uh following acute supplementation with hydrogen. And mechanistically, it that wouldn't be expected. Right. But in that case, it'd be I can negative study. However, we did a sub-analysis of some of the uh like the exercise look at the exercise and heart rate at lower exercise intensities. We can see that the heart rate was a little bit lower. And there's there's changes like in the respiratory quotient or the the respiratory exchange ratio and a number of other changes. And other people have reported on this, too, uh showing that actually hydrogen even an acute dose of hydrogen water might be able to help um with some of the athletic performance um with the hydrogen water or or hydrogen inhalation. and we did it in soccer players. Yes, exactly. And well, in some of the soccer players, they they took it for like a week and and then but they was not at a VO2 max. It wasn't a max effort. So, you're probably not going to see a change if you just take a one dose of hydrogen and you go for a peak performance. But you might see even just one dose of hydrogen and you can see at like a kind of a lactate threshold at pretty high intensity, you can maybe exercise for a longer period of time, maybe do more bouts of exercise. Mhm. And probably those benefits are going to be more significant when you do a longer dosing protocol because again, just like
dosing protocol because again, just like exercise, it takes time to activate mitochondrial biogenesis. So, by taking hydrogen water, you want to recover quickly cuz that's like the number one thing that comes to athletes is you want to recover fast. Why? So, you can train again. Right? It's a vol - it's a volume dependent. Right. the volume is limited by how quickly you can recover. And so by taking hydrogen water, if we can improve the inflammatory response, we actually can see that an acute dose of hydrogen often will increase super oxide production and inflammatory markers like interleukin 6 for example. And then it goes back to baseline faster and lowers that chronic low grade inflammation, lowers that chronic oxidative stress. has a positive effect on delayed onset muscle soreness. Yeah, that Yeah, the number That was There's a lot of potential mechanisms that that could be going on with with that. And and more research needs to be done cuz a lot of those studies are still pretty small, right? But but we can see though in in the studies that have been done where hydrogen does seem to exert like an anti-fatigue effect, right? They're able to exercise I'd say it's a scale where they rated the the Borg's effect or the RPE. Yeah, where they rated the actual level of intensity level of perceived effort. Yeah, the perceived exertion. yeah. The the level of perceived exertion. And in in nearly all of those cases their their level of perceived exertion for the same amount of exercise was lower. Yes. So I mean that's clearly something that would in my opinion improve athletic performance. Yeah, you can do it again. And but those
Yeah, you can do it again. And but those were also correlated with changes in say lactate levels. Those Those levels were also lower. Which, you know, the reason you make lactate in the first place is because there's a mismatch between the how how fast you need ATP and how quickly your mitochondria can make ATP. So if you need ATP fast enough or faster than what your mitochondria can provide, you have to go through glycolysis and you start producing lactic acid. instead of using oxygen, right? Yeah, well, not It's not the carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is only produced in during the the during the TCA cycle, the the citric acid cycle. Um glycolysis uh doesn't use oxygen or anything. It just breaks down your glucose molecule and you and it in order to continue driving glue the end product of glycolysis is this molecule type called pyruvate and then pyruvate normally enters into the citric acid cycle and then it gets converted to acetyl-CoA and then citrate you do the whole citric acid cycle then you make NADH molecules and it goes to the electron transport chain complex one two there's three complex three right there's a whole process takes quite a bit makes a lot of ATP one glucose molecule can make 30 or 32 ATP molecules when you use oxidative phosphorylation but glycolysis only makes like two net ATP but it's a lot faster like you know it's it's I won't give you numbers but it's a lot faster so if you can't oxidize pyruvate fast enough then you convert pyruvate to lactate and that's important because lactate production allows glycolysis to continue going so lactate production actually
going so lactate production actually delays fatigue it allows you to continue exercising it prevents or delays acidosis for example because you the whole purpose of lactate production is you're actually regenerating a molecule that you're familiar with NAD plus drives glycolysis and if you convert all your NAD NAD plus to NADH you can't do glycolysis anymore so by converting pyruvate to lactate you convert NADH to NAD plus and then NAD NAD plus can drive from glyceraldehyde 3 phosphate like it can cause that to that oxidation to to 2, 3-bisphosphoglycerate so you get any NAD plus being produced so in these studies where lactate levels are lower there's a couple potential things that are going on number one maybe because you have your this exercise intensity you need X amount of ATP and so maybe what's happening is your body your your the hydrogen helps your mitochondria function better so you can provide the amount of ATP you need through the via oxidative phosphorylation through your mitochondria as opposed to anaerobic glycolysis. So so in other words, it's just to again to pull us out of the weeds, um it's allowing you to exercise at the same intensity for a longer period period of time. Either because of the Because that's that's anecdotally what I notice. That's right. And my son and every athlete that I put it on. I mean, I bathe them in hydrogen water. I have them consume hydrogen rich water. Um and I have uh hundreds uh of of clients that by
uh hundreds uh of of clients that by bathing and consuming it have both reduced their pain, improved their recovery, and increased the duration that they can exercise at a high level of intensity. And this has been in a number of UFC fighters and a number of professional athletes that most people watching this podcast would know um that perform at a very high level and now they would swear by it. Yeah. That's amazing. And and I the research is still ongoing with that. And I think we'll start to see some of the differences in the mechanism because when you drink hydrogen water, actually a lot of the hydrogen gas is excelled out of your lungs. So, a lot of that doesn't actually reach the muscles. Yet, we still see these direct benefits versus say inhalation of hydrogen gas, that's going to have some different different effects as well. But, they both have very, you know, obviously benefits that we see when we look at the clinical studies. So, let's go through some again I'm going to pull us out of the weeds. So, now you know the mechanism. I'm going to pull us out of the weeds, but you know, I want to talk about women's hormones and women's health, PCOS, and hydrogen rich water. Um we we touched on athletic performance. There was also a really interesting article published in the Journal of Experimental Gerontology. And in this article was a I think it was a 6-month study. Uh they they broke these uh uh gerontology uh patients into two two categories. One drank hydrogen rich water, one did not. Um they used uh tattoo markers for methylation. They
tattoo markers for methylation. They used they measured like sit stand ratios. They also measured, you know, different cognitive scoring, short-term recall, learn memory. There were different a number of different measurements for cognitive function. And it seemed to universally improve the hydrogen-rich water um side is significantly across all of these markers. That was another one that really piqued my interest in hydrogen water because you know, a lot of studies are in young athletes, you know, like 22-year - old soccer players, you know, 25-year - old you know, competitive swimmers. But here you have a population that's deconditioned. You know, they're not out there sprinting. And part of their protocol wasn't to change their exercise regimen, yet they had exercise benefits. Yeah. They actually I I'm calling it sit stand ratio. There's another term for it, but um and that was another study that really drew my interest to hydrogen-rich water because that was the only intervention that they made for that 6-month period of time. Yeah, I'm familiar with that study. It wasn't one of the ones that I I participated in, but I know the authors, the researchers. And yeah, it was a very powerful study because to your point, this was number one, it was a longer study. They're using the hydrogen producing tablets. So you get a pretty high dose of hydrogen, which is important because sometimes some of these studies they use
sometimes some of these studies they use use hydrogen water, but the concentration you know, they may have found a more effective benefits if it was a higher dose. It's one of the potential trends we found this in metabolic syndrome study for example, which we will talk about later. But that study showed, you know, some of these potential benefits that you you already mentioned. And it was, you know, like 6 months. It was pretty good duration. And that makes sense when you think about the mechanisms. Do you hydrogen is not a super powerful molecule and that's what makes it largely safe as well. And so it's going to go in and it has these these effects on the mitochondria and in the cell and it's just long-term benefits that we start to see. So that's why going longer like for 6 months, you might still see more of these benefits. And and also this is why it gets me excited because yes, I am very interested in the on the mechanisms, the biochemistry just because I like to see how things things work. you are. But but we we want to know that those clinical endpoints. And here we're showing that it's translation it's being translated, right? It's translatable between the cell culture to animal studies and then finally to the human studies, right? And and like I know you mentioned with the women with that PMS and you know yeah PC PCOS as well. You know, more research need to be done on this. I I was involved I hope Arthur one of those studies but it's more of a subjective type thing that we looked at. And it does show favorable effects. So I wouldn't say you know, hydrogen's like a hormone or
you know, hydrogen's like a hormone or necessarily mimics those things. But again by helping to improve the terrain, the cellular terrain and and you know, how the inflammatory process and oxidative stress, you can start to help maybe regulate things that are really outside of homeostasis. So really think about hydrogen as a homeostatic adaptogenic regulator. Yeah, you know, you also in the 24-week metabolic syndrome. Yeah, that was the one. Mhm. That's this this I find fascinating because the vast majority of Americans with chronic disease have metabolic syndrome. Um and the vast majority of my deconditioned clients have metabolic syndrome. Um 41% of children have metabolic syndrome. That's very sad. Um you know, 52% of adults mean you know, we've become the sickest, fattest, most diseased nation in the world despite the fact that we spend $ 5 trillion a year on health care largely because of metabolic syndrome. And, you know, metabolic syndrome is a combination of things, you know, hypertension, high triglycerides, uh poor insulin sensitivity or or insulin resistance, um obesity. And um that was another one that was very fascinating to me. Can you talk about what happened to those patients? What changed? And what, if anything, surprised you? And what does this mean to hundreds of millions of Americans that are suffering from metabolic syndrome? Yeah, this was as a 6-month study. Um it was conducted in in India with some of my colleagues there, and it was a pretty big undertaking. Um we used the hydrogen-producing tablets um
used the hydrogen-producing tablets um in the study because we could provide a um a high consistent dose of hydrogen. the way, is why I I'm not a proponent of the hydrogen bottles any longer. I used to be a big proponent of the hydrogen bottles. I'm not a believer in those anymore. You know, it's I noticed that the proton exchange membranes would break down over time. The seals would break down over time. Um a lot of these would um you know, if you didn't clean it regularly, you would get almost like mold in the bottom. And then, because there were so so many Chinese fakes on on the market, you know, I had uh I had clients that actually had these things explode on them. Yeah. And and to get a relatively low dose of hydrogen versus getting like 12 parts per million or 13 parts per million um from an element elemental magnesium tablet, I mean, that that's it's apples and oranges, even cost-wise. Um and I hadn't seen any studies using hydrogen bottles. I'd had them I'd seen them with hydrogen inhalation, hydrogen tablets. Maybe there were some with hydrogen water bottles um that I'm unaware of. Uh but I haven't. Yeah, I mean, the the bottles can work, but but there are a number of caveats. I think you mentioned all of those, right? There some some bottles that are okay, and but then the longevity of those. The nice thing about the tablets, just for for research purposes is it's a lot easier to give a client a bottle of tablets and teach them exactly how to use it and we know they're getting a at least a minimum Same dose. Yeah. Even if it's not exactly the same, that we know they're at least getting a certain amount of hydrogen in order for it to be clinically relevant. threshold, okay. Yeah, hitting that threshold. Yeah, so
Yeah, hitting that threshold. Yeah, so can you talk a little bit about the metabolic syndrome? Yeah, so all those Yeah, so so this this paper um it was actually Is is it was both surprising but also expected because there were a number of other studies already on the metabolic syndrome area and but we were using a higher concentration of hydrogen and a longer duration. And what we found was we found improvements inside triglycerides and cholesterol levels and the the ratio for example um we found decreases in some of the inflammatory markers and oxidative stress. Maybe something that was surprising was there was the the BMI was lower which specifically because of weight loss although it seemed to be a more just fat loss in the hydrogen water group. And You just converted half my audience right with that one. Really? Better fat loss? Well, it wasn't wasn't a primary endpoint but it's something that was observed and this has actually been shown in a number of studies where there seems to just be some modest weight loss specifically from fat mass and potentially an increase in lean body mass. Mhm. And it's interesting so there was a you you'll probably like this. This is really interesting but there was an animal study um it was published in a um Journal of Obesity I believe was was a Nature Publishing Group also or used to be but this in this study they used a leptin deficient mice. So leptin deficient leptin's a hormone that you makes makes you feel full. Right. And so if you don't feel full you want to keep on eating. And so these mice
to keep on eating. And so these mice would overeat and they're fed a high fat diet. But they were blunt leptin so they wouldn't have a satiation response. Exactly so they just keep on eating. Yeah. Well, those given the hydrogen water, Mhm. they they like were so much thinner than the other other rodents were. It was just I mean those pictures in the article, you can just visibly tell the difference. In fact, the drinking of hydrogen rich water in this case was equivalent to like a 20% chloric restriction. Wow. And and mechanistically they found that hydrogen increased FGF21 or fibroblast growth factor 21, Mhm. which increases energy expenditure, which is again something that happens in the mitochondria. So it's it's metabolism improves metabolism. And and wasn't there recently a paper, you might have been involved in it, um comparing it to GLP-1s? Oh, yeah, there was a study on that. I wasn't involved with that paper, but that was interesting because hydrogen seemed to um have have some uh some benefits in terms of it basically helping restore some of the loss that can happen with like obesity or whatever. And so you can have uh basically the right levels that you would otherwise you're you're supposed to have. Maybe that's helping to regulate your somebody's weight or their satiety or just their perception, their desire. There's there's a lot of hydrogen is very multi-factorial because of what it's doing to the brain, what it's doing to the gut, and what that in turn is going to do to the brain. And then if that's going to change, you're going to have your your dietary habits will change. That's further going to change your gut microbiome. And then you might feel like exercising, you have
might feel like exercising, you have more energy cuz you're improving the mitochondria. And now if you start to exercise, and we see this in these studies where people are taking hydrogen water and like I write down in the journal, I feel like exercising more. I walked more, which is kind of a confound, but it's also that's very interesting that people are wanting to just move more and do things more. And that's that's very important for overall health. Well, you know, there's there's also um a link between the reduction of fiber in our diets over time and the reduction of this production of hydrogen gas, right? a very interesting correlation. And and yes, basically, if you have a healthy diet, Mhm. if you have a healthy microbiome, healthy healthy microbiome, Yeah, if you have all these are healthy and good, you naturally produce a lot of hydrogen gas. You actually you can produce up to, you know, I don't maybe you know, over 10 even 13 L of hydrogen gas a day, you know, just by by having a the a micro microbiome with a lot of fiber, right? Now, a lot of hydrogen gas is not um it is going to be consumed by other bacteria. It's going to be lost in flatulence. And so you don't actually get a lot of Lost in flatulence? I love the scientific term for And it's explosive. Just busting ass. Yeah. And it's explosive. Cuz it's above 4%. Yeah. Um but you know, it it is interesting when you look at some of these studies, uh Parkinson's, uh Alzheimer's, a lot of neurological conditions, they tend to have lower hydrogen gas uh in their air
have lower hydrogen gas uh in their air in their exhaled air. Their breath hydrogen gas is lower. And when you look at um what my my some of my collaborators at the Gyeongsang University, they they looked at a Parkinson's patients and in in their the bacteria in their fecal matter was actually had less hydrogen producing bacteria than those who don't have those disease. So, again, a very strong correlation. Again, correlation does not equal causation, of course. But these are important correlations that that you would expect to be exist that would exist if there were a causative factor going on, right. Same thing with the Japanese centenarians, right? The those who um are become centenarians, they have higher exhaled hydrogen gas levels uh than than the younger people who, you know, don't don't end up living as long, basically. Listen, there's what I share on this podcast, and then there's what I share with my inner circle. If you've been following me for a while, you know how I hold nothing back here. But my VIP community, that's where the real magic happens. Picture this, you're struggling with energy crashes, brain fog, or just feeling like you're not operating at your peak, and you don't know where to get real answers. But here's what really sets this apart. You're not just getting my insights. When I have incredible guests on the podcast, VIP members get to submit questions for a private podcast segment. So that world-renowned expert we just interviewed, you get exclusive access to their knowledge tailored to your specific situation. This section is under the private podcast section in the Ultimate Human community. And speaking of exclusive, you're getting my personal protocols, the exact tools I use for water fasting,
the exact tools I use for water fasting, gut optimization, and morning routines that have taken me decades to perfect. This isn't theory, this is what works in the real world. The community launches challenges throughout the year where you get direct access to me and my network of experts. It's like having a personal health advisory board for less than $ 100 a month. Your health is your wealth, and this investment pays dividends for life. Join the VIP community at the ultimatehuman. com / vip and step into your ultimate potential. Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human podcast. So So for somebody that's new to hydrogen water, um what is their entry point? What's the entry point to start consuming hydrogen water if they're if they've never consumed it before? Well, it's it's I guess it's pretty simple. One hydrogen tablet a day, start it in the morning, take it with food, take it without food, take it before exercise. What What How would you tell somebody who's um compelled maybe after listening to this podcast if they want And And that's that's kind of my my first thought is first, you know, what does the research say? Like, well, what is your situation and and circumstance at, right? Because, you know, hydrogen is not proven. We don't That's kind of anti-science is also like we don't prove anything. We We In science, we try to prove things are false. And if we can't prove they're false, then it increases the probability that they're probably true. Yeah. But we never really know if it's true. Right? And so I guess at first I'm just saying we don't want to I don't want to misrepresent like the emerging studies. It's like, yeah, 200
emerging studies. It's like, yeah, 200 human studies, but they're kind of all over the place from universities all over the world, not like just a focused look at this specific primary endpoints so we can make this specific claim or whatever, right? So we we there needs to be more research to really categorically say, yes, if you do hydrogen, you will have this benefit, this is what it is. Right. Instead, I think that people should have an informed consent. They should understand, hey, this is an emerging area, the safety is very high. Um the research looks promising, especially animal research, but the number of clinical studies look good. And if you have the funds, the discretionary means to try, Mhm. then by all means, you you can try it. Because I I believe the safety is high enough that you can do that, right? Yeah. And so if you if that's you and you do want to try, then um I guess if you're going to try the the hydrogen tablets, for example, then yeah, you actually only need one. Mhm. In fact, most of the research uh with just one tablet will provide you more hydrogen than the majority of all the clinical publications. Wow. Okay. because most most of them do not use hydrogen tablets. But that's starting to change because the hydrogen tablets have been now used in clinical research Yeah, I've seen that, yeah. a because they're just they're convenient. And you provide a very high dose. And now there's looking at some of these studies uh that potentially dose-dependent effect. And And if you also look at the uh translational effects, so animals, they drink a lot more water compared to us. I mean, like an like like we'd have to be drinking like over a gallon of water a day, you know, and to drink the equivalent to what an animal would, a rodent. So they're getting a lot more hydrogen. And so maybe one of the reasons that
And so maybe one of the reasons that they are more responsive to the benefits of hydrogen is they're also getting a higher dose. There's a lot of other metabolic factors as well. But but there's some trending in some case when we have the higher doses is is beneficial, which is why a lot of researchers are choosing to use hydrogen tablets. Um you know, but but and there are some studies that that there are some studies that show that a high concentration is not more effective than a low concentration in that specific area. Yeah. But there are other studies showing that a higher concentration is more effective Mhm. in those specific areas. But there are no studies for hydrogen water. There are no studies where a higher concentration is less effective than a lower concentration. Okay. Now that's not true for inhalation of hydrogen gas. if you're going to do it, um yeah, that's 2 to 4% but um So if you're going to do it, you taking a tablet that's 12 parts per million. Um and when would you consume it? First thing in the morning? Yeah, first I would just consume it daily. Yeah. Like we just think about what's the easiest thing, just consume it daily. And then if you want to be um okay, figure out some regimen whatever. We don't have enough research to really say this is going to be the most effective. Right. Um for example, you can take it um fasted. There's ideas if you take it fasted, well then maybe you don't have any noise in your blood or whatever and then hydrogen gas can directly cause a signaling and you can get those benefits, take it before you exercise. Mhm. But you could also argue before I exercise every every time. Yes, and that's and that makes total sense. Is that when you take it or I in in general. I I feel like I do hydrogen water before I exercise and I
hydrogen water before I exercise and I do like inhalation of hydrogen gas like after like a post exercise. Okay. But but you can do there's arguments both ways and we just need more research to see if there's really any difference. So you're just saying just take it daily. Just take it because it's not like caffeine. If you're going to If you want the benefits of caffeine to help you exercise, you actually do take it before you exercise, right? That that's not true with hydrogen. Hydrogen is going to provide a benefit that kind of stacks on top of itself over time and because we start to to change gene expression. We start to change the function of mitochondria. So we start seeing changes over time and they become more and more consistent. Consistency is the most important. And now if you're really thinking about something something important to you, then yeah, take the hygiene before you exercise. But for that matter, take the hygiene after you exercise also. So you can safely take you know a number of these say tablets and there's there's no safety concern when it comes to hydrogen gas itself. Just pure hydrogen there's really no safety concerns. They've been using hydrogen gas to prevent say decompression sickness since the 1940s at orders of magnitude higher than what you would ever talk about therapeutically you know dissolving a gas in water and then drinking that. So there's not concern there. You just start running up against you know how much magnesium can one tolerate for example. So you can you know probably take there is a trace amount of elemental magnesium that's remains after it ever passes. Yeah. Right. It's not a therapeutic dose of magnesium either, but it's Well, not necessarily because most people see most people um are only getting around 3 400 milligrams of
getting around 3 400 milligrams of magnesium. Most people are deficient or well in magnesium. So simply by taking one or two tablets a day you're literally no longer being deficient and that's that that can literally move the needle just not being deficient in magnesium. And I would suggest that the research indicates at least my interpretation that taking closer to around 700 milligrams of magnesium is probably better for you. So taking you know several tablets a day um you guess you get the benefits of hydrogen but I'm just saying you also are getting some of that magnesium as well. Right. And that can help move move that needle a little bit more cuz magnesium we know is a lot of has a lot of benefits to it. Now what is like really exciting you about the research in the hydrogen because as I've poked around the research you know I've seen it in concussive injuries you know comparing it to the standard protocol for concussive recovery and being magnitudes better than the standard protocol. I've seen it used and you know, to soak limbs immediately after injury compared to the rice protocol. Rice uh rest, ice, compress, and elevate. Um there seems to be significant indications in um cognitive studies that the the Journal of Experimental Experimental Gerontology, there seems to be significant impact for delayed onset muscle soreness and maybe um blunting the lactate threshold for athletic performance. Um you know, I certainly think that making it a part of your daily routine
making it a part of your daily routine definitely not going to have any negative side effects and there's this whole host of selective antioxidant benefits that you're not getting from your regular you know, um ingestion of antioxidants. Um I will say that again, anecdotally, I have seen the greatest uh impacts from people that are bathing in it. Um in terms of like immediate benefits. Like my my you know, Sage, my wife has an L5 S1 fusion. Mhm. And so when her back acts up, it travels right up her spine and she literally just cannot sleep. It locks up. When I rub her back, it's like it's hard as a rock. Um but if she gets in a 25-minute hydrogen bath right before bed, she'll sleep 7 hours. Yeah. Um and I put Navy SEALs in there. I put Shawn Ryan in there. He called me the next day and was like, "Dude, this is the first time I got 8 hours sleep in 15 years. It's the first time I woke up with no pain in 15 years." And it you know, maybe lasted 48 hours. Um I put arthritic patients in in these tubs, bathe them in hydrogen 25-35 minutes. Um no one's ever gotten out of there and said, "I feel the same or feel worse." Almost without exception related to inflammatory conditions, knees, hips, shoulders, rotator cuff, low back. Um there seems to be an immediate benefit um for people and pain, um inflammation, like yeah, you know, range of motion. And I have seen this so
range of motion. And I have seen this so many times and so consistently that I'm absolutely convinced. Um And so what are your thoughts on Oh, that's exciting. I mean, you know, it's interesting because That's exciting. Well, it's a Super exciting. well, it's interesting though because what you're talking about is your your experience. Yes. Yeah, and I want to be cautious to say exactly that. Yeah, and these these I guess we we could term it, you know, anecdotal evidence, which is not something we just throw away, but it's anecdotal, but it's still a form of evidence. It's way, eczema and psoriasis, too. Yeah. So, in front of my eyes. Which which and there are actually some case studies on those areas also, right? So it there there can be some mechanistic sense to some of these things. And so, but but bathing is the is doesn't have as much research as say drinking hydrogen water or inhalation. Yeah, inhalation. So, I have to be a little bit more cautious in what I can say what what we see clinically. Mechanistically, I could see how some of these examples make sense. You know, you get in the water and immediately hydrogen gas, the small small molecule. I mean, it can penetrate this the skin and it can actually get into those areas Almost like it's not there, right? I mean, it's transdermal, yeah, it goes transdermally. I mean, it's still We don't want to go into some of the the Brownian diffusion aspects, No, please don't. I'm just kidding. But it can get to those areas and you know, we we can see effects like in our research, we found that hydrogen if influenced the mitochondria within
if influenced the mitochondria within within as little as 2 minutes. Right? So, we we can see effects immediately. And when you drink hydrogen water, you're influencing the microbiome and you you can you you see excelled hydrogen gas within just a couple minutes also. So, hydrogen gas is going to the body, but again, the concentration is probably not very high if if at all in say, you know, your knee or something after you drink hydrogen water. So, the benefits to the knee come through other mechanisms, other second messengers, other things that are happening versus you were to bathe directly there or if you were to inhale hydrogen gas. Okay, now that hydrogen gas is getting feared into the blood and getting into those joints specifically. So, those are different mechanisms and they can be supported by by mechanisms actually. And I I mean I've seen it so consistently. Yeah. Well, which is why I think you can't necessarily what's better, bathing or drinking or inhalation. Right. You you know, really you you if you can, you should do all of them. I would say most of the research is on hydrogen water and inhalation. And bathing is starting to emerge and that that's becoming maybe more more popular, but but mechanistically we understand how hydrogen gas works on the mitochondria level. It's effects on signaling, calcium signaling for example. Um so, some of these can start to make sense. Probably that's why some of the exercise benefits. Um so, let's talk about inhalation um because hydrogen is amazingly effective at very low doses. I mean concentrations um 2 to
low doses. I mean concentrations um 2 to 4%. Yes, and we don't want to get confused because the concentrations in water is very different than inhalation. Cuz we want to reach at a certain micromolar level, a few a several micromolars in the bloodstream. When you drink hydrogen water, you only have you know, let's say you're going to drink this, you're going to get around a 3 to 4 milligrams of hydrogen gas dissolved in the water. You drink that, it's going to be diluted by your body. Right. By the time it gets into those areas in in your like a portal vein and your liver, you're going to be around you know, 5 to 30 micromolar concentration. Right. When you inhale hydrogen gas, based on Henry's law, between 1 to 4% you also get around 5 to 30 micromolar concentration. Right. And that's what we see in the research in the animal studies. So, that Nature Medicine publication again, that was 2% hydrogen gas. Now, I just this This is probably some of the most most powerful and interesting area of research I'm going to get to. Some research going on in Japan right now with hydrogen gas. That Nature Medicine publication was uh 2% hydrogen gas. Mhm. Then they looked at uh stroke. So, an actual in clinical So, that was an animal study of stroke. They used actual human studies in in 10 years later in 2017 and they did a safety study and a comparison to see how effective hydrogen gas was. Again, about 2% hydrogen gas. Okay. And in this study they found that inhalation of hydrogen gas compared to standard treatment, a
gas compared to standard treatment, a standard drug, hydrogen gas was more effective at improving the National Institutes of Health scores of of the stroke and a number of other parameters. I got to go back and look at the study. But, it was essentially more effective in all those parameters. Right. So, again, this ischemia reperfusion injury, free radicals, oxidative damage, right? Inflammation. are an excellent delivery mechanism directly into the blood, too. Exactly. Yeah. And that's important clarification, too, because hydrogen gas, unlike oxygen, does not bind onto the hemoglobin. It doesn't get carried through a specific protein. It just dissolves stays into the It dissolves in the blood. Yeah. And then it then then as it dissolved at that, you know, 5 to 20 micromolar concentration, it reaches the target organs, has its effect. When you stop inhalation or stop administration, then it goes back to baseline within an hour. So, like when you drink hydrogen water, Mhm. all the hydrogen gas is gone after an hour. Right. The benefits remain for like 24 hours or potentially longer if you were constantly doing hydrogen water. So, same with inhalation. It's gone after an hour. So, but those benefits remain. So, they they also looked at in animal studies in post-cardiac arrest syndrome in animal studies. And they found that the 24-hour survival at in in 24 hours in the control group about 43% survived. When you do the normal therapy, which is targeted temperature management, Mhm. the so basically cool the body down like a therapeutic hypothermia, Mhm. then you have 77% survived. Wow. That's that's why that's the normal treatment. Mhm. When you did hydrogen gas, 92%
Mhm. When you did hydrogen gas, 92% survival. Wow. When you combine the two, 100% survival at 24 hours. You're kidding. That's huge. Why isn't everybody talking about that? Well, it's an animal study. Ah. It's an animal study. Okay, but this was enough That was enough to get the Japanese government to approve um hydrogen as a class 2B medicine for the study of hydrogen in post-cardiac arrest syndrome patients in hospitals. when do you think that study will be already been done. I'm going to tell you the results. Okay, good. That approval We waited the whole podcast for this. We should have talked about this minute one. The messing around with the free radical, you know, stage four of the end, you know, the electron transport No, this is the meat. Yeah, this this is the the but understanding those mechanisms helps help us understand these observations, right? So, and so the Japanese approved this so they could do a study. And and it's not approval like now they're going to use it in the hospitals or whatever. It's just they can actually do a study cuz you have to make sure this is a safe. You're talking about people who are coming in comatose um who who are on the verge of death and then you're going to do some other radical therapy. You've got to get approval for that. Right. So, they gave this approval. There's a is major study undertaking. 15 different hospitals that were involved. Wow. But then COVID happened. Oh my gosh. So, unfortunately, the study got truncated and so it wasn't as long as they wanted to. vaccinated. I'm just kidding. They but they didn't go as long as they wanted to. But but we do have some of those results. Wow. And basically that the the
basically that the the um the couple of the endpoints. So, they used 2% hydrogen gas, all right? Again, this was not with a nasal cannula where like, you know, so many milliliters of flow rate. This was like with a face mask, a tank of exact precise concentration of hydrogen because remember, 2% seemed to be more effective than 4%. So, you really need to control everything and you can't have it be flammable. Has to be below 4% or else you you can't do the study. Yeah. Okay, so in the study though they they looked at a couple of things, but I'm just going to give you two main results. Mhm. Um the 90-day survival because typically after post cardiac arrest syndrome, you you know, yeah, you able to resuscitate the person, but then the survival is not very high because they had so much damage. They end up dying, you know, several days, weeks later. Right. They looked at the 90-day survival. And in the um hydrogen in No, in the control group, the control group I think this is a I think there were about 77 patients. It was going to be like 380 or something patients, but it got truncated. But there was like in the in this study, there was a 61% survival in the standard treatment group. Mhm. And in the hydrogen group, it was an 85% survival. Wow. So so if you had 100 subjects, 61% survived with standard treatment, 85 lived. It's like with 24, you know, Right. I mean, that's that's a pretty significant significant, yeah. Uh this is people's life. This is an actual study. Yeah. These So So they These people are alive Wow.
These people are alive Wow. because of hydrogen gas. Wow. And then that the primary endpoint was improvements in neurological scores that they were looking at. And in the uh standard treatment, it was a 39% um improved neurological scores. Mhm. And in the hydrogen treatment, it would went up to 56%. So still a pretty big difference. Now, because the sample size is a little bit smaller, this statistically did not reach statistical significance, but still 39% improvement versus 56% improvement was is a pretty big That's a massive improvement. Especially when you consider that there was uh the the survival increase from from um 61% to 85% was more. So, more people who are maybe on the verge who would have died anyways, they also survived. And yet you still saw an increase in the neurological improvements. Wow. So, this this really has got a lot of people's attention. And so, there's a lot more research that's being going on in this area. Um and and then that's These are comatose patients. I mean, they're they are inhaling hydrogen gas, right? Wow. Now, more research, of course, is going on in this area. And uh but but it's it's trending because I I believe that you know, there's a lot of corruption and problems with like the FDA and like all this kind of stuff and everything. But but that corruption is is everywhere. It's not just with these organizations, right? But I do believe and maybe I'm just too optimistic, but I believe that if we
too optimistic, but I believe that if we had true good concrete evidence with clear primary endpoints, then hydrogen therapy could be a standard care. Mhm. Like but in order to get that approval, we have to have that evidence. Right. And how do we have that evidence unless we do the clinical studies? Why are the clinical studies going to happen unless we educate people about it? Right. And that's really what I'm here today for. Right. I want to educate people about what's going on, let allow people to have their informed consent. We can raise the awareness about this. This is going to allow for more research to happen. And if hydrogen really can radically revolutionize health care, wouldn't you want to know? Wouldn't you want to use it? Again, something is so safe, so simple, that's affordable to anybody. Right. That and that's precisely why we're we're working on this education, right? And that's Right. That that's ultimately why, as you know, I um um helped to invent that Inhaltech 2 unit. Mhm. The entire purpose is not because we know this is going to cure every disease known to man, it's because we want to do clinical research. Mhm. We care like I care about you working on educating this the everyone about it. Well, we want to do clinical research and now we can do that without tanks of this this gas and everything explosive and we can model the concentration, make sure it's therapeutic. And so that's the whole idea behind your Inhaltech 2 is initially it was for clinical research and then um with Alex it's like people actually want the unit. There are people right now today who would want to use this.
today who would want to use this. 100%. And and so Everyone listening to this podcast probably wants to eat. Yeah, because you You get hydrogen water. Which we see those benefits and we have inhalation. So really nice combination and I but I believe people should understand the limitations and the preliminary evidence. That That's how you overcome skepticism because being skeptic is so important. Yeah. That's how you prevent falling falling victim to a scam. Right. Being skeptic means that you are open-minded. Not so open that your brain falls out. Right. I think that's over victim or something. But But you you But that means specifically that you do not reject the information without first evaluating the evidence and you don't accept the information without first evaluating the evidence. You do both. Yeah. Right? And so I want people to know what the evidence is and we're not uh claiming that it's going to cure every disease. We have all this evidence that's proven to do this. That's the antithesis of science. No, we're just saying, "Hey, this is what's shown in the animal studies, the emerging clinical studies. Yeah. If it makes sense to you, if you have the desire and the monetary means, well, then you can give it a try. And now you have options available." You know, when I was doing my research um and doing my PhD, I was I remember seeing some of the results. And you were like, "Damn, I wish I had one of these." No, I told I want to get into this study. I we we were taking we had to take a medical grade hydrogen gas with exact percentage. And I'm thinking why not? Yeah, I inhaled that stuff, you know, and I I want this I had the same thing with making hydrogen water. I
same thing with making hydrogen water. I would make hydrogen water in the in in the laboratory and and so I read these papers I look at the research I'm like, we know this is safe. Maybe maybe it can help me and so I want to try it and so I would use it. And so now there are like these tablets or or this inhaler's two machine. You people can use it and they can get clinically relevant doses that we use in the clinical studies if if you want to do that, right? But but I would not say that I would not say the evidence is so compelling that you should do hydrogen therapy instead of say go to the gym. Like if you have the choice to go to the gym or uh just drink hydrogen water. Yeah. Dude. Come on. Yeah. Go to the gym, right? But but if you're not able to exercise at all for whatever reason you're you're so busy and you have the discretionary funds why not try hydrogen water which acts as an exercise mimetic according to some of these animal and early studies, right? If if you Again, if you have the choice to if you're going to that that's what I do. I don't have a single client that I don't recommend take hydrogen water. And that's why I'm so glad that you're here to sort of return you know, the the noise to the balance of um you know, what are the claims that you you know, we could make based on the research today and then where does the research look like it's it's heading and it may I think the nicest thing is that the research indicates that it's extraordinarily safe and offers plethora of benefits even though there's additional research that needs to be done. impair performance. It doesn't make things worse. The emergent evidence in
things worse. The emergent evidence in animal studies is very promising. The emergent evidence in clinical studies is very promising. It makes mechanistic sense. But but of course I would not say that you should that hydrogen therapy is more important or there's more evidence than getting your sleep right or exercising or or maybe sauna. Sleep, whole food diet, and exercise. are those are the foundation. But if you can do both of them, if you can do all of them, and you have the discretionary means to do so, Mhm. I believe that people should have should be able to make their own choice to do that. And luckily we there are good products on the market now Yeah. where people can make that informed choice. Right. I agree. Tyler, this has been amazing, dude. Uh you know, I know it was very granular for a lot of folks for my super nerds, which is probably half of my audience. They're going to love this. Um for the Andrew Hubermans out there that really want to know the mechanism. And they're they're going to really enjoy this. Um I've been a huge proponent of your research. I've been a huge proponent of of hydrogen water. My family drinks it. My parents drink it. After that at the the experimental gerontology um uh clinical study, I put both of my parents on it. They've been on it um you know, that entire time since I read that study. I think that was published in 20 18. Mhm. Uh November 2018. Um but I I'm really deeply appreciative of this because even though uh we we went very granular on the science, I think people understand now why this is such a unique molecule. Maybe you understand what the difference is between an
what the difference is between an antioxidant and a selective antioxidant, which makes hydrogen so unique. It's almost like this miracle molecule um with how it reacts in in the body. So, um if my audience wants to find you, like where where can they find out more about you? Are you on Instagram? Yeah, you can find me on Tyler W. LeBaron on all channels. Okay. So, Tyler W. LeBaron and I'll I'll link your research to um you know, in the show notes. Um I'll link your hydrogen inhalation machine in the show notes. Um, but I always wind down all my podcasts by by asking my guests the same question. So, you probably know that this question's coming. Oh, no. I'm so worried. Oh, yeah. No, everybody gets the same question. There's no right or wrong answer to it. So, Okay. But before you do, I want to end with this. Okay. Hydrogen, think of it as a redox adaptogen that benefits the mitochondria. Mhm. I want to change the narrative that hydrogen is not just this antioxidant. Yeah. There's there's a buttload of antioxidants out there. Yeah. Think of it as a redox adaptogen that benefits the mitochondria. Mhm. Yeah. That's a great way to frame it. So, what does it mean to you to be an ultimate human? That's a great question. I think a lot of that comes from within. Uh, something divine aspect about that. Mhm. Um, to be the ultimate human means you are reaching your full potential. Has nothing to do with being better than
Has nothing to do with being better than anybody. Mhm. It's just are you making changes? Are you being better today than you were yesterday? Mhm. And that is in all aspects of your life. How do you treat your neighbors? How do you Are you making the world a better place? Are you improving this gift that we have of of our body? Um, are we You know, we say if knowledge is our power, then learning is our superpower. Mhm. Are we learning? Are we doing these things? I think to be the ultimate human, we've we have a balanced life where we're trying to become the ultimate to reach that potential in all those things. And And it's not necessarily that we reach our potential, but we're striving for that. We're just making these small changes. Just like hydrogen, it's a small molecule, but it's constantly there, just slowly getting better and better. It's not trying to brag or anything. It's just always there and that's really kind of what what we should do. I think if I were to sum it up is just being incrementally better in all the aspects that we can on a daily basis. Man, phenomenal. We're going to head over into my VIP uh group now. They're the VIPs are the only ones I tell who's coming on the podcast before they come on the podcast and so I let them know you were coming. They were super excited. There's a whole host of questions for you. If you guys are interested in becoming an ultimate human VIP, just go over to the ultimatehuman. com / vip. Would love to see you in there. Private podcast, one-on - ones with me, ask Gary anything. There is a 10-month course on
anything. There is a 10-month course on becoming the ultimate human version of yourself. It's entirely free. It's all inside of the VIP community. So, I hope you enjoyed this podcast. We're going to have Tyler back again for sure. Um as you continue your journey on hydrogen, I want to keep people um up-to - date on your research and and the emerging research and some of the new findings. Would love to see if this study in Japan ever gets completed. Well, that one is completed. Yeah, I mean in Oh, the one before COVID. Yeah, no, it's done. Yeah, published in eClinicalMedicine. A Lancet publication. So, we'll link that one. Yeah. And until next time, guys. That's just science.
Transcript auto-generated by YouTube. Verbatim — duplicates intentionally preserved.
"The question is not whether a molecule sounds impressive. The question is what the evidence can carry." — Contrast Collective
Tyler LeBaron discusses molecular hydrogen as distinct from ordinary alkaline-water marketing. The core claim is selective antioxidant behavior: influencing harmful oxidative stress without shutting down the free-radical signals the body needs for adaptation.
Free radicals are not simply bad. Training, the benefits of sauna, cold, and fasting all use controlled stress to create adaptation. The goal is not to erase stress biology. It is to restore balance when the system is overwhelmed.
Hydrogen research is interesting, especially around mitochondria and recovery, but consumers should stay grounded. A longevity practice should not be built on a single product. It should be built on sleep, movement, nutrition, thermal practice, and careful evaluation of emerging tools.
Distinguish molecular hydrogen research from generic alkaline-water claims.
Remember that adaptation requires some oxidative signaling.
Treat hydrogen water as an emerging tool, not a replacement for foundational habits.
The strongest message is restraint: use science to sharpen the practice, not to decorate a trend. The body adapts best when the signal is clear, repeated, and supported by recovery.
