The Truth About Hydrogen Part 1
Hello everyone and welcome back to the Hydrogen Therapy Podcast, Now that you understand the fundamentals of redox homeostasis, let’s explore how molecular hydrogen acts as a preventative and restorative antioxidant therapeutic. This series covers the origins, science, distortions and the future of hydrogen therapy. To really understand where we are today, we have to go back to the turn of the 20th century. This was the era of eating from tin cans during war and economic hard times. As people swapped fresh fruit and vegetables for processed ‘canned foods, health practitioners sounded the alarm. They blamed an “acidic diet” for the rise in inflammatory diseases and cancer, giving birth to the alkaline water theory.
Now, if that theory was actually true, nearly 70% of Americans would have cancer by age thirty given our modern diet is still lacking enough antioxidant fruits and vegetables. But our bodies are actually quite good at handling acidity. The real culprit isn’t the pH of our food; it’s the lack of antioxidants and today we know that we make hydrogen gas from digesting fruit and vegetable fiber. While the alkaline theory never quite became a mainstream scientific supported fact, it exploded in 1930s Japan, eventually leading to the Multi-Level-Marketing brand of water ionizer called Kangen –that still thrives today as a billion dollar business worldwide.
But here is where the story takes a fascinating turn and we actually owe a debt of gratitude to the pseudoscience of alkaline water. In 2005, a pioneer in mitochondrial health named Dr. Shigeo Ohta started wondering why these water ionizers actually seemed to reduce inflammation, even though he suspected it had nothing to do with alkalinity.
By 2007, he published his findings in the journal Nature Medicine that changed everything. He discovered that the real “magic” in those electrolysis machines was a tiny byproduct of dissolved molecular hydrogen gas. It wasn’t the high pH or some mysterious “micro-clustering” doing the work—it was just the hydrogen. However, Dr. Ohta stipulated that hydrogen isn’t a “super antioxidant” that just mops up every free radical in its path like vitamin C. In reality, hydrogen is a selective signaling molecule that triggers your body’s own defense systems, like the N R F 2 pathway, and boosts your natural glutathione levels.
To be clear electrolysis pH devices only demonstrated minimal inflammation reduction benefits in extreme cases and its promoters always relied on unverified testimony to sell devices. Superior cellular hydration is the only common benefit true to both machine technologies, but hydrogen machines do not raise the pH. It is true that we are 70% water but cellular water is actually in a plasma state our bodies make from hydrogen and oxygen. But any claim that drinking hydrogen water is equal in antioxidant benefits to eating a basket of fruit is false and unsubstantiated by science.
Unfortunately, as the science became clearer, the marketing got dirtier. Multi-level marketing companies and Chinese imitators essentially hijacked the research for their own benefit when the news came out that alkalinity was an unsubstantiated myth. M L M simply pivoted and started calling their old machines “hydrogen water makers.” But there’s a problem: those old machines are built to raise pH, not to create therapeutic levels of hydrogen. In fact, drinking that high-pH water can actually unbalance your digestion by neutralizing the stomach acid you need to absorb nutrients and kill pathogens.
This has left consumers in a tug-of-war between expensive M L M sellers, cheap Chinese knockoffs on Amazon, and social media influencers steering people into expensive products to earn huge commissions. Overnight experts have left most people with an expensive device that produces negligible benefits and breaks within weeks. It’s why so many people give up on hydrogen therapy after trying it—they were sold unachievable expectations. Others didn’t know what to expect because they didn’t really understand the science beyond all the marketing hype.
The legit science backed companies have been damaged by frenzied sellers that use exaggerated marketing tactics and are taught how to sell ice cubes to Eskimos, but I don’t want you to throw the baby out with the bathwater yet because we’re in the early stages of a genuine health revolution that you should feel fortunate enough to know about. You just have to look past the slick coupon codes and the “alkaline” scam and learn the facts that empower you with the right protocol based on the science of dose and frequency to get the benefits you want. We don’t know what the future will bring in technology advances. There are several companies now trying to produce a higher concentration in counter top devices but have not been able to prevent valve failures or risk of blowing up from excess pressure. Currently any counter top or pitcher style units are also not any better than smaller hydrogen water makers.
We’re going to dedicate this series to breaking down the truth about hydrogen therapy so you don’t have to spend weeks doing your own comparative analysis of products that you are not qualified to do. Let’s start with a few tips to avoid being scammed. We will explain all the traps they lay out to trip and confuse you.
Let’s start with a few tips to avoid being scammed. The market is flooded with everything from $2,000 M L M machines to $20 to $200 Chinese knockoffs on Amazon. To protect yourself, look for the word “alkaline” used in branding or marketing that tells you they are promoting outdated concepts and technology. That should be your first red flag.
Avoid affiliate or M L M marketing schemes where they focus on recruiting you to sell instead of making a quality product. In particular avoid M L M brands called Kangen and Echo, these are the worst. Prices are higher to pay commissions and quality is always poor and unqualified.
Poor quality customer service and product knowledge or warranty and refund policies are major red flags.
Lack of Hydrogen chromatography certification by H2 Analytics for hydrogen concentration verification is reason to not buy their water makers.
Make sure you can speak to a knowledgeable trained person that can interpret the science at your level and customize a therapeutic protocol based on your health, age and lifestyle. This can be the most challenging if you don’t know the right questions to ask.
We all like the convenience of Amazon but it is very difficult to qualify a seller or product with thousands of fake reviews bought from China, who also give competitors fake bad reviews too. Amazon can’t keep up, so we recommend getting a seller or brand name and google it to see if they have a website to call and qualify them. We sold thousands of water makers on Amazon and the vast majority of buyers never visited our website to learn anything. We believe most of those people stopped using the water maker within months as just another health novelty experiment they weren’t fully committed to learn about and were expecting some miracle effect. This impulsiveness means people are willing to buy health products based on what the seller says in the marketing text.
At the end of the day, hydrogen like any other therapeutic is dose and frequency dependent. If you don’t get enough of it, you won’t see the benefits and unfortunately hydrogen water makers produce the lowest dose with benefits limited to hydration and gut bacteria support. That’s why we recommend customers feel the hormetic benefits first by using Rejuvenation tablets before thinking about any device. They only get expensive if you are sick and need much more than a maintenance routine of just a few times a week for an average healthy person.
Stay with us as we grow with the science now that we are beginning to come out of the M L M dominance, and in the next episode, we’ll get more into the science and therapeutic benefits to expect from each method. You are always welcome to call before buying or using our products to guide you in dose and frequency based on your health, lifestyle and age because everyone is a little different.
Feel free to comment or ask us a question here as well as visit our website at H2WaterForLife.com to see our complete line of antioxidant and oxidant therapy products. Thanks again and don’t forget to like, subscribe and share this with others.
