144. What Makes Hydrogen Rich Water So Special for Your Health?

Let’s dive into something I’m obsessed with...hydrogen water! Today, I’m unpacking how this tiny element can transform your health, starting with your microvasculature, the 70% of your circulatory system that’s not powered by your heart. These little capillaries, thinner than a hair, deliver oxygen to every cell. When they’re inflamed or constricted, pressure builds, and your energy tanks. Enter hydrogen water. Why should you care? Most folks don’t realize inflammation in these microvessels often from stuff like high homocysteine levels which messes with circulation. That’s where hydrogen water shines. It’s the lightest element out there, zipping through your body to fight inflammation and oxidative stress where other antioxidants can’t reach. My advice? Start simple, add hydrogen water to your routine. It’s cheap, safe, and hits inflammation hard. Check out hydrogenstudies.com for the raw data with over 135 studies back this up. Ready to feel sharper, stronger, and younger? Resources/Articles/Studies: - The effects of 6-month hydrogen-rich water intake on molecular and phenotypic biomarkers of aging in older adults aged 70 years and over: A randomized controlled pilot trial: https://bit.ly/4blCkzf - Oral Intake of Hydrogen Water Improves Retinal Blood Flow Dysregulation in Response to Flicker Stimulation and Systemic Hyperoxia in Diabetic Mice: https://bit.ly/4gU7KOw - Hydrogen Water: Extra Healthy or a Hoax?—A Systematic Review: https://bit.ly/4h5OVrI - Hydrotherapy with hydrogen-rich water compared with RICE protocol following acute ankle sprain in professional athletes: a randomized non-inferiority pilot trial: https://bit.ly/4hXxOti Join the Ultimate Human VIP community and gain exclusive access to Gary Brecka's proven wellness protocols today!: https://bit.ly/4ai0Xwg Thank you to our partners: H2TABS - USE CODE “ULTIMATE10” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/4hMNdgg BODYHEALTH - USE CODE “ULTIMATE20” FOR 20% OFF: http://bit.ly/4e5IjsV BAJA GOLD - USE CODE "ULTIMATE10" FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/3WSBqUa EIGHT SLEEP - SAVE $350 ON THE POD 4 ULTRA WITH CODE “GARY”: https://bit.ly/3WkLd6E STRENGTH TRAINING EQUIPMENT - THE ULTIMATE HUMAN: https://bit.ly/3zYwtSl COLD LIFE - THE ULTIMATE HUMAN PLUNGE: https://bit.ly/4eULUKp WHOOP - GET 1 FREE MONTH WHEN YOU JOIN!: https://bit.ly/3VQ0nzW MASA CHIPS - GET 20% OFF YOUR FIRST $50+ ORDER: https://bit.ly/40LVY4y VANDY - USE CODE “ULTIMATE20” FOR 20% OFF: https://bit.ly/49Qr7WE PARKER PASTURES - PREMIUM GRASS-FED MEATS: https://bit.ly/4hHcbhc AION - USE CODE “ULTIMATE10” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/4h6KHAD HAPBEE - FEEL BETTER & PERFORM AT YOUR BEST: https://bit.ly/4a6glfo CARAWAY - USE CODE “ULTIMATE10” FOR 10% OFF: https://bit.ly/3Q1VmkC Connect with Gary Brecka: Instagram: https://bit.ly/3RPpnFs YouTube: https://bit.ly/3RPQYX8 TikTok: https://bit.ly/4coJ8fo X.com: https://bit.ly/3Opc8tf Facebook: https://bit.ly/464VA1H Website: https://bit.ly/4eLDbdU Merch: https://bit.ly/4aBpOM1 Newsletter: https://bit.ly/47ejrws Ask Gary: https://bit.ly/3PEAJuG Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:22 Hydrogen as the Lightest Element on Earth 03:39 Studies on Drinking Hydrogen Gas-Infused Water 05:38 Microvascular Circulation 06:59 Benefits of Hydrogen Water 09:11 Findings of 6-Month Hydrogen Rich Water Intake Study The Ultimate Human with Gary Brecka Podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing or other professional health care services, including the giving of medical advice, and no doctor/patient relationship is formed. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked from this podcast is at the user’s own risk. The Content of this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical condition they may have and should seek the assistance of their health care professionals for any such conditions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Gary Brecka?

  I want to take a little deep dive into hydrogen water and hydrogen gas in general, and some of the benefits in the human body. Hydrogen is everywhere. Very tiny, it's very light, and it has some really, really unique properties. One of them is its property to act like an antioxidant and reduce inflammation. When we look at the evidence on hydrogen water, because there are a lot of pundits out there saying that hydrogen gas and water has no effect in the human body, nothing could be further from the truth. Studies have explored the use of hydrogen in various age-related inflammatory conditions like osteoarthritis, neurodegenerative diseases, and sepsis, where it may help alleviate tissue damage and improve functional outcomes. This is very real science. Hydrogen gas has tremendously positive benefits in the human body.

• 0:45Gary Brecka?

  One of the reasons why I'm really advocating for hydrogen water, and so you can get them to...

• 1:00Gary Brecka?

  Hey guys, I want to talk about some awesome research that I've been studying on the effects of hydrogen-rich water on the human body, how it can reduce inflammation, how it can lengthen telomeres, how it can improve muscle function, brain function, short-term recall, memory, sleep, and other markers of aging and general markers of inflammation. I want to take a deep dive into the science right now, so let's get to work. This is absolutely one of my favorite topics and one I get a lot of flack for all the time, so I want to take a little deep dive into hydrogen water and hydrogen gas in general, and some of the benefits in the human body. First of all, hydrogen is the lightest element on Earth. It's actually the most abundant element in the entire universe. So hydrogen is everywhere. Very tiny, it's very light, and it has some really, really unique properties.

• 1:44Gary Brecka?

  One of them is its property to act like an antioxidant. One of it is the property to actually reduce inflammation. And I want to talk a little bit about the science of that, but particularly today, one of the reasons why I'm really advocating for hydrogen water and putting hydrogen tablets in your water, so you can get them to effervesce into clean hydrogen gas that you can drink, is because today's topic is about the microvascular system. So, many of us don't realize that when we look at our vascular system, we have arteries and we have veins. But believe it or not, more than 70% of our circulation is actually not conducted by the heart.

• 2:27Gary Brecka?

  The 30% of our circulation that is done by the heart are our major arteries and our major veins, meaning there's pressure behind them to send blood to the tissues, there's pressure to return it from the tissues. But about 70% of our circulatory system is what we call microvascular. It's tiny little capillaries. Remember, these capillaries, this microvasculature, is so tiny, smaller sometimes than a human hair, that even only a single cell can fit into this capillary system and sometimes exchange gas with the lung, or deliver gases to tissue, remove gases from the tissue. So think about 70% of your circulation. What if this part of our circulation gets compromised?

• 3:10Gary Brecka?

  Think about how little vasoconstriction it would take in 70% of your vascular system to back pressure up into the system. So this is one of the reasons why we're so sensitive to high levels of homocysteine, a natural amino acid that can rise in the blood, potentially cause vasoconstriction, and drive pressure up. It's also why this part of our vascular system is hard to reach, and it's also why this part of our vascular system is so susceptible to inflammation. So when we look at the evidence on hydrogen water, because there are a lot of pundits out there saying that hydrogen gas in water has no effects in the human body, nothing could be further from the truth. You can go to hydrogenstudies.com, there are about 1,335 published studies on there.

• 3:54Gary Brecka?

  Not all of them are on hydrogen water, some of them are on hydrogen gas, some are in animals and not in humans, but you can actually deselect to get to the human studies, and you can look at the difference between hydrogen inhalation, which is a well-known therapy for reducing inflammation, and you can look at putting hydrogen gas into the water to also have all the physiologic effects. One of the studies was so interesting to me, I wanted to talk about it today because it was published in the Journal of Experimental Gerontology. And this was published in November of 2021. This is a summary of it, I'm going to take you to the study itself. But it said that hydrogen gas, and this was... This was people that actually drank hydrogen gas infused water. It was a six-month study, it was double-blind, it's peer-reviewed, it was an excellent clinical

• 4:36Gary Brecka?

  trial, it was randomized, and it even had a control group, a placebo group. And so what they did was they took 70-year-old or older men and women, divided them into groups, where one group drank hydrogen gas infused water, the other did not, and they measured all kinds of physiologic biomarkers. They used something called TET2, which is methylation activity in their bodies. They actually measured certain compounds in the frontal lobe of the brain, they measured their sit-stand ratio, they actually measured their sleep, their cognitive function, their short-term recall, and several markers of inflammation. I'm gonna read the summary first. "Hydrogen has demonstrated significant anti-inflammatory properties suggesting its potential as a therapeutic agent for age-related inflammatory conditions."

• 5:19Gary Brecka?

  Inflammation is the root of all evil, we know that. So, with studies showing that hydrogen inhalation, or consumption of hydrogen-rich water, can mitigate inflammation by down-regulating pro-inflammatory cytokines, these are inflammatory factors that are in our blood, and protecting against oxidative stress in aging models. Here were the key points from the study, and then I'm gonna take you to the actual study. "It was believed to exert its anti-inflammatory effect by selectively scavenging harmful reactive oxygen species." So remember, when something is an antioxidant, it reduces inflammation. When something causes oxidation, it is causing inflammation. And this can be reduced by putting the two together to neutralize that inflammatory cascade.

• 6:03Gary Brecka?

  "Studies have explored the use of hydrogen in various age-related inflammatory conditions like osteoarthritis, neurodegenerative diseases, and sepsis, where it may help alleviate tissue damage and improve functional outcomes." Why would hydrogen be so good at getting to tissues and improving inflammatory-related conditions in the tissues, like peripheral neuropathy, like poor circulation? Because that is microvascular circulation. This very light, very tiny element crosses the blood-brain barrier very easily, and it is also considered harmless to human beings. I mean, the vast majority... ...of us by weight are water and hydrogen makes up the majority of water, hydrogen gas. Hydrogen can be administered through inhalation of hydrogen gas, drinking hydrogen-rich water,

• 6:47Gary Brecka?

  or via intravenous infusion of hydrogen saturated saline. That's not what we're talking about today. We're talking specifically about this study in the Journal of Experimental Gerontology. And what was really fascinating about this was that the outcomes in this study, and we actually, I'm going to show you a separate one now, benefits of hydrogen water. I'm going to link this study as well. Extra Healthy or a Hoax? This was a systemic review of different mechanisms of getting hydrogen gas or hydrogen water into the body. It's been shown to be beneficial in mitigating oxidative stress-induced damage through its anti-inflammatory and anti-apoptotic pathways. And they conducted a systemic review and they looked at a number of articles, total

• 7:30Gary Brecka?

  of 25 articles were included in the systemic review. So let's go down and see what it concluded. So we're in the conclusion section. It said that it was found that drinking hydrogen-rich water for six months, this was in the 70-year and older group, that drinking hydrogen-rich water for six months was harmless and also had a favorable effect on many of the factors associated with aging. Factors like pain, metabolic processes in the brain, strength in the lower extremities, and several other factors. So reducing inflammatory factors, improving strength, lengthening telomeres, which is one of the hallmarks of aging, improving different pathways that they were measuring in the brain, improving methylation, they used a TET2 marker to actually measure methylation.

• 8:14Gary Brecka?

  And so you can get these, I used to get a lot of flack for promoting these hydrogen bottles, which I'm still a big fan of, but they're $250 to $300. You can get compressed magnesium, elemental magnesium tablets, which are called H2 Tabs, which is what I take every day. Get high part-per-million hydrogen water for less than a dollar a day. I use these guys, they're called H2 Tabs. You can get them at drinkh2tab.com. It's just drinkh2tab.com. They're less than a dollar a day. You drop these in water, it effervesces into high part-per-million hydrogen water. ...per million hydrogen gas and you can get all of the benefits of hydrogen gas in a single pressed elemental magnesium tablet. They're super easy to travel with.

• 8:58Gary Brecka?

  It has probably become my favorite and number one health hack because I think everybody can benefit from hydrogen-rich water. It's gained worldwide attention over the last few years for its potential health benefits. I'm going to, I'm going to link this article. The one that I really wanted to highlight was this study that I was referencing that was published in the Journal of Experimental Gerontology. It was published in November of 2021. It was a six-month hydrogen-rich study where they took molecular hydrogen and they measured phenotypic biomarkers of aging in older adults, 70 years and older. The reason why I like this randomized controlled pilot trial is because the majority of this research is done in young athletes that have ankle injuries, for example, and they compared

• 9:38Gary Brecka?

  soaking the ankle in hydrogen-rich water to the RICE protocol: rest, ice, compress, and elevate. So they compared that to actually hydrogen soaking and hydrogen improved these outcomes because hydrogen didn't constrict the blood vessels and stop the site of injury from removing inflammatory factors and stop it from allowing fresh blood flow. It actually improved the blood flow, especially in the microvasculature, so you actually had accelerated healing. They did the same thing, putting hydrogen tablets in the buccal fold of athletes after concussions. And they looked at how they behaved and how they recovered from concussion bores, and they found that actually hydrogen helped improve the post-concussion recovery phase.

• 10:20Gary Brecka?

  All of this is related to inflammation, very likely related to the circulation in the microvasculature. This is very real science. Hydrogen gas has tremendously positive benefits in the human body. When we look at the abstract here and we look at how well this study was run, and we look at what happened in the baseline control model that was only drinking water versus the ones that had hydrogen-rich water, methylation increased in the hydrogen-rich water group. Hydrogen-rich water was superior to control water to increase brain choline and NAA levels in the left frontal gray matter. Significantly improved chair stamina. And performance after hydrogen-rich water intervention compared to the control group. It reduced other inflammatory markers.

• 11:05Gary Brecka?

  You can actually see the exact blood biomarkers that they measured. Homocysteine, resting blood pressure, body composition, facial skin features, sleep outcomes, and health-related quality of life. All improved by drinking hydrogen-rich water. So this is not a sales pitch. This is real sound science. A lot of people that haven't read the science, I think there's two types of people out there, those that have read the science, that are taking hydrogen-rich water, and those that are just unaware of it. I think this is the easiest and least expensive hack that you can add to your daily routine. It's less than a dollar a day. You can get these hydrogen tablets, and you drop them into water. It effervesces into the pure gas, and you can actually turn your drinking water into an antioxidant-rich hydrogen bomb. So I hope you guys enjoyed this episode.

• 11:49Gary Brecka?

  Let me know if you actually like more of these whiteboard episodes. I always said if there was money in teaching, I would have been a teacher. But here's to your health, guys. Start adding hydrogen-rich water to your daily routine, and I promise you, you'll see the benefits.