Why I Changed My Mind About Hydrogen Water (with Tyler LeBaron)

What conditions has hydrogen inhalation, molecular hydrogen through water, what conditions has this been studied for? There's around 3,000 publications so far, over 200 human studies. Parkinson's disease, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, stroke, cancer, obviously Alzheimer's, dementia.

You gave hydrogen water to people for 6 months and they saw improvements in multiple markers that give us indication of metabolic syndrome. We found that the subjects drinking hydrogen water had improved glucose levels. In fact, there was even a loss of weight, you know, improved BMI.

Hydrogen is very different because it actually does not have the physical chemical property to neutralize these other free radicals. Hydrogen can only react or only neutralize the most toxic free radicals. It almost feels divine and it's like a divine molecule. It's wild. God did make the world with a word. That word would be hydrogen.

On this week's podcast, I talked to Dr. Tyler Learon. He's probably one of the world's leading experts on hydrogen. We go into hydrogen water, inhaled hydrogen. We go into structured water, alkaline water. Are these real? Are they a scam? We talk about how much to dose the water, the protocols. We talk about the benefits, what it's actually doing in your body.

I'm not really a biohacker. I just prefer to go out in the ocean, go barefoot, and surf. But I've gotten really interested in this recently, and some of the research is pretty impressive. So, I think you guys are really going to find this one interesting. If you're skeptical of hydrogen water, I think you may be changed in your mind at the end of this podcast. So stick with this one. It's very technical, but I tried to break down the parts that are more technical during the podcast. If you have questions, put them below in the comments. My team will try and answer them or I can answer them on YouTube or wherever you're watching this podcast. We're going to try and put stuff on the screen to make the technical things more digestible. But this podcast is worth your time. Enjoy this podcast with Tyler Learon.

Dr. Tyler Learon. All right. Thanks for coming on the podcast.

Oh, thank you. Is there a PhD in molecular hydrogen? What is your PhD in?

Well, okay. So my PhD is in physiology and I did my dissertation on cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases where we used molecular hydrogen as one of the modalities for treatment modality. So it's not like a PhD in hydrogen like that doesn't quite make sense on hydrogen. Yeah. And my MA and my MAShes we also studied a hydrogen gas and anyway it's been a big part of my life since 2009.

So you've been for a while.

Yeah. So I did not know anything about hydrogen before the last year or so maybe six months. you know, I heard your name. My friend Gary Breus talked about it. I was like, I don't know about this. But I've gotten really interested in this recently. And I don't think of myself as a biohacker. I live in Costa Rica. I walk around barefoot, uh, shirtless, and I'm in the ocean most of the time. So, I'm doing like biohacking in nature. But some of these things are coming on my radar recently, you know, hyperbaric chambers, hydrogen. And the more I dug into hydrogen, I think one of my friends gave me your contact information. We've been talking for months now. When I when I started looking at the research, I was like, "This is really fascinating." And we're going to get into a lot of that in this in the podcast.

We were talking before the podcast that this is an interesting topic because it really gets to like general chemistry, right? When I was in medical school, I was learning about oxidation and reduction. And the acronym that I learned was Leo the lion as loss of electrons is oxidation, gain of electrons is reduction. And over time in PA school, in cardiology, in medical school, in residency doing this work, I realized like so much of life is the movement of electrons. This is so crazy. And that's what we're talking about with hydrogen and it relates to oxidative stress, reactive oxygen species, free radicals, inflammation, things people have heard about, but we can really use this conversation about hydrogen to get into some of that like deep dive like chemistry. So I I think from the outset I want to give people a context here so they know why we're talking about this like and then I want to circle back to the chemistry.

Yeah. What conditions has hydrogen inhalation, molecular hydrogen through water, what conditions has this been studied for? And broad strokes, what have we seen?

Okay. Excellent. So, we still have a long a long way to go, but there are a growing number of publications. There's around 3,000 publications so far, over 200 human studies, uh, and looking at hydrogen on the use of, uh, there's probably over 200 different human and animal disease models for which hydrogen has been studied. Wow. So we look at things like Parkinson's disease, uh diabetes, metabolic syndrome, um you know, uh stroke, uh cancer, obviously Alzheimer's, dementia, the the the top disease the top diseases that there are hygiene has been studied in different models and you know human studies and so on and showing some pretty interesting promise.

Wow. I mean, it yeah, when you when I was reading you sent me a couple of articles and when I was reading through these articles I was like wow like everything that most of us suffer from all the chronic diseases cancer cognitive impairment dementia models Parkinson's diabetes metabolic syndrome okay so what's going on here like yeah this is an incredible thing like and and you sent me a study maybe we can just start with that one that I think you were the first author on the study where they gave um hydrogen water to people with metabolic dysfunction right just like what's the conclude like tell me about the Just in a nutshell, just in a nutshell, it was a 24 week study.

Yeah, it's 24 weeks.

Yeah. 6 months. And you know, they had 60 subjects and basically we just gave the placebo group just had normal water and then the hydrogen water group. And all they did is drink water, right? There just this pretty simple intervention with hydrogen with hydrogen, right? With hydrogen gas, which we need to go into the chemistry what we're talking about a little bit. But but in the end, after drinking the water, we we found that the subjects drinking hydrogen water had improved glucose. um levels. So like you know some had pretty high glucose levels like pre-diabetic their glucose levels decreased improved HBA1C marker um decreased inflammation markers decrease oxidative stress improve cholesterol levels in fact there was even uh uh fat loss just loss of weight you know improved BMI um just by drink and that's that's an a number of studies they made analysis also showing that hydrogen helps improve lipid profiles again just by drinking hydrogen water that's that's so interesting okay so I want to get into it and I almost forgot this but we got to do I got gifts for you.

Oh wow. You I got you some whole package from Harden soil. Okay. Has testicle in it. That's our hardened soil testicle pills. And then Lineage is another company that I have. We have grass-fed meat sticks. And you are the first person to see this. We have the new spicy southwest flavor and the garlic and onion flavors. I put them all into a little atmosphere for you.

Wow. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. So you can take these home, you know, let me know what you think of these. But um it's like I think it all goes together, right? this idea that if you eat healthy, you avoid these chronic illnesses, you know, and some of us develop chronic illnesses. How do we get back? We get back by eating healthy. But I think that all of us are aging. There's another longevity angle with hydrogen that we'll get into.

But what's up, guys? The studio messed up this video. So, for the next 20 minutes, there's no video. We've got audio, which we're going to continue on the video here. But if you want to skip and you just want to watch video, you don't want to listen to Tyler and I talking, fast forward 20 minutes. We've got video for the rest of the podcast. Sorry for this. It was a studio error. This stuff happens with podcasting. If you like the audio, you can just keep watching the audio. We'll put a still frame. But if you want to keep watching the video, fast forward to 20 minutes. Hope you guys keep enjoying this podcast.

This is Paul from Montana. I mean, human health to me is good quality food, but we're all aging. And so, this is why hydrogen is interesting to me. Like, how do we get the edge? How once we become sick, we can use things like this to potentially reverse it. And then I think there's also applications. I mean, the internet doesn't know this, but I got I was hanging out with Brian Johnson. Brian with a Y Johnson, the guy that don't die guy. and we were sort of talking about his philosophy and you know he shows me like his his hyperbaric chamber in his garage and I'm like you know so he's interested in hyperbarics and I I need to get him on the hydrogen train I think he'll be interested to hear about this too and he and I differ he's vegan I'm still trying to convince him to eat meat but um yeah we'll see where that goes but let's talk about um I think that people are interested in hyperbarics and hydrogen which are actually kind of connected and we we all want to live better we want to live longer or we want to get back to health or we want to prolong our health. And so tell me about this study that that you sent me, this this 24-week study with hydrogen water in people with metabolic dysfunction because that's common. I mean 86 to 93% of the population has metabolic dysfunction. So you were giving them hydrogen-rich water. What did you see?

Yeah, exactly. So just a simple study, right? Uh just a placebo group and then the hydrogen-rich water group. And those who are drinking hydrogen-rich water, we saw improvements in their glucose levels, improvements in the HBA1C as well, uh decreased markers of inflammation and oxidative stress. uh pretty much all the biomarkers that you can you start seeing changes and just these improvements. In fact, it was a little bit surprising. Uh but we also saw those drinking hydrogen water, they lost weight and the fat fat mass and you can see that by the weight and their BMI and this is actually done in multiple different studies where the hydrogen just drinking hydrogen water seemed to help prevent yeah help them lose weight. Um the just just on a side tangent there is potentially a mechanism. There was an animal study published in the journal of obesity where hydrogen inact in increased the secretion of the hpatic growth factor FGF-21 fiber blast goes back to 21 and this increases energy expenditure and in this study they used lethin deficient mice and the the rats that drank hydrogen water or rodents that drank hydrogen water they prevented a the weight gain substantially compared to the ones who did not drink hydrogen water and it was equivalent to about a 20% caloric deficit. it. Wow. Just to drinking hygiene water, right? So, so when we're seeing some of these translational effects into human studies, that's when it starts getting really interesting.

How much weight do people lose over 6 months?

Uh, I think in this case, I want to say it was like more than a kilogram. Uhhuh. You know, so yeah. Yeah. But it was statistically significant. Yeah. Yeah. Is that Yeah. Well, yeah, it was still Yeah. And this one was statistically significant. But but in general, when you look at all those studies, you almost all you tend to find this trend of of of a fat loss, an increase in lean muscle mass or not lean muscle, just lean body mass, I should say. Right. There's a little bit of difference. I mean, I guess it makes sense. If you're improving metabolic health, a lot of things could get better.

Yeah. Overall, so this this is what's wild to me like like you said, I mean Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, or at least cognitive impairment, metabolic dysfunction, cancer, these are the diseases that most of us suffer from. And we're talking about a gaseous molecule that has been around on the surface of the earth since our inception. Yes. Literally since the beginning, you know. So, let's just with that context so people understand how important this conversation is, the potential to help improve every aspect of human health with hundreds of human studies and thousands of overall studies, but still a new molecule that we're studying. Like, let's back up and talk about the general chemistry about how this is working. So, we're hydrogen. I mean, you are probably one of the best people on the planet to talk about this, but like what's going on here? Because when I first heard about hydrogen, I'm thinking, okay, it's if it's getting rid of some reactive species, whether they're reactive oxygen species or reactive nitrogen species or other reactive species, that's great, but how does it know? I mean, like, so like just let's let's do basic general chemistry to start. What is oxidation? What is reduction? What is hydrogen doing? And I know it has kind of two different Yeah. two.

So, I love it. Okay. And and maybe to go back even even further when we talk about hydrogen we see hydrogen on the periodic table of element that's the first one that's the first one that's hydrogen now this hydrogen because people get confused about what hydrogen water is right so so we got to follow this chemistry that's the first hydrogen now that hydrogen is just a proton and electron and and that's called atomic hydrogen and that's a free radical because it has an unpaired electron it's not it's it's not going to stay like that it wants to react with pretty much anything and that hydrogen atom can react with other atoms atoms like it can react with oxygen and if two hydrogen's react with oxygen you can form water H2O or it can react with carbon to form hydrocarbons right like carbohydrates and fatty acids and all of these things or it can react with nitrogen to form ammonia or like amino acids right so hydrogen is going to react with pretty much anything so hydrogen is normally found in compounds hydrogen can also react with itself so two hydrogen atoms reacting with itself to form a molecule of hydrogen which we call molecular hydrogen And this is a gas. It's explosive. This is the alternative energy source, right? But you can take this gas and you can inhale it, which we'll talk about, or you can dissolve it into water as we talked about. When you dissolve hydrogen gas into the water, it doesn't change the chemical structure of the water or anything. We can talk about the structured water claims of things later, but it it doesn't do anything to the water structure. It's just dissolved into the water. The water is the carrier. You can drink the water. the hydrogen gas goes into the body and then and it has these effects and and and and so that's the hygien molecule that we're talking about. It doesn't it doesn't convert to electrons and protons. In other words, it doesn't like change the acid uh base balance or affect the pH. Okay. Right. So now we understand that hydrogen is a neutral molecule. It's two electrons, two protons. So then going to your question, okay, how does this all happen with the redux chemistry, right? And and and what is going on here? So when when we say redux, we're talking about oxidation and reduction. And that's how life exists. Just like you talked about, it's all about the electrons. And it's it's like, you know, a battery. You have a negative electrode and a positive electrode. And you you have both of them. And there's going to be a separation. That's how you have a flow of electrons. And the body is the exact same way. You need oxidation and you need reduction. So when we eat food, well, the the entire process that drives ATP is oxidation. We literally are inhaling oxygen and that oxygen is literally stealing the electrons. So when I eat your meat sticks here, right? Essentially that oxygen is going to pull the electrons away from that food. And so so so the audience can understand it's going to pull those electrons off of of those molecules and in that process that that creates a lot of there's a lot of energy and that energy is going to be converted to make a molecules of ATP adenosine triphosphate right the energy currency of our cells. But during that process of electrons go to oxygen. When that happens, you form water inside the inside the mitochondria. That's that's called metabolic water. And and that's a great thing to happen when you have oxygen just consuming these electrons reacting with hydrogen ions and you make water. But sometimes that oxygen uh will extract electrons at the wrong place in the mitochondria at the wrong complex. And when that happens, you create free radicals. And these free radicals have these unpred electrons and they can steal electrons from other things. So now you have your oxidants, right? That's your oxidation that's going on. Yeah. The stealing of electrons. So loss of electrons, oxidation. Yeah. Right. I was we there was an acronym I learned in in you know uh college. Loss. Leo the lion says girth. So Lo Ge R. Loss of electrons. When something loses an electron, it's essentially that's the process of oxidation. When you gain an electron, it's reduction. Exactly. Yeah, it's reduction because if like like if we talk about like magnesium is an ion mg2+ if we add electrons it's no longer positive2 charge it's neutral right if you gain more electrons so it's reduction it's it's reduction back to its native state so now we have yeah oxidation and reduction and we we know that too much free radicals too many uh is is bad for you because that's going to cause oxidative stress and that's going to cause damage to the cell membranes to the DNA to the proteins you radiation causes oxidative damage and in turn that can cause DNA mutations and that can end up causing cancer and this is so well known. It's it's it's been known since, you know, oh, at least since the 1950s, we have the the free radical theory of aging, which still is talked about a lot, but is is largely misunderstood because that's when I think to your point, the importance of reduction and the redux homeostasis is really, really important to understand why hydrogen is different than any other antioxidant. Because back in the day, it was all about, oh, these free radicals are bad. These free radicals cause cancer. These free radicals cause every disease, insulin resistance and whatever. And therefore, we need to have antioxidants, lots of antioxidants as much. And the more the better, right? And now we have this billion dollar industry born of antioxidant marketing. And and one of the earlier studies, I remember uh reading about this and it was found this correlation between those who smoked and ate more carrots, they they didn't get cancer as often and they lived better. Well, so logically we're like, well, duh, like smoking causes free radicals. Uh, carrots have a lot of beta carotene, vitamin A, so of course you're not going to get it. And then some some wise guy in the back of the room was like, you know, maybe we should actually study that. You know, it's like, why why should we study something we already know? And and so they decided to do a study on it. And lo and behold, they had to stop the study before they even finished it because those taking the antioxidants, this is not the carrots, this is synthetic antioxidants. those taking the antioxidants were getting cancer and dying faster than than those in the placebo. And the same was true with vitamin E and numbering. Exactly. Especially when they were smoking. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

What were they giving in that stud?

They were giving vitamin E, alphaol. Yeah. And then vitamin C. Um I think there's so several of them actually. I think there was one was just vitamin E and then some others where they combined them and then the one of smoking that was the first one I remember was just was beta carotene. Okay. So they did a number of them and all finding the same things because you're messing with the redux homeostasis of your body. So so taking these high doses of antioxidants, these synthetic forms and it's not just the argument, oh these are synthetic and you know like cuz vitamin E has a whole bunch of different um stereoisomers of the same thing. And so there's that argument too, but it's it's actually not just that. These are reductive molecules and the the body actually needs to have a homeostasis between oxidation and reduction right and this there's there's actually several principles that I think we should learn from this and that is that even this in these cases these people were were many people were very certain that taking antioxidants are going to be beneficial because the logic because there was a mechanism that was there but just because there's a mechanism doesn't mean there's going to be the primary outcome and that's why we have to really focus on what does the clinical research show and so we'll talk about mechanisms here with hydrogen because we want to understand the logic and like wow that's crazy like how is that even possible what's happening we we want to understand that but in the end we want to know what are the primary clinical and secondary endpoints of the human clinical studies because that's what really matters that's what matters yeah absolutely so it's interesting because let's just talk about antioxidants for a minute um you know there's this idea like you said that more antioxidants is better there are countless supplements sold as antioxidant supplements, right? Marketing. Yeah. It and whether it's polyphenolic compounds from plants that are in a pill and not in the plant. It's an incredibly complex thing. It's so interesting that you give people carrots. Maybe it has a different effect than giving people just purely beta carotene, right? We've seen this over and over, which is why I think, you know, reductionism and nutrition doesn't always play out like you're saying, but you don't see the same clinical end points when you reduce something to its parts. There's a lot of nuance. food is so complex, which is why the organs are interesting to me. And you know, this is why I think it's cool to make the supplements with this because we're taking organs and we're basically just freeze drying them and trying to make a whole food in a capsule as close as we can. And so the organs have microRNAs and peptides and it's a very complex thing. And so when we strip something out of a food, it doesn't always work the same way. And conversely, it's it's why I always worry a little bit about the ultrarocessing of foods and we're stripping things out of foods that aren't supposed to be there or we're putting things in that aren't recognized by the human body in terms of additives. Anyway, I'm digressing. But if we get back to this idea like what is the data with antioxidants in human health? It's not very good. It's almost hor it's almost bad and especially in exercise. Yeah. Blunts blunts exercise performance. It prevents mitochondria biogenesis. So the real question is how is hydrogen any different? Right? Because because we say hydrogen is also an antioxidant and so many studies show it has antioxidant effects. Is that a bad thing? That was my concern at first. I thought how could you be taking something that is a you know presumably doing some reduction? Yeah. Yeah. Um if it's quenching an oxidant, right? If it's getting rid of oxidation and getting rid of free radicals or getting rid of species that I want to talk about specific species, how do we say that it doesn't do that too much? Right? Because there's like we've said there is this buzz word oxidative stress. There's also reductive stress. Yes. Yeah. Which is when you don't have enough of these things and you you hinted at this like when we we exist as humans by stripping electrons from the food we eat moving them through the cytoplasm into the mitochondria using intermediates FADH2 NADH to put these into the electron transport chain and then eventually creating molecular water and producing super oxide in in the mitochondria which is an important signal. Like you know there are valuable valuable oxidative species in the human body that we don't want to get rid of. It it it's amazing you say that to because like you when you produce super oxide it actually has unique signaling effects and then it goes to superoxid mutase to create you know things like uh well it there's a number of things that happen but they can then create hydro peroxide which then has signaling effects and then there's a specific aquaporin channel for hydro peroxide to go to transverse and then it go gets uh you know use like catalase or glutathion peroxide or something to be converted to water. So to your point, every free radical that's produced by the body, not everyone, but but there's a reason that your body has conserved a mechanism to produce these free radicals, they're valuable. They're very val it's it's a horic stress, right? This this process of hormesis where a small amount of a toxin can end up being beneficial for you. And when we exercise, we create free radicals. We're breathing a lot more oxygen. Obviously, we're going to we create more inflammation, but that stress is what mediates these benefits. So by taking high doses of conventional antioxidants, we're basically attenuating that very signal that we want. And in that nature medicine publication from 2007, it demonstrates this very thing that if you put hydrogen gas in in uh the same place with nitric oxide or hydrogen peroxide superoxid there's no reaction versus vitamin C. Of course there's going to be reaction because vitamin C is a is a powerful uh reducing agent. It can donates electrons has a what we know is a conjugated pi system. Many of these polyphenol compounds, vitamin E and so on, they can donate their electrons and remain stable because it's easy for that to do that. Molecular hydrogen doesn't do that. So there that's from a chemist perspective of why hydrogen can't do that. It's about the rate constants of molecular hydrogen as second order reaction kinetics. Now there's another explanation which is even better. Okay? It's it's how hydrogen modulates our body's natural antioxidant defense system. Uh-huh. So, our body, as you know, creates its own antioxidant protection just like vegetables and and fruits and and other animals, right? Um, if if you take like a an apple and you cut it in half, it turns brown. Well, that's because all the oxygen is oxidizing it, right? But it's not brown when it's on the tree because the apple itself also has antioxidants and so it's preventing that oxidation from happening, right? And and that's why we can consume the apple or the carrots and we can get those antioxidants out of us and there can be some benefits if as long as it's you know not too much. Well, our body also produces antioxidants. We produce things like superoxides mutates catalase the peptide glutathione. These are our natural antioxidants and it's regulated by a transcription factor called NRF2. This NRF2 keep one is this this pathway that when it gets activated NRF2 literally transllocates into the nucleus where it interacts with the DNA and induces the uh transcription of over 200 different cytorotective enzymes and proteins. Our antioxidation enzymes and proteins are detoxification. These are what's called known as a phase 2 enzymes basically. And hydrogen can activate this pathway. And it doesn't just activate it, it modulates it because again we don't want to have reductive stress. We want to have perfect redux homeostasis. And so if you and we've done this in a number of studies when we administer molecular hydrogen sometimes we see NRF2 is activated and subsequent rises in catalase and downstream enzymes. Other times there's no change and other times there's a decrease in different individuals or in different situations different situations different situations because in like like let's say that like we did a study um in radiation toxicity we're looking at MIA changes micro RNAs um and anyways we also looked at some of these antioxidant markers and in some cases yes hydrogen gas would increase the levels of antioxidants and that would exert a a therapeutic cytorotective effect. In other cases, there was a there was also a therapeutic cytorotective effect, but those levels were not as high and that's because if hydrogen was able to protect the cell like prevent excess apoptosis, prevent excess inflammation, all these things, then the antioxidant markers didn't need to be as high in order to exert the same protection. Hydrogen is a modulator of all these systems. Another great example is autophagy. Well, we know autophagy has a lot of benefits, right? This this auto this this process of the cells cleaning out the cellular debris, the the um the organels that aren't working so well, uh cells that you know potentially are cancerous and so on. Autophagy can help with that. And a number of studies have shown that hydrogen can activate the the autophagosome complex and activate and improve autophagy. It can also like by decreasing inflammation because if you have high levels of cytokine interlucan 6 cytoine then that also prevents autophag autophagy from happening. Um hydrogen can help lower that it can help get autophagy going and you get these cytorotective or neuroprotective effects. In other studies, in different models, hydrogen exerts very important cytorotective effects by suppressing autophagy because if you have too much autophagy, that's called autoopagic cell death, right? That's another way that you have apoptosis and and autophagy. You don't want to have too much, right? Hydrogen can regulate this. So that the same principles applies like I was saying with the NRF2 pathway. We we know that if you have constituently activated NRF2 pathway and this is like you can do genetic modifications for example and there's actually um some uh genetic uh disorders where there's the NRF2 is constituently activated and so you have high levels of this NRF2 protein all the time and that leads to cardiomyopathies it leads to reductive stress it leads to all sorts of problems because of reductive stress because it's too much it's too much and and that's that is really see we had before the whole idea of the the free radical theory of aging. Well, now it's more the uh the theory the aging problem is a redux dysregulation because it's not only that okay when you're young you kind of start having oxidative stress and you get older and then you you are reductive stress sometime. It's it's so much more complicated because you can have not only in the same individual a process of reductive stress going on and oxidative stress going on. You can have in the same organ that going on. You can even have in the exact same cell really. So like you have let's say in the cytool too much oxidative stress that's going on too many free radicals are being produced from the mitochondria and so on. So you have oxidative stress going on there. Then you have the ER the endoplasmic reticulum which you need to have oxidizing power in order to fold your proteins correctly because function dictate or structure dictates its function. So if you don't fold the proteins correctly you're not going to function correctly. And if you lack the oxidizing power you're not be able to do the things you need to do. So in the exact same cell, you're having oxidative stress and reductive stress. This is a disregulation. So why would you think that you can just take excess antioxidants and fix everything? May maybe you'll help this portion of the cell, but what about this portion? You just further exacerbated that going on in the endulone in this case, which doesn't have Yeah, it's it's such an interesting balance that I mean, you see this in biology, right? We like I said earlier, reductionism and nutrition, reductionism in biology, it's dangerous. It's like we just it's such a balance like you said it's not we're not just trying to take a million antioxidants you know I think it was Paul Polling that believed that vitamin C was the answer to everything and he won Nobel prizes but he might not have been right about that he didn't win a Nobel prize for showing that vitamin C was there he won a prize for something else right something else exactly think Nobel laure it's like they're brilliant yes and sometimes they get things wrong exactly you know and so he was you know there's there's still this concept that like we need to mega dose vitamin C and you think like well we talked about why you wouldn't want to do that and you Okay. So, it's it is just this balance and I love what you're saying here. This redux homeostasis. If oxidation and reduction get out of balance in either way, like a seessaw, too much reduction or too much oxidation, you're going to have a problem. And you can have reductive stress just like you can have oxidative stress. You were describing constitutively active NRF2, this transcription factor that's over activating genes involved in like controlling oxidative stress and you have problems. You have cardiammyopathies. You we need this for signaling. So, we don't want to get rid of everything. And this is where my brain started to kind of melt a little bit with hydrogen. And like you said, what an interesting molecule. Yeah. What an interesting molecule, primordial molecule. Nobody created hydrogen in the lab. It's just on the earth. What an interesting primordial molecule that it seems to only affect and maybe, you know, maybe we'll learn more of the story, but right now there's this compelling narrative that does hydrogen do this modulating role? Does it only get rid of the most harmful oxidative radicals, right? We talked about the hydroxal radical and I want to talk about how that's formed. I want to talk about peroxy nitrate also like these two things said like we talked about, right? Reactive nitro reactive nitrogen species nitric oxide valuable right until there's too much. Super oxide valuable until there's too much. Peroxide valuable until there's too much. So let's talk about because this is interesting to me and kind of fascinating. Where does hydro where does the hydroxal radical come from? Yeah. And then where do other damaging radicals presumably the peroxy nitrite radical where does this where do these come from? Yeah. Because it like you said if I'm saying this correctly like hydrogen seems to target the harmful ones selectively which is what is that?

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Okay. So, so the way that I tend to talk about this when it comes to free radicals is it's all about the good ones are okay when they're they're they exist for the appropriate duration, the appropriate location, and the appropriate concentration, right? And if those things are online, we we need them. They're good to go. But if you start creating the free radicals in the wrong location, so like nitric oxide, you have three different isoymes to make nitric oxide, right? There's indothelial nitric oxide synthes. So exactly enos. So now that's great for your systemic cardiovascular system. Then you have things like inos um inducible nitric ox synthes. And so if you have like an overreacted immune system, that's going to create oxidative stress, inflammation. Of course, sometimes you need that, sometimes you have too much of that, right? that can be a problem. Often you want to decrease inos and then there's NOS neuronal nitric oxide synthes and often you want to decrease it can get too active. Um and so there's a there's this disregulation of the nitric oxide synthes and hydrogen can help this this entire process because again it's going to help activate say enos but it can help suppress these other ones. Okay. So now we're going to help with the location wise and then we're going to talk about the duration. Well, if if the nitric oxide exists is existing too long, that's problematic. If it's if the concentration is too high, that's problematic. And so going into like peroxy nitrite, well, the reason why is because if you have high levels of nitric oxide and you have high levels of super oxide, a super oxide is very important. Okay? But high levels of super oxide and nitric oxide now their locations are going to start to converge and they when they react, they react instantaneously. The only thing that's slowing down the reaction is the rate of diffusion. And when they react, they immediately form perio nitrite, which is it's not a free radical. It's a very powerful oxidant. Okay? And this oxidant is very pernicious because it's a little bit more stable, but a very powerful oxidant. And it can literally oxidize anything. So it can steal electrons from something else. Exactly. And we kind of hinted at this, but I'll just I'll just repeat it so people understand. When you steal electrons from something, you can damage DNA, you can damage proteins, you can damage lipids. Yeah. So the peroxy nitrate now that it's formed, it can it can actually diffuse like through lipid membranes and it and it can just damage so many areas and it can ex it last long enough that it can get to very critical places that other radicals may not get to like the hydroxal radical. It could be argued that peroxin nitrite is even more damaging than hydroxal radical just because peroxin nitrite can go to to to further places whereas the O radical as soon as produced it's like already reacting with something. So the hydroxy radicals can be formed just by say the radiolysis of water uh like through radiation for example or to take super oxide and when that gets u more basically goes through a further redux reaction that's when hydroxy radicals are also being produced through uh through peroxide. Yeah. Yeah. Super oxide to peroxide. There's a there's there's a number of ways it can be made but yeah called the fentin reaction the habberwise reaction. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Mhm. And and this very problematic and and that's why it's so cool that molecular hydrogen is able to target that free radical. But the biggest way it's targeted is actually is actually through the NRF2. That's one way. And through prevention because just to put this in in in perspective, although we're talking about hydrogen gas as this antioxidant radical scavenger to like react with hydroxy radical, it's it's probably not very significant. And that's because of the second order reaction rate constants. The hydroxal radical as I said is already reacting with whatever is right there. So when you look at the concentration of hydrogen molecule, the hydrogen molecule is you know billions of miles away from the where the O radical is. So it's unlikely for the O radical to like somehow travel over there react with that and form water. Now it can happen and that's my point with selectivity. Hydrogen if it's going to react with the radical the only one it can react with is the hydroxy radical. Therefore, there is no risk of causing reductive stress. It's not going to just needlessly donate electrons into your body and cause harm. It cannot do that based based on the most basic chemistry. It cannot do that. Okay. Now, I talked about how hydro hydroxy radicals were formed, right? From from uh um like the this redux reaction, the fentin reaction and super oxide production when those levels get high. Well, guess what? Hydrogen can suppress the elevated increases of say super oxide levels. So steps exactly say like the NOx systems the NAP oxidase when they get super active you produce a lot more superoxide levels. Well by hydrogen suppressing these levels then you're not going to form as much super oxide and therefore you don't have a spillover to creating hydroxal radicals. So you actually have less production of hydroxal radicals in the first place. And then your your your body is able to regulate the free radicals that are being produced because you have in your body you have superoxidism mutates that can handle superoxide. You have catalates of glutathione perox peroxidase that can handle hydrogen peroxide. Your body can handle these for the right duration and the right concentration in the right locations and everything. So if you are low in these enzymes it's going to be problematic. Hydrogen can increase NRF2 pathway. It can activate these levels. Now your body is back into control, right? Your cells are back into control of regulating these oxidants in the way they need to be before they start producing a bunch of hydroxal radicals and perio nitrate. Mhm. So you said it well. It's like a spillover, right? Your body produces super oxide which can go to peroxide and you have catalase superoxide dismutase glutathione which are enzymes produced as part potentially as part of this NRF2 cascade. You have this transcription factor going to the nucleus turns on the genes these indogenous antioxidants sort of controlling enzymes catalace superoxidis mutase glutathione control these things. So hydrogen is potentially modulating NRF2. It's potentially um creating or modulating the production of superoxide in the mitochondria to prevent the spillover because it's interesting. Yeah, it's like a spillover. When you have too much peroxide from super oxide, you get the hydroxal. And like you said, if you have too much nitric oxide, it can combine with the hydroxal radical and you get the peroxy nitrate. And it's interesting because I just want to touch on this. A lot of people I think may imagine I had somebody tell me this. I forget exactly what the situation was. He said, "Man, I feel great when I take nitroglycerin." And I was thinking, I don't think you want to take tons and tons of nitrates, right? Like people are abusing things like Viagra now, right? And look, if you have erectile dysfunction, you're using it in a setting that's okay by your doctor, fine. you could potentially is is it possible that you could create excess peroxy nitrate um by just taking lots of Viagra by inhibiting the enzymes that break down these nitrates? It's just it's like we're just messing with these pathways. You don't want to have a bunch of nitrate. You don't have a bunch of re active nitrogen species, which is how sort of Viagra works, right?

Well, it's a number of points on this that that's very interesting. So, um I I believe the mechanism with with Viagra is not the end production of nitric oxide, but it's a PDE5 inhibitor, right? And so actually nitric oxide typically bonds to um cyclic GMP and then that well that creates cyclic cgmp and the cgmp molecules um then have all these signaling effects and then that gets broken down by phosphodieststerase. So then Viagra inhibits phosphodiesttor. Okay. So it's maybe not producing the nitrate. So it's probably not producing the the nitrate and nitric oxide. However, it brings up a important point because this is the problem with aging. As you age, you have more of a um uh dysregulation of your nitric oxide production. As we get older, we actually produce less nitric oxide than we should and and like like an 80-year-old is going to have like 20% or shouldn't say the numbers, I forget, but it's a significant difference of what like like a 20-year-old is going to produce. Those levels go down tremendously. And one of the the benefits of even even vegetables like like uh uh like like spinach and and different things that have um they're actually rich in nitrate and the nitrate gets metabolized by our the the bacteria on our in our mouth to create nitrite and the nitrite gets converted in the body to nitric oxide and you have this whole nitrate nitrite nitric oxide cycling. Right. Right. And that's really important. But most people don't a lot of people don't have the right bacteria to make that conversion. And when you get older, you have this disregulation of nitric oxide. So now you're you could potentially produce the nitric oxide in all the wrong places, all the wrong times. So someone with asthma, you one of the ways to diagnose asthma is you measure your fractional excel nitric oxide levels because you should have high levels. But but so so you have this major disregulation where people are making higher levels of nitric oxide than they should but in the wrong locations in the wrong durations and everything. Hydrogen is able to come and regulate these areas. So it's a really interesting cross talk between nitric oxide hydrogen gas and other gas simulating molecules like um hydrogen sulfide and and carbon monoxide. So so that's one point with with the nitric oxide. We do need to be careful because nitric oxide it is a

free radical, and if those levels get high, you will produce peroxy nitrite, and then that's going to cause a lot of damage. Nitrosocrosine levels is a marker, and it's a it's very problematic. So, people who want to take more nitric oxide products, it's like all the more reason you should be taking molecular hydrogen.

And in fact, in the studies, and and and we've looked at this a number of times, but some pretty cool studies using hydrogen gas in conjunction with nitric oxide. And you can actually see that hydrogen attenuates some of the negative effects of the nitric oxide while potentiating its beneficial effects, including some of the same activities. Hydrogen can also increase cGMP levels. So it's actually like a nitric oxide mimetic in that sense. Oh, and that's that's the mechanism that nitric oxide affects cGMP or something. Yeah, exactly. That's how it interacts with, I guess. Yeah. The whole PDE5 system.

Did you do you remember hearing the stories or the recently about people taking the mouthwash and how mouthwash attenuated 100%? This is why. Yeah. Because you need these nitric oxide producing bacteria in your mouth. And so if you destroy all these bacteria with some sort of alcohol-based mouthwash, you're essentially carpet bombing your oral microbiome. It's a horrible thing. I did a piece of content about natural mouthwash recently. Things I think most people who have halitosis or who suffer from bad breath don't have a mouthwash deficiency. You have dysbiosis in the gut. Mouthwash deficiency. You know, you have dysbiosis in the gut. You know, mouthwash is not going to solve the problem. And and as we don't want to carbon bomb our GI microbiome or the oral microbiome, there's so many benefits to this this these nitrates, but it is a balance. And that's so interesting to me. Yeah. That that that too much nitric oxide from whatever is a problem. Too much, too many of the hydroxyl radicals is a problem.

In one of the papers you sent me, there were a couple of other things that I want to point out to people. Other things that increase the free radicals, things like Tylenol, cisplatin, you know, some things that like I think there's things people need to know about heavy metals. This is how it all kind of ties in that the reason, am I correct in saying this? That the reason that heavy metals are harmful for us is because they produce these these sort of free radicals that that create some sort of oxidative stress. Tylenol does the same thing. Yeah, that's obviously a a contributor, right? I think some of these metals that there there are some specific receptors they can also activate and so yeah, it it can it can have negative effects indirectly, but oxidative stress, free radicals are always like at the root of pretty much every pathology.

And hydrogen being a modulator like it is. This is why I think this is one of the reasons why we can see it influencing over 200 different human and animal disease models because it's going to the root of oxidative stress and inflammation and cellular stress resilience, your epigenetics, you know, all of these things.

And you know what one one other really important point just about the dual role of hydrogen antioxidant, it also has a pro-oxidant effect, right? And and and so we we talked about how hydrogen can decrease superoxide production from say the NADBH excess activation or uh the mitochondrial complex a complex one for example can decrease production of superoxide levels. We also have stud we've also published articles showing that hydrogen has like a mitogenic effect where it can actually increase superoxide production just like exercise. So so if you if you're like in this place where you're maybe not producing much free radicals as you should, as your mitochondria should, as you need for signaling, that hydrogen will now increase that superoxide production. But if that production is already too high, it'll decrease it back to where it needs to be. It is almost on an individual basis. It's like an individual cellular basis because different cells respond differently depending on what toxin you give to it or if you don't give toxins to it. It it really is modulating the entire redox homeostasis. It's pretty wild, man. It's just it's pretty wild to think that something like this exists and that there is research to to to back this up.

I mean, the study we talked about at the beginning of this podcast, you gave hydrogen water to people for six months and they saw improvements in multiple markers um that give us indication of metabolic syndrome. That's that's interesting, right? And these are the mechanisms. And to me, this got interesting even more interesting when I thought about the connections between oxidative stress and metabolic syndrome. And I don't want to get too technical. This is probably one of the more technical podcasts I've done. So I hope people are hanging on with us. We'll we'll bring it back, guys. I promise you that we will we'll get it to be high level in the end. But there there are mechanisms of oxidative stress in connection with metabolic dysfunction also. And I'm trying to connect these things in my mind and understand what's going on here. Have you thought about this at all? Like IRS1 phosphorylation in the cell membrane. Right? So in order for insulin to bind to its receptor, you have to have IRS1 and that that sort of regulates downstream signaling from when insulin binds to its receptor. And sort of part of the molecular mechanism for insulin resistance, quote unquote, is sort of inactivation of IRS1, which can be triggered by oxidative stress. And so in states of diabetes, in states of obesity, we see excess reactive oxygen species. In states of metabolic dysfunction, we see the production of things, and again, we're getting technical here, like ceramides and diacylglycerols at the level of the mitochondria because the energy production isn't working well. And those can trigger a sort of signaling that triggers insulin resistance. And so, it's interesting to me that okay, if you can resolve, if you can modulate oxidative stress, you can start to reverse some of the fundamental pathologies that or at least the signaling pathologies that are driving metabolic dysfunction.

There are other questions, and these are the most interesting questions for me. What is causing those those imbalances in the first place? What is causing your excess oxidative stress in the first place? What is causing your mitochondria to not function well? But as a modulator, the connections between molecular hydrogen, oxidative stress, and metabolic dysfunction at the metabolic level. That's pretty fascinating. Absolutely. And and mechanistically it's quite fascinating because when when some of these studies compared molecular hydrogen to say um metformin, right? Hydrogen was like more effective or similar or more effective in almost every parameter that was measured. Is this in human studies? No, this was in an animal study. They haven't done a direct comparison with the human study. Wow. Okay. Um not sure on that one. But in because metformin is kind of a horic right as a complex one inhibitor. Well, I think the mechanism metformin is not they say maybe complex one but it's confusing. It is it is very confusing and it depends. We could really get into this a little bit but but it's interesting how metformin kind of works and what what we kind of see with hydrogen how I just talked about how hydrogen affects the mitochondria, various complexes with the superoxide levels and different things that are going on. But we we've shown that it can induce mitochondrial rejuvenation, regeneration because it enhances um heat shock proteins and activates um UPRmt, which is the mitochondrial unfolded protein response, which then activates mitochondrial regeneration, rejuvenation. We're we're working on a on a I can't talk too much about we have the mechanism. We actually know exactly what's going on um to for this to happen and for the mitogenesis. Yeah. For the mitogenesis. Yeah. We have the primary target of what hydrogen gas is directly targeting in order to induce this conformational change so that you can have these changes in the mitochondrial level and in turn this regeneration, rejuvenation of the mitochondria. Mitochondrial rejuvenation. Yeah.

I mean, it's so interesting and does it affect PGC1 alpha also? Yeah. Yeah. We we it depends again because if you're already if normal healthy rats or people whatever you are unlikely to see increases but anytime you have like a um deficiency or a compromise or mitochondrial impairments or myopathies that's when we start to see increases in PGC1 alpha levels and so you have more energy production right and so now you're talking about with diabetes you know you have to have enough mitochondrial ATP production in order to activate uh the right channels to get insulin secretion in the first place. Okay, this is the the beta cells of the pancreas. So, cuz that's the first thing. If you want to get glucose into the into the muscle cells, you got to get insulin to be released and from the pancreas. So, first, hydrogen's protecting um the beta cells from oxidative stress, from um various toxins. There's a number of publications on this um mechanistically showing how hydrogen protects pancreatic beta beta cells and it promotes the secretion of insulin. Now, we're going to go to the muscle cell. And to your point, normally, yeah, insulin is going to bind to its its receptor um tyrosine autophosphorylation and then it goes through this uh PI3 kinase pathway, which can then uh induce the translocation of the GLUT4 transporter right into the membrane and that's what glucose moves, brings in glucose. Hydrogen also activates this PI3 kinase pathway downstream from the insulin receptor. Exactly. Mhm. And so it's able to induce translocation of GLUT4 transporters. And you can actually inhibit this mechanistically. They've done this in animal studies where you you can use a drug and you can inhibit the PI3 kinase pathway and prevent GLUT4 translocation induced by molecular hydrogen. Wow. And it's again, it's modulating. So if you have insulin doing this, exercise does this, and hydrogen does this. Hydrogen is like a mild exercise mimetic, right?

I mean, people say that DMT is like the god molecule. Like hydrogen is starting to sound like a little bit of a god molecule to me. Have you ever thought about this? Like I know it it from a poetic perspective, it is amazing as well. I mean, hydrogen, it was the first, you know, Professor Harlow, an astronomer, famous astronomer, he said if God did make the world with the word, that word would be hydrogen. Wow. Right. I mean, it is the father of all the ancestors. The ancestor of all the elements. Right. It's the first element. Exactly. It's the simplest element and it's modulating things that I this is this is like I mean I'm not I don't know like it almost sounds divine, you know, like I don't that's what I'm saying. There's a divine aspect to it. Yeah, there's a divine aspect to it and I'm sort of spiritual but not religious, you know, I've been in so many grand natural settings that that I find inspiration in nature, but I don't, you know, I'm not religious per se, but I'm going to, you know, carefully use the word like this is it almost feels divine and it's like a divine molecule. It's wild. It's it's what powers the sun, fusion, creating helium, the stars, everything, right? And and it's it's it's quite like I said, it's kind of romantic when you consider the fact that all of us are basically stardust. Right? We we all come came from the stars. We're all literally made of this this hydrogen in in that sense from the very beginning. And hydrogen, very first from the beginning. And now we're just and actually was involved even in the genesis of life like from the theory of evolution, which there's great models to to explain how this would work. Um, then the deep sea hydrothermal vents. You can imagine something like, you know, iron is a catalyst and some other things, and then these hydrothermal vents are releasing hydrogen gas at these high temperatures and hydrogen, those two electrons are like a great energy source and now you iron can kind of catalyze this release of these electrons as an energy substrate and now you have this the first organisms. And then we we've a lot of data suggests that hydrogen was what forged the bond of of um to make eukaryotes from archaea to to to for bacteria basically to eukaryotes. That's plant and animal cells. And even even plants, they have these enzymes called hydrogenase enzymes. So bacteria do and some plants have this hydrogenase enzyme that produces and consumes hydrogen as an energy source. And humans, we do not have this specific enzyme, but we do have the genetic hallmarks for the enzyme, suggesting we also have conserved targets. And the and the evolutionary um similarity between mitochondria and bacteria. I mean, they're very similar to each other. This is primordial. It literally goes back, you know, we have the origins of the universe, the genesis of life, and the evolution of life. And then and then as we evolved and we developed a healthy gut microbiome and if and our ancestors, right, they would eat sometimes a lot of fiber and and that fiber would produce lots of hydrogen gas. So they would eat, you know, meat and fibers, the fibrous vegetables or whatever, right? And they're producing lots of hydrogen gas. And now I mean, they say we should try to get like 15 grams of fiber for every thousand calories, 30 grams a day, which a lot of people are not getting. But but our ancestors could be eating like 100, 200 grams of fiber. Yeah. I wonder about the fiber with our ancestors. That's a whole separate topic. But yeah, it's interesting because it speaks to this idea that there are hydrogen producing bacteria in the gut. Yeah. You know, and there are methane producing bacteria in the gut and at a microbiome level, we do not have this figured out. But you know, the idea that we could fuel hydrogen producing, you know, bacteria in the gut is fascinating to me.

Well, and it's interesting the correlations and again, correlation is not equal causation, but these are important correlations that I want to point out that that in general, the more hydrogen producing bacteria an individual has, the healthier they are. And and we've seen this like with Japanese centenarians. They have higher levels of breath hydrogen naturally out of their breath because you you eat fibers, hydrogen gas metabolized, and then you can measure that in their exhale breath. Japanese centenarians have higher levels of breath hydrogen than people who are younger and don't don't become centenarians. Um, when you exercise, you tend to have higher levels of breath hydrogen. Really? Um, people who have. Is that from the gut microbiome? Yeah. Yeah. It's just gut microbiome. Gut microbiome is producing more hydrogen when you exercise. Yeah. Yep. Exactly. Um, also when you have uh different diseases, so like Parkinson's for example, those who have Parkinson's disease, when you look at when you analyze their their the fecal matter of their bacteria, they have less hydrogen producing bacteria than those who don't have Parkinson's or other cognitive impairments and so on. So these are very interesting correlations suggesting that yes, hydrogen may be playing a role. And probably the best direct evidence comes from an animal study where they took uh rats and they gave um lactulose, which is a a fiber, right? And they fed it to to the rats. There was hepatoprotective or liver protective benefits to the liver after they give some some toxin. But when they gave the they they did they with the study, they actually genetically engineered the bacteria to remove the hydrogenase enzyme so they could metabolize the lactulose but not produce hydrogen gas. And when they gave that bacteria back in and they gave the lactulose, it was metabolized, but there were no benefits. Wow. So in this case, all those benefits seem to have been mediated by the production of hydrogen gas in the gut. In the gut.

In medicine, we give patients lactulose when they have liver failure. I believe um are you familiar with that? Yeah. Yeah. And and actually there were some studies of human studies showing that some of these like a carbos, lactulose, and other things have these cardiovascular protective effects and cerebrovascular protective effects. And so now the question is, is it because of hydrogen gas mediating these other benefits that we didn't think about because originally, like for the liver or or other things, and you were seeing these all these other benefits. Maybe it's because of the hydrogen gas was being produced. So interesting. And there's so many things we'll get to in this podcast. Later on in the podcast, I want to get to inhaled versus oral hydrogen water, but I'm wondering if you know, as a foreshadowing, if you're drinking hydrogen water, if that fuels hydrogen mic producing microbes, maybe, you know, can you affect your gut flora? Yes, you you do affect, well, according to the clinical research, a lot of animal studies on this, but that is one of the benefits of drinking hydrogen water. It appears it improves your microbiome. Now, it's not going to directly increase the amount of hydrogen producing bacteria because that bacteria is already producing hydrogen gas. Now, there's actually a good hypothetical concern, which is are you are you increasing the hydrogenase? This is the bacteria that consume hydrogen gas. And if you increase that bacteria, that's going to decrease that that could be a bad thing because the more methanogenic bacteria and sulfate reducing bacteria where you're producing hydrogen sulfide, you have that that's correlated with not good health. And so there's there's an a logical reason. Well, well, if I'm drinking hydrogen water, literally fueling or providing the fuel to this methane producing and sulfate or hydrogen sulfide producing bacteria, then it can make things worse, right? But the clinical studies don't bear that out, really. And so, in fact, they were seeing improvements in the microbiome as well as various postbiotics like short-chain fatty acids, you know, butyrate and, you know, other other benefits from the microbiome in general. And mechanistically, if we just go a little bit deeper than what seems on the surface, you you see like uh like let's say um H pylori, Helicobacter pylori, this causes ulcers. Well, this also um hydrogen gas is an energy source for the H for for the H pylori bacteria. But the Km, the Michaelis-Menten, okay, going going back, right? Let's go um but but it's it's it's very, very small. So in other words, um this the hydrogenase enzyme has a very high affinity for molecular hydrogen. So it only needs a very, very low concentration for the enzyme to be working at its maximum level. And with this bacteria, it's already fully saturated with hydrogen, like a very, very small, like, you know, nanomolar type level of molecular hydrogen. And so by adding more hydrogen, it can't make it grow any faster because it's already maxed out. Okay? But by drinking more hydrogen, you do get to these micromolar concentrations in in the different tissues, the organs, the body, the colonocytes. And now you can start seeing systemic benefits to the host. Now you improve the immune system. You improve the environment and everything else. And now your immune system can get rid of these other bacteria and you have and you can start improving the environment for beneficial bacteria to overtake the pathogenic bacteria. The microbiome is a whole separate thing. It's so interesting.

Before we move on from this, are you aware of any studies looking at hydrogen producing microbes in the gut and what sort of things modulate that? Does more fiber increase hydrogen producing bacteria? Is it other things? Because I know there's so many inputs that can affect the microbiome. UV light, you know, for instance, like ultraviolet light affects the microbiome positively. Does ultraviolet light increase the amount of hydrogen producing microbes in the Interesting. I don't know of any research on that. That'd be so interesting. Yeah. Yeah. It could be it could be very interesting to look at, but but we know that um a lot of these healthy interventions like fiber, for example, yes, you can you can selectively start stimulating that that bacteria. Um and so so that's a good thing that that's it's interesting though because I think I think it's a little bit controversial. It's interesting the data coming out about fiber and how good is that really? What's really going on versus just taking like, you know, kimchi and other like probiotic things, fermented foods, right? And where that really sits at. But but regardless, yeah, I mean, uh, if you you have to feed the good bacteria something, right? So, there's going to be something there. But but can you just eat more fiber? And therefore, some not everybody has hydrogen producing bacteria. There's a there's a small percentage of the population that don't. Plus, people that do may not have as much as they used to because of our environment today. Um, the antibiotics that are overprescribed and so on, chicken, etc. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I visited the Hadza. I talk about this too much on the podcast. They did not eat a lot of fiber when I was there and I was only there for two weeks, but they had almost no fiber when I was there. So, certain times of the year, they don't I know Justin Sonnenburg at Stanford, who I want to talk to at some point, has done studies with I think microbial diversity. I think they looked at alpha diversity of the gut. And I think you're alluding to this. He didn't find the fiber actually didn't increase or change the alpha diversity of the gut. The but but interventions with fermented foods did. So like kefir, kombucha, things. So you know, like you said, it's questionable whether, you know, we need to be eating 100 grams of fiber per day. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. But but probably some fermented food or sunlight, you know, who knows? But I think this is the frontier when it comes to the microbiome. But certainly hydrogen can be absorbed through there. So we'll come back to that. The the real question is, yeah, why does drinking hydrogen water help at all if you're if you're already producing lots of hydrogen gas from the bacteria? Cuz you literally can produce liters of hydrogen gas in your gut. In your gut. Wow. Per day. But yet, when you drink hydrogen water, you're getting like less than 100 milliliters of hydrogen gas, right? So, how can that be any beneficial? What do you think? You're the You're the person, man. I'm glad you're here. Funny you would ask. No, I've been thinking about this a lot and and I actually I think it's pretty simple. It's because when you're producing that um hydrogen gas from the gut, the concentration the cells never reaches a micromolar concentration. It never reaches that micromolar level. It never reaches that that threshold in your actual blood and body. Right. Right. And so it's going to have beneficial effects on the bacteria. You get second messenger effects. Now you can start benefiting the brain and other organs and different things, but maybe not from the hydrogen molecules themselves because the concentration is not very high. When you drink hydrogen water, it we can measure this. We we can see what the concentration is. You drink hydrogen water, it goes into the intestines. It goes right to the liver through the portal vein. It increases the liver concentration to, you know, 20 to 50, 80 micromolar concentration. You can measure it. You can measure it, you know, with with a unison sensor electrode. You put it into the liver. Um, you can take and there's lots of ways we've done this and and then it goes to the heart and the heart pumps it to the lungs and you can measure hydrogen gas uh within within like 30 seconds, you know, to and and it reaches a a peak in about 5, 10 minutes or so of hydrogen water. So that's the pharmacokinetic when you drink hydrogen water. But the fact that you're measuring it that quickly, it shows that hydrogen gas is literally going through the intestines into the into the blood and get, you know, getting was very bioavailable very quickly, right? So the concentration is one reason the concentration is a lot higher and and then and versus like when it's just produced by the microbiome, it's over this long period of extended period of time and it's like the rate of production is about equal to the rate of in is equal to the rate of it escaping or being released. And so the concentration never really goes up high. And it's this spike, this intermittent exposure of hydrogen that might be important, kind of like a signaling, kind of like exercise or other things. It's just the spikes that are happening.

I've heard you talk about this. I heard you on another podcast talk about someone that made a hydrogen room in their house, right? Oh yeah. In Poland. And the idea was maybe you don't want that. Maybe you don't want to live in like more hydrogen. Maybe it is just an input that you want sort of occasionally. Kind of like hyperbaric. You know, you get hyperbaric oxygen, then you take time off, and you get hyperbaric oxygen, you take time off. Is that what you're thinking? That that that maybe hydrogen water, maybe we'll just get into this inhalation versus drinking the water. Now, you know, when you're inhaling it, you don't inhale it all day, but I don't know, maybe you do want to inhale it all day. So, do you want inputs? And then, you know, if we're talking about something that's a hormetic, it's like a signal and then on, off, on, off, on, off. So, is that what you think is going on? I I I think that's very plausible, but I don't know that we really understand it. There was there was a one study done where I was at Nagoya University in Parkinson's disease and what they it's very interesting, but they they damaged the the substantia through a toxin, six-hydroxydopamine, and animals in animals. Yeah. Yes. That's in animals and rats. But they administered hydrogen three different ways. Inhalation. They also did lactulose and they did hydrogen water. And with inhalation, there's 24/7 exposure. Okay. With inhalation, there was no no noticeable benefit. Wow. With lactulose, there wasn't really any benefit. They also did another another one where it was intermittent hydrogen exposure to mimic the idea of drinking water because the drinking of hydrogen water essentially prevented the development of Parkinson's disease. So there was inhalation, intermittent hydrogen exposure, constant. Yeah. So there's two ways, right? Constant inhalation or intermittent inhalation, right? And intermittent inhalation was to mimic the drinking of water because and when you drank the hydrogen water and these rats, it essentially prevented the development of Parkinson's disease. But 24/7 didn't. Yeah. But 24/7 didn't. Yeah. Yeah. But the intermittent exposure was effective. Still not as effective as the drinking of hydrogen water, which we understand some of the mechanisms, some second messenger systems that are enacted by drinking hydrogen water that doesn't get from inhalation. So that kind of feeds to the idea that yeah, maybe this intermittent exposure is is more effective. But what does intermittent mean? Because in one of the things I sent you um, you know, published in in the Lancet um with with postcardiac arrest syndrome, they inhaled hydrogen gas for 18 hours a day. Okay? So in a lot of these studies, we use hydrogen gas for several days at a time, right? And then there's so the so so I think you can there's probably some benefits to always being exposed to hydrogen, but we don't really know what is the optimal dose or concentration or things. But but we do know what works based upon the clinical studies, you know, and so now we have honed in well, what what doesn't work so we can kind of optimize the protocol, right? So let's talk about the protocol a little bit. So is it worth inhaling? You know, pie in the sky, right? Unlimited resources. And then we can talk about what's more functional or much more reasonable. But if if somebody has access to it, is it worth doing inhalation and drinking hydrogen water? And how do you think about those two things? And then we can drill down on both of them. Maybe we can start with inhalation and then go to the water and like you said, try and debunk some of the misinformation that's out there and let people know about the quality of devices and things like this. So, is it worth doing both? And then I think I think it's totally worth doing both because the pharmacokinetics are different and the pharmacodynamics are also different. So when you drink hydrogen water, that's an oral route, you're going to influence more of the of the gut microbiome, of the intestines, the liver. The concentration is going to get pretty high because it's just a bolus of hydrogen just coming like right there. You get induction of various second messenger systems. There was a um a study that was done that actually compared the two and they see um different gene expressions that were changed differentially depending on if it was um hydrogen water or hydrogen inhalation or if they were combined together. There's other effects, other benefits. So when you inhale hydrogen gas, that's going directly to into the lungs, it's going to go dissolve into the blood. There's no carrier like hemoglobin or something for the hydrogen molecule. It doesn't need to. It's just it's going to dissolve into the blood according to the partial pressure or the percent of hydrogen gas being inhaled. And now and so inhaling, you know, 2% hydrogen gas can reach around 12 micromolar concentration, which in cell culture studies, we have shown is therapeutic. It's enough to to exert these beneficial effects. So 2% hydrogen, you can reach 12 micromolar in the blood. Yeah. Exactly. Okay. And and and and sometimes uh sometimes there's a dose dependent effect with inhalation like, you know, higher is more effective. And other times that's not true. Wow. Like sometimes actually 4% is not what in an animal study for example, that's one of the Nature Medicine, 4% was not as effective as 2%. So so you you actually want to be able to have a precise dose of hydrogen. That's why in this study in Lancet, they used 2% hydrogen because in all the animal studies, it shows that 2% was more effective. 2% inhaled hydrogen gas. Yeah. Okay. Interesting. So, so going to some of these benefits then and just some of the differences when you inhale hydrogen gas, goes to the blood and it's going to diffuse just, you know, Brownian motion equilibrium and it's going to basically reach that concentration in all your cells, right? Your muscles, your your big toe, your your brain, everywhere, right? Whereas hydrogen water, the the hydrogen molecules from drinking hydrogen water probably won't reach the the distal organs and tissues of the body just because it's going to get to the heart and just go to the lungs. Most of the hydrogen gas is exhaled out, but we still see it has benefits largely probably through these second messenger systems.

Okay, so let's talk about inhalation in detail. Like I mean I guess there's a you know, I've done some research on this. There's a lot of different things out there for people like how do you like if you want to inhale hydrogen? Yeah. How do you find a reasonable device to do this? Like what should you look for? Because there's a it's dizzying, you know, and then you read the reviews. This one doesn't work, this one does. And there's all kinds of weird stuff for the inhalation. Yeah, it's it's it's a very good question and we also have to be careful because hydrogen gas is explosive. Well, hydrogen gas is flammable and then you have oxyhydrogen which is explosive, right? So that's what we have oxygen, hydrogen combined together and people um think that this is going to be more therapeutic. Oxyhydrogen in an inhalation. Yeah. So you're in like a nasal cannula and you you're inhaling both oxygen and hydrogen. Hydrogen. This is the Hindenburg, right? If people don't know the reference, we'll put like a piece of B-roll like like this is a big blimp that just exploded, right? Yeah. Yeah. Major catastrophe. And this has actually happened in Japan where hydrogen is much more prevalent. Um, there are a number of case reports. I was actually a reviewer for an article um that's that'll be published here shortly, but they document 12 other instances where people have been like inhaling this oxyhydrogen and like with a nasal cannula and they'll be static discharge, something happens and that will go off and fractures their their nose. Wow. Um, or other people, they'll be inhaling hydrogen and like one person had like a combustion inside of their internal organs. They had to go to the ICU. There was blood like all over. How do their internal organs combust? Because hydrogen is explosive above a 4.6% concentration. If you're inhaling oxyhydrogen, 66.7% hydrogen, 33.3% oxygen, that all gets, you know, diluted, but still at a flammable level inside of your lung. So the amount of energy needed to ignite oxyhydrogen is less than the amount of energy to cause a spark, a static electricity. It's a very small amount actually. And and and so yes, it's rare, right? Maybe it happens one in 10,000 times, one in 100,000, but it but it has happened. That's scary. And so we need to be aware that this is flammable and that's why in in the research like like when I was doing my PhD for example, and also studying in Lancet, we didn't use a machine like this because we can't even get IRB approval to do a study and use this in the hospital settings. So we we we actually had a a a company u a gas major gas company right make a tank of mixed gas. So you have medical grade like 21% oxygen, right? And they would say, okay, we want to have 2.3% hydrogen or whatever it is, right? And the balance to be nitrogen. And then we would provide the tank. That's what we do in the in this like Lancet study. They'd have a tank and that way every inhalation they would take comes only from this tank of air that contains that precise mixture. So now you have three benefits. You have a precise concentration. It's not all over the place, not fluctuating. Because if you just have a nasal cannula, sometimes you're getting a therapeutic dose because you're breathing slow enough. Sometimes it's not therapeutic because you just took a you took a sigh or you were talking or whatever, right? The the concentration is all over the place. And and if the concentration is all over the place, you can't really do good studies to really know the precise dosing. And then how do you equate that to what we talked about earlier about how sometimes the 2% was more effective than the 4%. Right. Right. So it's really difficult with with that method. That's why we will use the tanks of hydrogen gas or even they they'll create these rooms that have exactly 1, 2, 3, or 4% hydrogen gas and people just go in there for their therapy for several hours. It's not flammable. It's not flammable. It's below 4.6%. Exactly. And technically even below 10%. Um, so so that's how they'll do it in the in the in these studies. So you have can get a precise concentration of hydrogen. It's always therapeutic because everything that come we know what the the concentration is, right? And it's nonflammable, right? So, I I've always been very interested in hydrogen inhalation and things, but it's been somewhat difficult to to really feel comfortable always recommending because what if somebody is a bigger individual and they're going to, you know, the way they're breathing, their anxiety, whatever it is, they're going to inhale more. They may not even be getting a therapeutic dose of hydrogen because it's it's not about um how much hydrogen gas is being produced. It's about how much hydrogen gas is actually entering the body. And like when we're when we're uh breathing, we don't inhale for an entire minute. We are the the the breathing is inhalation, exhalation, and transition. So we only inhale for about 20 seconds per minute, right? So you only have 20 seconds to that inhalation time. When you start doing that math, you you start to require a pretty high volume of hydrogen gas per minute in order to ensure you're reaching the minimal therapeutic level or FiH2, the fraction of inspired hydrogen, which is about 1% hydrogen. Okay. So um and this is where this is where things are are transitioning a little bit because I consulted with a company this uh inhale H2 to for the past seven years to develop a device that could provide you a precise consistent dose of hydrogen. So it's a precise concentration. It's always therapeutic and it's nonflammable. And and that's the device that that that you've been using and where it has that inflatable bag. Yeah. So every inhalation you take comes from within that bag at the precise concentration. Even if you just take a big breath, it's it's exactly the concentration. It doesn't get diluted down by the outside air, right? And it's like a face mask. It's a face mask, right? And that way every it's it's always precise. It's nonflammable. And you could smoke with it. I I don't do that. Right. But I tried. It's fine. I smoke it. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sure. No. It's scary thinking about exploding. Yeah. Exactly. So it's Yeah. Okay. But we can use this in the clinical studies and and there's a lot of excitement amongst researchers now because now we can do bigger clinical studies without having to rely on these massive tanks. So there's really nothing else like that on the market. There's nothing else. There's nothing else. Yeah. When I look at other like hydrogen inhalation devices, it's like they're either it's either oxyhydrogen like you said and it's flammable and it's dangerous or they're just very low quality. So, I think in terms I mean I'll say this I mean you know you can add what you'd like but like in terms of hydrogen inhalation like there's not a whole lot of great stuff on the market. You got to be pretty careful with that. Yeah, I think I hope you guys will bring this one to market soon. Yeah, there I mean yeah it'll it should be ready in the fall. Um I mean I people can go on to inhaleh2.com and and they yeah they can they can you know get get to the device right there. But this way will ensure that you're getting a therapeutic dose of hydrogen because we you we can we've done the calculations. A lot of people are not getting a therapeutic dose of hydrogen. And to ensure you are, you want a higher flow rate, but now you're really running that risk of of making a bomb. And and that's Yeah. And and there's been major catastrophes that have happened. It's sad. Like this one of the like in in the report, you know, the the the son reported that his dad who had cancer was inhaling hydrogen for therapy because he nasal cannula. Nasal cannula. Yeah. And and all of a sudden he heard this loud bang. He comes running in, you know, to see what's going on and there's blood all over and and and his dad's like, you know, major medical issue. You had to rush him to the ICU. Yeah, it's gnarly.

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Well, it's like you go back to hyperbarics. Like there's this idea that hyperbaric, you don't want to fill the hyperbaric chamber with oxygen. You know, similarly flammable or if you're filling a hyperbaric chamber with oxygen, you have to be naked or you have to wear cotton clothing. You can't bring electronics. Static electricity, right? Yeah. A static spark. If you fill a hyperbaric chamber because a hyperbaric chamber exploded recently and I think a child died. And I imagine, do you know, was it a hyperbaric chamber that was filled with oxygen? I don't I don't know if it was or not, but I heard about that. And I'll just say oxygen is an oxidizer, so technically it itself is not flammable. It just is an oxidizer. Hydrogen is the fuel. This is why it's even more dangerous, right? Because a hydrogen will burn. Oxygen makes everything burn a lot better, a lot faster, a lot quicker, right? You can't mess with the divine molecule, man. You got to be careful with the divine molecule. You got like this is a single molecule, man. You got to be careful. But when it does ignite, you just form water, the life-giving solvent. It's it's kind of romantic when you put it on your body, you know, on your face, you know. Yeah. Don't don't ignite. Don't form water in your in your ethmoid sinus, you know. You don't want to form water in your face and blow it up. But you have to be careful with that.

Let's talk about hydrogen water. This is potentially even worse to me than than inhaled hydrogen in terms of the number of devices that are just not real or fake or are not doing what they're supposed to do. I mean, so basically like what's the data on hydrogen water? Because one of the studies I think the study you sent me in that six-month study used hydrogen. What was the concentration of that one? Was it like Yeah, it was a high concentration. Yeah, we we it was like it was like over 10 milligrams per liter was what what they were ended up getting. um parts per million. Yeah. Yeah. We like to use milligrams per liter because ppm is the same, but but ppm can be confusing because ppm in this case is reference to a weight per weight ratio, but ppm often is has reference to a volume per volume, right? Like 10,000 ppm right is like 1% or maybe it's going to be a ratio like talk about like deuterium depletion and we talk about deuterium and water, that's ppm, but that's a multi-mole um ratio. Yeah. Uh percentage wise, not not a weight wise. Anyway, it could just be confusing, but yes, milligrams per liter was the dose we were using. 10 milligrams per liter. Yeah. Because um, you know, when you look at these hydrogen bottles and stuff out there or even look at the hydrogen tabs, it'll say this produces six or eight or 10 ppm. So I want people to understand what what they're looking at there. Yeah. What do you think is a therapeutic range and a dose of hydrogen water? So, so, so actually the the therapeutic um the lowest therapeutic dose is actually quite low. Um and and and there there's a clarification too because we have concentration, we have dose, and unfortunately, most people are marketing the concentration, right? Right. That that's really the fundamental problem, right? If if you take like like vitamin C, right? If you took vitamin C, a gram of it, right? And you dissolved it into a liter of water, you have one gram per liter. But if you dissolve into um 100 milliliters, you have 10,000 milligrams. But so it sounds like, well, that's so much, but it's just a concentration. We really have to talk about the dose. So when we talk about the dose, we do that calculation, which is simply take the concentration and multiply it by the volume of water. So 10 milligrams per liter, you're drinking a liter or whatever by the liter, how much volume. So like in like in this case, they were drinking like say 250 milliliters of water. So it's 10 milligrams per liter. So they're, you know, they're down to 250 um or or 2.5 milligrams of hydrogen, right? And then but they would do that several times a day. Exactly. So So the total dose ends up being, you know, over 10 milligrams of hydrogen per day. So now and and and ultimately we want to have dosing where it's like X milligrams of hydrogen per kilogram of body weight. Okay? Like that's really the pharmacology wise, that's really what we want to end up getting to, but we're not quite there yet. But the lowest dose has been shown to be um beneficial is only 0.5 milligrams per day. Total hydrogen. Yeah, total hydrogen. That's enough to exert benefits, not necessarily the optimal amount. See, other studies have shown that that is not enough to provide benefits in in that specific model or that human study or something. And is that is that inhaled or is that in water? Right. Yeah, that's that's ingesting from water. And and 0.5 milligrams or or the saturation of hydrogen is considered 1.66 milligrams per liter, right? Which which saturation that that just means that um because if you have if you have a 100% hydrogen gas in the headspace, it'll reach equilibrium and reach 1.6 milligrams. But of course, you could increase the pressure and that's why we can get, you know, even 10 milligrams. Yeah. How do you get how do you get 10 milligrams per liter of water? There there's two ways to do that. one if you have like certain bottles or whatever if if if you have the pressure is really high, then it's just based on Henry's

law, which is C equals pKH, which is the pressure divided by the Henry's law constant for that gas. And you can get that concentration just by pumping more, just by getting higher pressure. And that higher pressure will force the gas to dissolve into the water. And then once you open it, yeah, the gas starts to immediately come out. But it's just like carbonated water, like it's not going to vanish like that. Like it has a half-life of, you know, two hours or so. Like you have plenty of time to drink. But people drink it fairly quickly. Ideally, you should. You don't just sip on it all day, especially when it comes to using the hydrogen producing tablets, which is another way to do it. Because in that case, that hydrogen gas is not dissolved in the water. There's no pressure. And and and and so it's not dissolved.

The dissolved hydrogen concentration may only be around, you know, 2 milligrams per liter. It's still slightly super saturated, but it has a lot of micro, macro, and nanobubbles and that are that are kind of stabilized in this quasi suspension. And you want to drink it when it's all cloudy white because that's when you're getting the most hydrogen gas. And as soon as it goes into your stomach, then those gas bubbles will quickly, you know, diffuse and dissolve into the bloodstream and so on. And you can measure increases in your breath hydrogen concentration in the plasma and so on. So we can see you're getting a high dose of hydrogen. So I almost feel like, I mean, with a hydrogen tablet, maybe this is overkill. You'd be you'd almost want to like fill a small plastic or glass jar. I mean, obviously I'd rather use glass, but the pressure can break the glass if you're not careful. But I don't think a hydrogen tablet's going to break the glass. But you have a small glass. We've done it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The pressure can be high enough it can break them. I've broken glass hydrogen water bottles by just keep pushing it. Yeah. Like I want more. It snaps. Um, but yeah, you a small glass jar and you throw the hydrogen tablet in, you close the jar and that that might improve it. We did studies on this and that's what I initially thought is just based on Henry's law, like, you know, partial pressure and proportional concentration, it doesn't work. Oh, okay.

And this this this is the reason why because you have another chemistry principle, is the Le Chatelier's principle. Okay, going back to, yeah, the K of equilibrium constant, right? So if we look at the re the reaction of magnesium plus hydrogen ions goes to magnesium ions and hydrogen gas. Okay, so we have products over reactants. So if we increase the amount of hydrogen gas on one side, which is going to be um seen in this equation via pressure. As you increase the pressure, then you are going to cause the reaction to start going the other direction and so it actually slows down the reaction. So you can try it. You can put the tablet in a closed enclosed bottle like that and immediately you'll see a good reaction and then it'll kind of slow, slow and it'll just kind of stop and and and you if you were to measure that concentration, you'd be like, let's say 3 milligrams per liter or something. The reaction stopped. You still have unreacted magnesium that has a potential to make another 3 milligrams of hydrogen, but it's not going because the reaction is being pushed. The equilibrium is being shifted this way. As soon as you open that, all of a sudden that pressure released, so the reaction continues to go, but is that those bubbles are being created? Those bubbles actually sparge out or remove the gas that's already dissolved in the water. So, so that push makes all this hydrogen gas then pushes the hydrogen gas those dissolves out of the water and now the final concentration ends up only being 2 to 3 milligrams per liter. But when you do in the open cup with no pressure at all, then it causes the microbubbles and macro bubbles to be formed and they just kind of stay in there a little bit and you you have a few minutes to to down that way. That's we measure with gas chromatography. Wow. And ends up ends up being an open cup hydrogen. That's the best way. Warm water. Warm water. Yeah, if you do cold water, then you you you slow down the reaction kinetics. We we we also tested this as a gas chromatography slows things down. You don't get the fast reaction. You don't get the bubbles formation and the concentration is just not as high. So, when we did the studies, we want to have the subject, the participants um basically use room temperature water. Um put use 250 milliliters of water so they can drink it all at once, throw a tablet in, and as soon as that tablet rise to the surface, they immediately drink it. As soon as the tablet rises to the surface, what do you mean by that? So the tablet's going to disintegrate and then it's going to come to the top and then continue dissolving. As it's like once it's rising on the surface, that's when you start drinking it. Oh, really? Do you drink the like semi dissolved tablet? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Just, you know, just finalize the reaction. Your stomach acid makes more hydrogen gas. Doing it that way, you end up getting the most hydrogen. And I mean, cuz that doesn't take that long, you know. Yeah. 90 seconds. 90 seconds. So, you throw the tablet in, you wait 90 seconds, and then you drink it. Yeah. Cuz sometimes I think I'm waiting too long with the tablets. From waiting like 3 or 4 minutes. No, no, no. It's completely dissolved. Yeah. Yeah. You don't want Yeah. You want to make sure it's room temperature water. If it's cold water, it's you're you're you're missing a lot. You're still getting the benefits of magnesium. Yeah. Right. But, but and you're still getting actually more hydrogen than most clinical studies. Right. So, so when it comes to a therapeutic dose, well, like I said, 0.5 milligrams, that's like a quarter of a tablet, right? So, so one tablet is going to give you more hydrogen than most clinical studies. But there does seem to be a dose dependent effect, at least with hydrogen water. And and yeah, why there's no evidence for hydrogen water anyway that a higher concentration is less effective. Okay. And then some of the bottles are tricky, right? Because they have the proton exchange membranes. So, we're still talking about, you know, hydrogen water. Any recommendations in terms of how to find a bottle or is it just the tablets work better? Um, no. It's kind of subjective. You know, I think there there's some bottles, there's some other um like electrolysis machines and things that can work uh well. Um, it's just in general the concentration is not going to be as high and they're not going to be as consistent because sometimes the these bottles and and and uh um other products you know just over time may not last as long the proton expend exchange. Yeah. Because like like calcium for example from the tap water can kind of you start to get onto the membrane. It doesn't work as well. You can clean it with citric acid. You know, maybe the battery life, but but it also becomes so some so somewhat much subjective because again, if you um are able to always afford a tablets and it's just for you, maybe that's fine. But maybe if you have like a family trying to give everyone hygiene water, you get some, you get some, you get some, you know, then it can kind of be expensive. And so like I I have several water bottles. I have a flask. I have um, you know, the number of products that I that I have. And I also have the tablets and I find myself I I can use all of them but for a consistent dose of hydrogen I I like to use the tablets just because I get a high dose. I get the benefits of the magnesium. Um, I will say that there there are some concerns with all these products in terms of the contaminants. Yeah. Um, because with the membrane are you putting is is material leing from the membrane into the water? Right. This is a proton exchange me exchange membrane in the bottle. Yeah. Exactly. Or the electrodes. You have water in direct contact with the electrodes. Right. Is that a problem? If you My recommendation with with bottles and pictures and other things is if you want to use that um just um don't always use fresh water. Don't don't leave the water overnight or whatever on that ju just in case. And and and to make sure it's clean um you want to make sure that all any product you get is certified to IHSA criteria. Okay. International Hydrogen Standards Association. Okay. Tested by H2 Analytics. um and and basically do a a a concentration of hydrogen to make sure the concentration is high enough. It's above the minimal threshold. And number two, it measures all these other metals and contaminants to make sure it's not toxic when used the right way. So again, not leaving the water in in the machine all day. And the same thing with the tablets. Um, you know, you want to make whatever magnesium products you're using. Um, there's like stick packs and things that are coming out there. You got to be somewhat careful with any of these ones uh just to make sure that they have that certification. There there's there's some there's some misinformation about the tablets in general that they have metals contaminated with them um like lead and chromium and different things. Well, yeah, there's trace amounts of this stuff in like everything you eat, right? Um, but all these tablets have been tested and the the amount is, you know, like hundreds of times lower than what the the EPA standards are, right? So, so you but but you want to make sure these types of tests are done. IHSA. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And there'll be that certification on Yeah. It'll be like Yeah. It'll be Exactly. Yeah. I'll say like certified by H2 Analytics. Uhhuh. Right. Um, and that'll be it's it's it's the certification is done according to the standard set forth by IHSA. Okay. How do you program it? You know, what's like I imagine you have 20 hydrogen devices. How do you use them throughout the day? Uh yeah, I I I typically, you know, sometimes I I'll forget like I like I don't notice immediate benefits from the molecular hydrogen. Um I know some people do, but often like I'll be reviewing an article or looking at our results and I'm like, "Dang, this stuff is good. I'm gonna go get me some of this." you know, and and and I know some people they feel like they have to have it every morning cuz it notice it's a big difference for them, right? Um but for but for me, I don't notice it a whole bunch, but but I believe in our data. I think I think that the trends are really good. I know it's super safe and so I'm I'm I want to try that. So, I I typically try to drink hydrogen water throughout the day whenever I can. I try to do some inhalation um, you know, at 20 minutes at least to an hour, even longer. You know, like I said, some of the studies they do for 18 hours, right? Um, so I I don't there's any there's no downside. I don't think you're going to have a problem doing it for too long. And I think people can just try to what what kind of makes most sense to them. Maybe they try, you know, several like like like three or four different sessions of like 20 20 minutes to an hour every day just just to kind Yeah. Inhalation just to kind of see what might work the best for them. And we're trying to maybe somehow collect this data and so we can drive clinical research so we can really optimize what that dose is, right? We we'll get there. Especially with the development of this new machine, now we can really do more clinical research because before there just wasn't really an option to give a therapeutic precise nonflammable concentration of hydrogen and then and then in the in the evening I will do um hydrogen water and I often will just use the tablets because it has the magnesium. Most of us are deficient in magnesium and I'll just take that great for sleep and I'll I'll just, you know, so that's kind of my my regimen I often use. We talked about the mechanisms earlier, hydroxyl radical, peroxy nitrate. Like any concerns around exercise? Probably not, huh? I mean, I'm always thinking I'm always think is it enhance it? Yeah, in fact, it seems like I said earlier, hydrogen seems to be if anything an exercise mimetic. We can see hydrogen can increase superoxide production in one of the earlier studies with with hydrogen water in elite soccer players with helping to show it reduces fatigue. There's they also looked at uh DROMs um and marker of oxygen stress basically. And in the hydrogen water group, when you when you hone in on the data, look at the table closely, you'll actually see that there are that the levels in the hydrogen water group of the free radical production was slightly higher and in some case realistically statistical significance. We see the number of studies that hydrogen in sort of enhanced the effect and then it it goes back to baseline faster. Shows a faster recovery later on. And and there's some other studies showing like with hydrogen um compared to say vitamin C where vitamin C is basically able to blunt exercise induced PGC1 alpha mitochondrial biogenesis whereas hydrogen not only doesn't blunt it, it actually promotes more. So, we're working on another um study, a really big study is really excited about um where where we can look to see the effects of hydrogen water on exercise performance. But already there's 20 30 studies, you know, I've published maybe three, five studies or something on exercise performance. There's a systematic systematic review meta-analysis uh specifically on hydrogen water showing that yeah, it does appear from the data so far that hydrogen does help improve um endurance, you know, like uh reduces fatigue and so on. So uh, you know, again, it's not a miracle cure but again with hydrogen being so safe, it's something that I think we can do more research. Yeah, it's super safe. So so it's fine to drink before after during a workout. Yeah. I think most important thing is just consistency. Uhhuh. Yeah. The more the drinking it consistently is going to be the is going to be the most important and then probably doing a pre-workout. Um, because there might be some acute effects of hydrogen the way it affects like the sympathetics parasympathetic nervous activity. Um, just kind of a pre-treatment with modulating oxidative stress inflammation. Prepare for an oncoming assault of a bunch of free radicals that are being produced. Yeah. So I kind of like the idea of, you know, kind of a pre-treatment. Um, and hey, if you can do it again, then do the post treatment as well. Yeah. But but a daily regime of hygiene just like exercise. When is the best time to exercise? We can actually get into the nuances of when it might be the very best time of the day to exercise, but the most important thing is to exercise. Just do it. Yeah. Yeah. And so what about with hyperbarics? Because I'm getting into hyperbaric therapy. Again, it's probably only affecting the hydroxyl radical. If I were going to do a protocol with hyperbarics, should I think about before, after? Yeah, I would say even more so the pre-treatment. Pre-treatment. Yeah. More so just consistency. Same idea, taking it every day. But then yes, I would certainly do the hydrogen before. Or I would inhale hydrogen gas. Um, again, we need clinical studies, but this is just my opinion, right? I would do an inhalation session. I would drink hydrogen water and then I would before I would get into the chamber just because, you know, that hyperbaric oxygen, it's it's beneficial because it's toxic for you. It is a very hordic stressor. So, so the idea is that you're getting more benefits than negative effects. You're still getting negative effects and and your body is pretty good at like repairing cells and DNA damage or whatever, right? But but given this hyperbaric oxygen, it's unless you have a medical condition, it's not like your body needs more oxygen. You already have plenty of oxygen available for for for metabolism and you're not going to now be consuming more oxygen because you're in a hyperbaric oxygen condition. It's that oxygen is having effects on the cell membrane and all these other areas and right. So all the more reason all the more reason to be taking the molecular hydrogen pre-treat as a pre-treatment. What about a post treatment? I also think it's good. I just think that if you were to if I if I were to bet in general, I would say a pre-treatment would be more effective than a post-treatment. And the most effective would just be taking it consistently. Like if you would just take it for seven days and then and then the seventh day don't do any hydrogen, let's say, and you just do hyperbaric, that'll probably be more effective than just taking hydrogen right before you get it like just an acute dose. Uhhuh. So because hydrogen alters gene expression, it alters so many things. It prepares your body to handle the upcoming assault, the upcoming stress. Mhm. So doing doing even three or four days of hydrogen before you started a session of Oh, yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. No, that that's why it's hydrogen is something you should take like every day. It's just it's just a better it's a way of life. It's so interesting. I'm going to have to send this to to Brian Johnson. I mean, you know, they Yeah. I I It's funny because I was just I just I was just going to talk with him because I have another um content, but I'm thinking with him about him because we have a he and I have a lot of uh uh interesting connections and so I'd love to talk with him about this. I'm sure he would love it. Yeah. It's interesting. I mean, the internet's going to love the fact that I'm hanging out with him or at least talking to him. We we differ on some things and, you know, I called him out on his hormones previously, but whatever. But he he has a hyperbaric chamber in his garage and I was at a conference of his recently, you know, actually went admittedly to troll him. We did not end up trolling him, but um and, you know, he was on stage and and one of the guys on his team was like, "Yeah, I don't think there's anything to hide." And I'm thinking like, "I don't know. I think he's missing something there." you know, they they they were of the opinion at least in I think it was May or maybe March of this past year of this year, 2025. Um we're recording this in July. Um that that the hydrogen just got consumed in the stomach acid or something. But I mean all this data you're suggesting it's like clear. Yeah, that's yeah, that's why I wanted to it's fresh. I wanted to clarify the chemistry in the very first place because people assume that hydrogen and water has a reference to like pH or alkaline water or something and it's going to get neutralized by the stomach acid and that is a fundamental misunderstanding of chemistry and you you have a chemistry background. I so I don't I don't think consistent it's foggy but I but I I don't know that you fully understand the frustration of how many people I have spoken to who they just have this in their mind that hydrogen water is going to get you know neutralized by the stomach acid or something. I'm like dude if you increase the if we're we're not talking about the hydrogen ion right if we were talking about the hydrogen ion the hydrogen ion is what makes the pH acidic. So like in every way you think about it you're wrong. Yes. And and most of the criticism from mainstream scientists about hydrogen water has been fundamental misunderstandings about what hydrogen water is because they hear hydrogen water and they automatically assume water already has hydrogen in it. What a scam. Or hydrogen like the hydrogen ion. And we have, you know, there's there's some credible influencers so to speak on on on social media who have said negative things about hydrogen water. And I completely agree with everything they said except the fact that they fundamentally misunderstood what we're talking about. Therefore, it's a straw man fallacy completely. Right. Right. So the idea is that like pH is a logarithmic scale of the hydrogen ion, right? Not molecular hydrogen as you said at the beginning of the podcast. Completely different things. Fundamentally different chemicals. Fundamentally different things. You're not we're not drinking acid water. Oh my gosh. Exactly. They could the hydronium ion or something. Yeah. Yeah. And and and it's complicated. It's even more complicated because some marketing companies selling hydrogen water promote H40 water. Oh, there's no such thing as H4 water. That's like totally different chemical structure. Like you can't H40 would be like cuz you have hydronium which is H3O plus. So another another proton on that to make H4 H42 plus that would be like a super super duper acid, right? Like it just you can't do that. It's not H30, right? It's not H40. Then you have Oh, and then you have H302, which is like the the structured the fourth phase of water, the easy water. Okay. Are you familiar with this? I've seen some stuff about it. Yeah. You know, there there's this there's this idea from uh Professor Gerald Pollock um the University of Washington. He's published a number of papers um but but they're all like in his journal. um and and they're they're they're interesting, but they've also been from what I can see in the literature have been debunked over and over again and they fundamentally misunderstand some of the basic principles of water chemistry. Now, it has brought drawn a lot of attention to some very interesting things. For example, the fact that the water in our bodies is all structured or most of the water in our in our cells are structured, which means that it's not just this free floating bulk water that like you have a glass of water and you you know you see it floating around like that, but it's it's it's actually kind of part of the cellular constituents in our cells. So like like uh muscle is like 90% water, but you can't like take your steak and just like ring it out like a paper towel. It's never worked for me. Yeah, it doesn't it doesn't work. That's because the water has literally become part of that that meat. Yeah, it makes sense. I can ring out a paper towel. Right. Right. That's not structured water, but I can't ring out the water from a steak. Exactly. Cuz it's like inside gel. It's a gel. And that's what they call it. It's a gel-like substance. That's the fourth phase of water. All right. That that's where it comes from. But this is not a new concept. We've known this for a long time, right? But then they have this idea like this H302, a novel water structure. You you can't you can't do that. You have a thing called aquaporins and I I I I remember talking with professor P just um a little bit ago and he he he wasn't aware that we actually have the X-ray crystallography structure of the aquaporn they won the Peter Agar won the Nobel won the Nobel Prize in 1992 like actually we know what this looks like and the water molecule look looking like Mickey Mouse right oxygen and two hydrogens's right it it goes to the aquaporn in a in a linear single file way and it actually has to change its orientation as it goes through because it excludes the hydronium, the H3O molecule and the hydroxide OH, it'll actually exclude those molecules from entering. So only the water molecule with that specific bond angle of 104.45 degrees can enter. So if you had a different water structure or a different hydrogen bond angle, you you couldn't get the water into the cells. If you could actually structure water the way that they are saying, you would drink that and die. And in fact we know that even further because if you take heavy water dutyium water right which does have slightly slightly different structure of water the angles yeah it's just it's a little bit different and the hydrogen bond is a little bit stronger um all these are a little bit different and you were to change out all the water with duturium the heavy water you would die right and and so because it wouldn't move through the aquaporn it's it would have a difficult time probably just the connects would be so off. Biology is so incredible that there's an aquaporn channel and the X-ray crystallography and the exact thing that goes through this. What the heck, man? Such an amazing exclusion criteria. So now like now now you know tech engineers are trying to figure out how can we base you like a water filter like that's the best water filter. If we can exactly if we can just make something like that you can just run seawater right through there and you know it's an osmosis type process. Anyway, it's it's pretty amazing something. It's pretty incredible. I mean, you know, like I haven't really It's funny because the more I learn about biology, the harder it is for me to like not believe in something bigger. You know, we talked about divine molecules and stuff. It's like, wow, this is so incredible. Like, how did this happen? You know, like, I mean, who knows? You know, I am a three-dimensional being. Maybe I'm just don't have a brain big enough to comprehend how the universe did this with a big bang or maybe there is no God or whatever you want to call it and I'm not religious, but it's like it's so elegant and beautiful and interesting that it's like wow, there's something really cool there. I don't know. I don't know what that means other than maybe we should all just like be kind to each other and try to live good lives. I don't know if we'll meet anyone after we die or or what the life is about. But there's elegance and beauty in life that you kind of discover when you start peeling back the layers and you see this this incredibly beautiful chemistry, biology, molecular biology, you know, bond angles, you know, it's like I mean hydrogen is like this. It's a proton and electron. It's this simple. And then what is a proton? What is an electron? It's it's funny because you talk about how in life everything is based upon the flow of electrons. Yeah. And and actually in in chemistry the the two main reactions the two main chemistry is redox chemistry flow of electrons and acid base chemistry the transfer of protons or hydrogen ions. Thus the most fundamental chemistry is all about the hydrogen. Yeah, right flow of protons acid base hydrogen ion or redox chemistry right with the flow of electrons. It's really fascinating. Everything is built on that. And then you have uh when when so we talk about oxygen like everyone's talking about oxygen we need oxygen to live right but oxygen is slowly oxidizing us causing free radical damage then we have hydrogen which is like the opposite end of that yin and yang you know type concept and when the two react together you form water the lifegiving solvent so water is like the perfect redox balanced molecule one part oxygen two parts hydrogen we need hydrogen yeah it's pretty incredible man it's it's it's wild and thank you for talking about the structured water because I know people have questions about that. I mean, how long have you been drinking hydrogen water or doing I mean, I learned about it in 2009. Uhhuh. Have you been doing it since then? Pretty much. Yeah. I learned about alkaline ionized water. That's how I got into this. And and I remember learning about all the things that the company was selling and things. And I was like, I don't know. I I didn't have a a background in science. I was interested, but I didn't have a strong background. But I was like, if if if a fraction of this stuff is true, like I I I want I want to try this. Like I'm very into taking control of my health at a young age and everything, right? So when I but when I started the my university studies, I started asking my professors about alkaline ionized water and some of the claims I was hearing and primarily was about the benefits of alkaline water, right? And they're like, "Dude, no, that's that that you can't you cannot even if you believe in the idea of alkalizing your body, you can't do that with water because water is not a buffer, right? It can't resist changes in pH." And it's very simple chemistry. Just a just a tad bit of lemon juice or whatever will neutralize any alkaline water. So, there's not going to be benefits from there. And then then there's the structure of water. That was another big one. People talking about microclustered or structured water. And I mean there's so much data out there, strong data showing that there's no difference between structured water and unstructured water. When you really get into X-ray diffraction, light scattering, there is no difference. And and if there were a difference, we could see with simple chemistry experiments. And I did this. It's called the colligative properties of water where you you okay? So when you if you're cooking, for example, you can add salt to water. And the reason why is because that's going to increase the boiling point of water. It's called the boiling point elevation. Okay, now we're going back to the gen chem, right? So, so by adding salt to the water and you and it's so specific that you can actually determine the ionic concentration of the salt based upon the change of temperature, whether it's the increased boiling point or the suppression, the depression of the freezing point, right? Yep. Well, that's because you just add these ions and those ions just change the structure of the water a little bit like that and it's going to may have these drastic effects. Well, if you take the exact same water structured and unstructured structured, right, and unstructured, if they have the same mineral composition, there is no difference in the surface tension in the colligative properties of the boiling point or freezing point, you know, depression, elevation and so on. So anyway, this has been studied extensively and and I did this at the university as well because I I with this machine that I I had to to really investigate everything and that's when I came across well there there is this OP this oxidation reduction potential of this this negative ORP of the water what's causing that and that's through the research I found hydrogen gas is also being produced when you do electrolysis and then I found hydrogen gas is also therapeutic and I'm like okay and that's kind of What really transitioned everything into focusing my research on molecular hydrogen. So wild. When I was like in the fifth grade or maybe fourth grade, I did a research project about the freezing temperature of water with salt in the fridge. And oh, cool. I remember, you know, when I lived at high elevations in the mountains, we would add salt to the water because, you know, at high elevation, water boils at a lower temperature, I guess. And so if you can raise the boiling point of water by adding salt to the water because spaghetti doesn't cook as well at high elevation, you know, because the water is boiling at a lower temperature because there's less pressure. And it's such interesting chemistry. So you add the water and I guess maybe that's the reason to add salt to the water even at, you know, even at sea level is that something about spaghetti which I'm not a huge fan of unless you're in Europe. That's a whole separate conversation. You know um, you know, something about the the the temperature at which you boil the spaghetti affects the quality of the spaghetti. And I'll do another podcast guys on gluten in Europe and all this stuff. I don't eat gluten in case anybody's wondering but I've done stuff on sourdough. But it's interesting stuff like the way that this affects it. But it's like you're saying if you look at this, there are no there's no difference in the colligative properties of water for a structured water versus regular alkaline water structured water, there's nothing there guys, there's nothing there. We we we published an extensive comprehensive review article so on this on this topic of alkaline ionized water specifically which is claimed to be, you know, structured water, microclustered water, all these things and and we'll have to put it in the show notes but it's it's it's we basically go through every article including some some of our own that we published but a bunch of other articles from other researchers that have all demonstrated that when you remove the concentration when you remove the hydrogen gas from the water all the benefits are eliminated. Right? So only the hydrogen gas in the water is is the reason for therapeutic. And people who who sell and promote and do this the this business they also all know this intuitively because they all say drink the water fresh. Why is that? Because the gas goes out, it doesn't last right. They also say make sure you clean your machines frequently. Why? Because if you don't clean your machines frequently, then hydrogen gas is produced but does not get dissolved in the water. And we measured this. After a few weeks, those machines will have calcium depositions on the plates and there's no more hydrogen gas dissolved in the water. So, it's no longer therapeutic. And and that actually is amazing because that actually increases in my mind the credibility of the research in general because I have heard before I even knew about all this area of hydrogen. I heard so many so many of these companies and these major like distributors who were like sharing water like, you know, thousands of gallons, you know, all the time and and and so many reports people saying I I um was drinking the water. I got all these benefits when I first got a machine and then I kind of stopped getting the benefits. But then my neighbor got a machine and I tried their water and I get all these benefits. Well, now we know why. It's because they had a clean machine, they got hydrogen water, you stopped getting hydrogen water. As soon as they clean the machine, they got those benefits again. Got to know it's all about the molecular hydrogen. Well, let's put those articles. And there are it also goes through some potential concerns about drinking very high pH alkaline ionized water as well. um, because it it there there's some issues potentially with the microbiome, with um potassium levels and other things that have been found in the research. Yeah, I I've never been attracted to alkaline water. I mean, it's got to be multiple hundreds of millions of dollars of industry smart these like alkaline water things, but it's there we go. We just killed it, you know? We just killed the alkaline water industry, guys. Sorry. But during it, don't waste your money on that. But do look into hydrogen. I think it's worth your time. It it is interesting because because they had all this all this testimonials and data coming out that alkaline ionized water was beneficial in the late 199 1990s but there was no mechanism. So if you look at the actual publications they're like, we don't really know why. They're trying to figure out why it was. And that's why the marketers started promoting things like well the alkaline pH but the the research never said that. In fact the research would actually use the water and then neutralize the pH before doing cell culture research. So, how could it be the alkaline pH? Oh my god. So, now we know now now we finally know it is the hydrogen water. And we have better ways to make water that's richer in hydrogen. Yeah. We now we can focus and optimize on the molecular hydrogen instead of some enigmatic, you know, property that we can't even measure. Exactly. Okay. I got to ask you this one thing before we go. How old are you? 38. You look younger than 38, man. Have you ever done any of these aging things? I Yeah, I did do I did a couple of them and they all show about the same thing. I guess it's I don't know. You don't I don't know if I trust any of them, you know, but but you know, I'm like, you know, mid-20s or something. I mean, there's there's hydrogen right there. And for both heart and soil and lineage, we're going to be infusing these with hydrogen that's never do it. But I just think it's interesting. There's so much attention now to like aging and longevity. I just have to point that out that I mean, it's just correlation. Who knows? But you've been drinking hydrogen for years and you're healthy, so thanks for living it. Yeah. I just I I I train, exercise for about three hours every day. And uh what do you do? Well, I I'm I'm I'm a wannabe athlete sort of, you know, in what? Well, so I do a couple things. So, I do these uh I use I I do compete kind of compete in like these, you know, local races like 5K, half marathon, marathon stuff, you know. Um, so, I'm I I I try to, you know, win the local races on those, right? Um, and then I'm also competing and my new one is called Towerthons. I don't even know what this is. You run the top of skyscrapers. Oh, that's cool. In the stairwells. Yeah, the stairwells. Yeah, exactly. So, um, yeah, I I I actually looked at my time um my last competition and I compared to the number one in the USA and like seconds, you know, over close. Yeah. What? So, I'm like, "Okay, this is this is my thing." I I ran there was a stair race where I live um in uh St. George in Utah. And anyway, I took I took first on on this stair race. Wow. Against elite level runners, what I consider elite. I mean, these are guys who are, you know, like Olympic qualifying times, you know, for You beat all? Yeah, I beat them all. Wow. Now, the thing of the stairwell, I've seen this, like back in my vegan days, which was like 15 years ago, one of the guys I used to follow was into these things. Like you you're like running past people in the stairwell or or do you or is it just timing? That's one person at a time. It's both. So, so they start you off like a 30 secondond bout. So, you have your bib number, right? And then you try to catch the guy in front of you. That's that's kind of the idea. You try to catch the guy in front of you, but but it's hard to do that, right? But then the stairwell is long wide enough that you can get around. But you you can also hold on to the stairwell. So you kind of help yourself up. So it's kind of another technique that I'm I'm I'm learning to do. And it's good cuz the other sport that I do is I'm I'm I'm a wannabe arm wrestler. Oh wow. Okay. So So I've competed in a number of competitions in that and when you So there's some correlation here cuz when you're arm wrestling you want to, you know, pull into you. So you think like grabbing the hander and I'm kind of pulling myself in. And I'll be posting actually some of my training videos and things on my social media. So people who want to like learn cuz my background is exercise physiology as well. So kind of I'm thinking about maybe doing some education about, you know, what I do for my health and fitness in in these ways of what how I train to and what's your diet like? Um, so that's funny have the conversation with you um where you're at. Are you plant-based? No. Well I I don't know I don't know if I like the term plant-based. Um, but but I I I I I I just try to eat healthy and clean, which I know everybody says, but I want to make sure I get like a gram of protein per pound of body weight, okay? Right. And I want to get that from primarily clean foods, right? I want to get good meats. Um, I I like to have like good fish, for example, try to like, you know, low mercury levels or something when I can do that because I do a lot of high intensity cardio, you know, endurance wise. I I absolutely love my carbohydrates. Um, if if I were not trying to be elite level, then it's not so important or whatever. Um, when you look at the research and things, but for me, like I want to get my carbohydrates. So, I just really focus on proteins and getting my essential fats right and and getting high enough there and then the rest is like carbs. How many carbohydrates eat a day? Oh, I don't know. I haven't done the math on that. Um, because because if if I if I'm aiming for around, you know, 150 to 200 grams of protein a day, so this is pretty high at the protein. And then my fat is going to be around 25% I'm guessing on my calories. That's actually kind of low, but okay. Yeah, probably depends 20. It depends on what how I'm getting my protein, right? Cuz some it's going to be, you know, up to 40% or so. So I haven't done the whole macronutrias. I just I I really feel pretty in tune with my body like what I kind of need. Like sometimes I feel like no, I don't need any any carbs cuz all my cardio is fasted also. Like I'm 14 16 hour fasted by the time I'm, you know, doing my cardio session as well, you know, and so but but I want to but as soon as I'm done with my cardio, I I eat my breakfast and I have, you know, 50 grams of protein and I have a bunch of carbohydrates cuz I have my training my weight training session later that afternoon. So I got to be fully recovered, get my glycogen, you know, replenished a bit so I can hit it hard in the gym later on. Right. Right. Right. So, you're doing aerobic and weight training every day. Every day. Wow. Yeah. 7 days a week. Wow. You don't take days off? Well, I'm traveling. When I'm on the plane, it's built in. Yeah, it's built in. Yeah. Wow. Do you do hyperbarics? Um, no. I I don't. And and and just And it's not that I I just I don't have a lot of opportunities to do it and I still have questions. Sure. You know, about about it in general. Um, but I'm not opposed to trying it and things. And I mean, you're so intentional with these other things you're doing. Uh, this is, you know, we we tried to end the podcast and now we can't end it. Um, we'll have to cut this into the front of the podcast before we did the outro, but like what else are you doing in terms of biohacking or other things people might not know about in terms of in addition to hydrogen? Anything else you're doing that's like interesting for people in terms of your protocols? Um, I I I try to be somewhat conservative in a lot of things I do because I feel like there are so many mechanisms that we can think of of why something's going to be helpful for you. Just like we talked about with the cold plunge, we can think all day why that's good for you, but it ends up not being so great for recovery and stuff, right? And the same thing with supplements and anti-inflammatories and antioxidants, right? So, there are some important supplements that I think are important, right? So, like vitamin D, I want to make sure I have good levels of that. Magnesium, um, some, uh, omega-3s for example. So, so that I I I make sure I have supplementation in in those areas or I'm having a good diet or whatever, right? And then I think the most important thing is sleep. Really optimize my sleep the best that I can. Um, you know, putting like turning the red lights on like at at night time so that when I'm ready to hit the bed, I mean, I fall asleep immediately, right? And then getting up at the exact same time. Even if I go to bed at 3:00 in the morning, I still get up, you know, at 6:00, 6:30 or something because How often do you go to bed at 3:00 in the morning? Um, sometimes I have work to do or things. Yeah. But but I I I don't like it. I mean, I've stayed up for, you know, 50 hours before. Um, you know, just just working and doing things, you know, when I was at the university. Oh, man. I had some some serious times. You know, it's horrible. I mean, you you know, you went through med school. You know, you know how it is. Yeah. Yeah. I if if I can avoid doing that, I would rather be in the bed for 8 hours a day. Um, and get at least 6 to 7 hours of sleep is kind of what I want to do. Um, I got to recover. I I train hard, you know, so I have to do that. Get up and then I want to be hitting my high intensity exercise within, you know, 30 to 45 minutes after I waking up first thing. Okay. And and then I have a high cortisol spike. Um, and man, I am I am ready to go. Like I I I don't have any coffee or anything like that. I just I I don't need it and I'm I'm on point and I'm ready to hit my my hard workouts very quickly after your first as soon as I'm done like with my cardio session. Yeah. I want to eat and I want to replenish my like I said my glycogen. Your protein synthesis is seems to be somewhat higher in the morning as well. and I just barely had like a 14 hour fast and so I want to get my muscles and everything going and so get that in there and then for lunch, you know, just whatever I need to have and I try to get more greens and things and then I have a a pretty big dinner. Most my calories are actually in the dinner. Okay. Um, just just, you know, my lifestyle and what what tends to work well for me. Cool. Um, but then but my but my weight training, you know, and I I train anywhere from 1 to two hours um weight training but but it's not like all out like you know like circuit training like it's, you know, I'm I'm I'm a strength athlete, you know, so I I like to compete and so I'm doing a set then I'll rest for like 3 to five minutes between, you know, and I'm and I'm sometimes I'm I'm reading or I'm working on I'm doing things like zoom papers no for sure like I mean I I've worked out for six hours before like I'll just go into the gym and I'll just like do my work and like well get another set, you know? I mean, it's it's it's just fun. I just I love working out. I love competing and I love Good to move. Yeah, it does. Thank you so much, man. What a cool conversation. I appreciate all of your input, all the conversations we've had previous to this. Where can people find more about you and your work and follow your stuff? Yeah, absolutely. So, molecular hydrogen institute.org. Okay. We're a science-based nonprofit focused on advancing the research, education, and awareness of hydrogen as a medical gas. So, there's no product promotion, endorsement, or affiliation or anything. It's just research, education. People can actually get certified through our MHI courses. So they can learn the basic chemistry like this redox chemistry we talked about. We have people who are 8 to 80 years old get certified do this and people just absolutely love it. So I would encourage people to to do that and that's that's that's how we're um, you know, kind of funding our our research and some of the things that we're doing. And then um, of course, there's then there's inhale.com that is the company that I I consulted with that I'm I'm going to be um, you know, the scientific officer of this company as well. So, it's really exciting for me. So, you can learn there and then check out for social media with the institute is just H2 MHI on on Instagram. Um, and then my is Tyler W. Leberon. Um, and yeah, check check me out. I'll post, you know, post stuff about research and some of the other extracurricular activities that that I'm involved in and stuff and love to connect with people and help spread spread the word about this research. Yeah, thanks for doing this work, man. It's really cool. But it's molecular hydrogen institute all spelled out for the first one. Cool. Thanks, man. Thank you. Thanks for coming on. Yeah, my pleasure.