Transcript:
Dr Mercola:
I'll bet you'd like to know what I believe is the most exciting and profoundly effective antioxidant. Hi. This is Dr Mercola helping you take control of your health. And today I am joined by Tyler W. LeBaron. The W is important because there's a number of other Tyler Lebarons out there, and he is literally a world class expert in molecular hydrogen. And, he did his initial training out in Nagoya University. He did his internship out there, and spent a lot of time in Japan where most of all this research is being done. And, the reason why you probably haven't heard of it is because it's relatively new. Most of the landmark papers only came out 10 years ago, most of the science is in Japanese. So it's relatively new, but you are going to be fascinated with the information that Tyler has to share today. So welcome. And thank you for joining us.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Thank you for having me. I'm glad to share the research of molecular hydrogen.
Dr Mercola:
Yes. And now, what I neglected to mention is that you're also associated with the Molecular Hydrogen Foundation Institute.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Yes. So we're a science based nonprofit. We don't sell or represent products, but our mission, our focus is to advance the research and the education and the awareness of hydrogen as a therapeutic medical gas. That's that's what we need. That's what we're interested. That's what we do at our organization.
Dr Mercola:
And what is your position there?
Tyler W. Lebaron:
I'm the executive director. I'm also a director of several other nonprofit organizations, such as the International Hydrogen Standards Association, where, we're working to actually create the standards for the ISO criteria for measurement of hydrogen gas. It's even in all of the scientific research for marine biology or other areas for measuring. Hydrogen has actually no official standards. So we're looking to make the actual standards as well as those for hydrogen products so the consumers can know what could be considered a therapeutic type product or not. Also, I'm a director for the International Molecular Hydrogen Association and I'm also involved with the International Society of Medical Hydrogen Research in biology.
Dr Mercola:
All right, so you're at the leading forefront of all these organizations, but let's get into the depths now and explain what hydrogen is. Before we start that, we might explain what it's not, because there's a lot of confusion about hydrogen with respect to it being hydrogen ions or PH. So let's clear up that first and then we'll expand on the hydrogen and what its benefits are.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Yeah, absolutely. So first, when we talk about molecular hydrogen, it's just diatomic hydrogen, h2 gas. Two hydrogen atoms combined. The smallest molecule in the universe, smaller than oxygen. So that's why it's so bioavailable. It's very small. It's neutral, so it's not an ion. It has nothing to do with pH. For example, it will not change the pH of water, the pH of your bodies. Nothing to do with the claimed alkaline concept, if you will. So, it's just hydrogen gas. It's three times more energy dense than gasoline. That's why it's being looked at as an alternative energy source of fuel. It's what powers the sun and infusion in producing helium. This is the hydrogen we're talking about, and we're seeing it can also be therapeutically effective whether you inhale it, dissolve in water and drink it, or other methods of its application.
Dr Mercola:
Okay, so how did you first become aware of this, and start your journey on becoming a world class expert in this area?
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Well, with the hydrogen gas, it was in 2009. I came across an article published in Nature Medicine. And this was significant because nature medicine is one of the more reputable, prestigious scientific journals. And this article showed that hydrogen was effective at preventing brain damage from ischemia and reperfusion induced by medial cerebral artery occlusion in an animal model. So basically, they just cut the blood supply to the brain and that caused brain damage. But inhalation of only 2% hydrogen gas, which is below the flammability level, was effective at suppressing the brain damage and had great effects in the model. And so when I came across this article, I thought, you know, this is really interesting, and it wasn't that long ago. I wasn't an expert and I'm not an expert by any means, I've got so much more to learn, but I did have a strong understanding of biochemistry. There was something that hit me when I read that article, that I needed to look into this, this is kind of my future, this is what I needed to do. And I took it from there, and was able to read all the research, all the literature, and continue advancing in this area. Then later, as you mentioned, go to Japan. And now, I'm I'm able to work with and collaborate with svome of the top researchers around the world in this. So I feel very fortunate to to be involved in this emerging area of hydrogen gas.
Dr Mercola:
What sparked your interest in that? Because, wait, did you have a degree in chemistry at the time?
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Yeah, well, I was I was actually getting my degree in biochemistry at the time, but I've always been interested in health in wellness and exercise performance. All of these things my whole life, I've always loved that, and then I came across this. Something that's safe, something that's natural, something it's easy to use and could be rather scientific. So it fit every category that have interest in since a very young age. I mean, we're talking elementary school when I started reading or looking into this kind of stuff just out of curiosity. So it hit on all cylinders. This small molecule is a very big molecule in my life.
Dr Mercola:
Indeed, and you mentioned you're passionate about health and exercise as I certainly was, and continue to be. But, you know, you are a shining example of applying this information and getting pretty significant benefits, and you're kind of modest. I'm just going to say right now that you may not look like it. I mean, you look healthy, but you may not be aware of Tyler's capacity as an athlete and that you've run a 2:30 marathon, which would, in years past qualify for the Olympic trials. But your new goal is to actually run a 2:20 which will qualify for the Empress trials now, right?
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Yeah. Well 2:18. And, it's just something. You know that that's a lot of time to cut off, 10 minutes. I mean, I ran a 5:45 average mile pace and, trying to cut off another 30 seconds per mile, it may be quite difficult, but it's fun to have goals to shoot for.
Dr Mercola:
Not only that, because there's a lot of people that run that fast in a marathon. But to balance it out with strength training, which I was a long distance endurance athlete for 40 years, and I regret that because mostly because it didn't integrate strength training. You're doing strength training. What have you dead lifted? Which, is probably one of the premier strength training tests.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Well, I mean, on the straight bar, 420 has been my max a little bit more on the hex bar? Uh, so, hex bars are a little bit easier.
Dr Mercola:
I prefer the hex bar.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
For me, it's a little easier too, I have really long legs and a short torso, so I can get under there a little bit better. But in competition, you have to use a straight bar. So I try to focus more on the strait bar.
Dr Mercola:
Sorry for little tangent there, Tyler is an athletic stud, you know, and part of his reason for pursuing this area was his interest in athletics. Before we go into the application that's there, because there is profound applications.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
I'm excited to talk about that.
Dr Mercola:
Yeah. I want to go into the mechanism of how it works. Sure, because essentially, it lowers oxidative stress, which is really one of, along with inflammation, and inflammation causes oxidative stress and vice versa. So, those are two of the most fundamental mechanisms for destroying human health, right?
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Yeah.
Dr Mercola:
So that's why this is so exciting is that this molecular hydrogen is probably the best antioxidant out there for a variety of reasons. And this is not hyperbole. You will come to the conclusion after we show information that you'll reach a similar similar conclusion. I think so. Um, why don't we talk about the mechanism? There's some confusion, you would think that the hydrogen gas essentially knocks off, or is able to neutralize, hydroxyl free radicals, which is probably the most problematic, worst free radical that you could have. It causes the most oxidative damage, but it doesn't appear to work that way. So why don't you get us up to speed as to what the current thinking is and the mechanism.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Well, and I appreciate that you talked about the inflammation and oxidative stress as the underlying cause to virtually every disease, and I'm going to get your question. But this is an important thing to consider because it is almost a skeptical sign, if you will, when we look at a molecule like hydrogen that has such a wide, diverse effects in so many different diseases. So far, the research is still in its infancy, we don't have decades of clinical studies for hundreds of papers.
Dr Mercola:
And then landmark paper that you read in 2009 was actually published in 2007.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Yeah, 10 years ago. Exactly. Right. So this is this is still quite new. There's over 1000 publications on a molecular hydrogen, and they're suggesting that hydrogen has a therapeutic potential in over 170 different human and animal diseases. And the reason why could be so many different diseases because most drugs it's like one disease, one organ, one target. Hydrogen, many organs, many targets. In fact, hydrogen has been shown to be effective, in essentially every organ of the human body which will talk about and the reason why is because it really helps to mitigate the area of oxidative stress and inflammation. Okay, how is it mitigating oxidative stress? And you're right, this hydroxyl free radical, it is one of the most cytotoxic radicals. And I think in order to understand how hydrogen works, we need to understand a little bit how free radicals work and why they're produced anyways. First off, the hydroxyl free radical, which is O H neutral with a lone paired electron. It's produced in the body through, say, the Fenton reaction we have when you have different free radicals that get too high, like superoxide radicals or high levels of peroxynitrite, that could be converted into hydroxyl radicals. Ionizing radiation these cannot be converted to hydroxyl radicals, and they're so damaging because they're so reactive wherever they're produced, a meeting immediately react with --
Dr Mercola:
Let me just interject here because most anyone wouldn't dispute the damage of ionizing radiation. But, the commonly held belief is that most of the damage occurs because the high energy in those bonds and ionizing radiation to actually break the DNA and covalent bonds, but actually, it's the production of oxidative stress. It probably causes more DNA double and single strand breaks than the actual ionizing radiation themselves.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Yeah, that may be because now you have about propagation cascades, right? And now you have really serious problems. And when you look at the other free radicals, nitric oxide, that's a very important free radical - vasodilation, right? We don't want to neutralize that. We have superoxide radicals. We have other oxidants, like hydrogen peroxide. These are all very important. Of course, too much is bad. But having them having them in the right concentration, the right locations is very good for you. So we don't want to just neutralize all of those, whereas, like hydroxyl radicals, yeah, we don't want any of them. Or peroxynitrite oxidants. We don't want any of that. And that Nature Medicine publication in 2007 specifically showed that hydrogen could act, notice that word, could act, as a therapeutic antioxidant by selectively reducing the cytotoxic oxygen radical specifically the hydroxyl free radical and to a lesser extent, peroxynitrite without decreasing the other oxidants like hydrogen peroxide or superoxide. Okay, so in that sense, it is selective. But how does it actually do that?
Dr Mercola:
And that's the key word, selective. If you have a key word here, it is selective and that that differentiates it from essentially every other antioxidant.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Exactly. Most other antioxidants, they're not selective. They're just say, hey, I have an electron, take it and now it's gonna neutralize that. And that could be problematic. And, I think potentially when we look at some of the clinical trials on antioxidant supplementation in general, we could have a lot of conjecture of, you know, well, that was maybe a synthetic or this was that or whatever. But the fact is, these air still antioxidants in the conventional sense. They took high levels of them and they had to stop the clinical studies because the people taking the antioxidants we're dying, getting cancer, lung cancer, or prostate cancer, cardiovascular disease, faster than those on placebo. And you see the same thing with sports athletes that athletes taking antioxidants high levels chronically, they negates the benefits of exercise training, but potentially because the antioxidants are neutralizing these beneficial signalling molecules that our body needs. So, hydrogen is selective, and that it's only going to decrease and reduce those toxic radicals like the hydroxyl. How does it do it? Is it really that hydrogen gas is directly reacting with the hydroxyl radical, scavenging it and producing water? It's possible it happens. I suppose it can't happen at least in vitro, because the reaction is, is favorable. If you look at it, calculate, it gives free energy, for example. But there's a lot of other competition with a lot of other antioxidants and the rate constance are quite low. Probably the direct scavenging, does not account for the therapeutic actions of hydrogen. So there's two definitions of an antioxidant I'm gonna give you.
Dr Mercola:
So this is actually what you just stayed is actually sort of contradicts with the earlier beliefs were. People early in the field thought that that was the mechanism.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Well, it's interesting. Maybe that is that maybe more what people interpreted. But if you look at the paper, hydrogen acts as a therapeutic antioxidant. It doesn't say it is. It says it acts one. Right? And also the definition antioxidant. One of them, on the conventional chemistry side, could be, a molecule that donates itself to a radical reaction inducing the termination step, donated an electron sacrificing itself for giving an electron. Then on the other side, there is simply a molecule that improves the Redox status of the cell.
Dr Mercola:
Okay, so explain Redox status because many people want to know what that is.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
So redox as in, oxidation reduction. There's a balance right, homeostasis. You have to have so much oxidation in the body and so much reduction. There's a balance between the two and life is balanced just like a battery. Have a negative and you have a positive. You can't have just a negative electrode or positive electrode, and the body is the same. The cells of the same. You have to have an oxidation and reduction. That's how everything works. Cell communication, everything. When that balance gets perturbed either too much oxidation, you have oxidative stress. If you have not enough, you have other serious problems. If you don't have enough oxidative power, for example, in your into endoplasmic reticulum, which folds to proteins, you have misfolded proteins, which leads to lots of disease and ageing. Ageing and disease is really associated with a dysregulation, a Redox dysregulation. It's not so much an excessive amount of free radicals, but a redox dysregulation, that's the real issue with aging and diseases.
Dr Mercola:
That's a profound concept that really most people haven't been exposed to.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
That's not it's not oh free radicals. No, we need free radicals. And studies have shown you can actually suffer from too much oxidative stress and too much reductive stress or not enough oxidative potential, not only in the same body or the same organ, but in the exact same cell! Right? Too much oxidative stress in the cytocell, not enough oxidative power in the endoplasmic reticulum. Hydrogen helps to bring everything back to homeostasis. And so, going back to how hydrogen works, what we see in cell studies, in animal studies, in plant studies in human studies, all of these studies, hydrogen does indeed exert an antioxidant like effect. It acts as this antioxidant to improve the Redox status of the cell. We see this through markers of MDA, malondialdehyde, OHdG which is a marker of DNA damage. We see improvements in superoxide dismutase, glutathione levels. I could just go on down the list of what we see in clinical studies and other animal studies showing that indeed, hydrogen does improve the Redox status of the cell when it is needed. How does it do it? It's not done through this conventional radical scavenging activity. It does it through acting like an antioxidant, and does so by selectively reducing just the cytotoxic radicals, again, probably not directly reacting because of the competition with so many other nucleophilic endogenous, electron donors right in the cell. So, how does it do this? Well, maybe it's helping to prevent some of the free radical from being produced. For example, in one animal study, they took these mice and they chronically restrained them and in the container so that it would induce cognitive impairments, Alzheimer's disease, basically and they did a genetic knockout for vitamin C depletion. So, almost all mammals produce vitamin C except humans, right? I think guinea pigs, and I think bats also, but they did a genetic knock out so you could suffer from oxidative stress. And if they found that the drinking of hydrogen rich water was very effective at preventing the development of atherosclerosis, but also in the production of superoxide in the hippocampus of the brain. And so when we see other studies with, like, an allergic type reaction that hydrogen down regulates an ox system, NaDPH oxidase, which is, a complex that produces free radicals like superoxide radicals. And when they get hyper activated and chronically stimulated, we have high levels of free radicals and subsequent inflammation that is very damaging to the cell and cause cell death, apoptosis. Hydrogen is actually able to down regulate this energy pH oxidate system in other ways, to actually prevent these excessive free radicals from being produced in the first place. So that's one way. It's a prevention right? It's the best way. So, that's one of the ways hydrogen can help mitigate and improve the redox status in the cell and act as this antioxidant right? Another way, is if you're familiar with the NF2 pathway; this is a transcription factor that, when it's activated, it goes into the nucleus and binds to the DNA. And when it binds to the antioxidant response element (ARE) it then induces the transcription of further cytoprotective enzymes. Your glutathione, superoxide dismutase catalase, glutathione peroxidase, phase II enzymes, heme oxygenase-1. There's many, many cytoprotective enzymes, and hydrogen can somehow also activate the NRF2 pathway. A few years ago in metabolic syndrome, they found that the subject's drinking hydrogen rich water had about a 43% increase in extracellular superoxide dismutase. So yes, hydrogen does have this antioxidant like effect because it can help regulate the NRF2 pathway and bring these levels of these enzymes and these cytoprotective proteins back to the levels they're supposed to be. Back into that realm of homeostasis, and we see this through many clinical studies. And that's another way that hydrogen gas can exert its antioxidant like effect. It's more this cell modulation type action, but again as a direct radical scavenger? Probably not so much, sure maybe it can happen.
Dr Mercola:
So can you relate how effective hydrogen is at stimulating the NRF2 pathway relative to some of the other nutrients and phytonutrients, that are known like, glucoraphanin or sulforaphane and a whole variety of others. It's a really important pathway and probably one of the most important ones because it just produces the antioxidants when you need them, it's hermetically controlled, so it's not like a surge of antioxidants.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Yeah, absolutely. And I It would be nice to be able to quantify.
Dr Mercola:
Yeah, but we don't know.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
I don't know that we can do it. And because hydrogen is very mild, because if you take and you see this, if you look at the studies and this is why hydrogen is so difficult to study is because if you administer molecular hydrogen to a cell or an animal, a lot of times you don't see any changes. If everything is already perfect, everything is already in homeostasis. You don't see changes. You may see changes in gene expression, and mRNA levels. But but other significant changes especially, you know, typically you don't see. But perhaps if you were to give a drug or other pharmacological agent that's potent. You do see significant changes. You don't see that with hydrogen. For hydrogen, often you have to administer some sort of a toxin or an assault of some sort. And you look to see how hydrogen mitigated a rescued or attenuated those effects from that toxin induced problem. Okay, so if you were to give hydrogen to a cell, or a human that's healthy, and you look at the NRF2 activation or the glutathione levels, often you may actually see no change at all if the cell is healthy. If the cells already healthy, but as soon as you're to induce some sort of a toxin radiation or some environmental pesticide type toxin, which we see in some of these studies, that's when you start seeing that €œOh, look hydrogen helped prevent the downregulation or the decrease of that glutathione or that superoxide dismutase level in the cell. And this is important because it's not good to have a constitutively active NRF2 signaling, that's really bad. Like I said, you have to have a balance, redox balance, redox homeostasis. And, if you have a constitutively active NRF2, there's genetic conditions where you can actually have too much of a reductive components that are being produced, and that can lead to various hypertrophy, myocardial hypertrophy and other areas. And yeah, that's not good. And various toxins, cancer, could be problematic in that area. So it is a little concerning maybe some of these strong, powerful agents taking chronically over a long period of time. Maybe they're not so good to be doing, because maybe some of your cells and say, your liver, maybe they need some extra NRF2 up regulation, but maybe the cells in your brain or something, maybe they don't need that. Well, if you take this other component, just conjecture but perhaps the pharmacological strong signaling component would up regulate, NRF2 in many of the cells, even those that don't necessarily need it chemically,
Dr Mercola:
Without differentiation of discrimination.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Exactly, where as with hydrogen? It knows.
Dr Mercola:
So I've heard you lecture many times, and there's a brilliant slide that you have in there and perhaps we can get in post production, integrate into this video, and you can talk about it as if the slide was there. But it's a study where they showed basal levels of oxidative stress and then administered, I believe ionized.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Oh, sure, sure, yeah.
Dr Mercola:
They showed hydrogen with and without. A picture is worth a thousand words.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Well, it was published in Free Radical research, and it was just showing marker of DNA damage. And, you'll see that there are very basic levels of oxidation, if you will all the time, and then when you administer the molecular hydrogen to that healthy cell with no radiation. The level stays exactly the same.
Dr Mercola:
So in the meaning, because the basal level of free radicals, which you need to stay healthy, doesn't get lowered.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Exactly. And then the ionizing radiation. Uh, yeah, what really goes really high up, and then you can see hydrogen significantly attenuates that upregulation of that oxidative stress.
Dr Mercola:
Yeah, I believe it was about 80% reduction. It was over 50% of pretty sure.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Yeah, I would have to go back a bit, but it was significant.
Dr Mercola:
So what does that mean? It means that there are gonna be times in your life when you are going to be exposed to ionizing radiation stress.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Or other toxins and other toxins.
Dr Mercola:
Let's just go ionizing radiation because that's what the study was done with. You're getting an X-ray, get a cat scan, your flying at 35,000 feet being exposed to gamma rays. So what are the implications for that? According to study, if you if you have taken a therapeutic dose and we'll talk about what that means in a moment, of hydrogen, you can radically lower the damage from ionizing radiation.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Yeah, I mean, we would need a clinical study. Yeah, but the implication. Yeah, it's certainly something worthy pursuits, and well hydrogen is safe. And so it's It's not a bad idea.
Dr Mercola:
Yeah, we'll talk about its safety because, you know it's just from a historical perspective, why might be considered beneficial because we actually make hydrogen gas or our gut bacteria makes the gas.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Well, there's two areas that I find interesting. One of that is the fact that we're always exposed to hydrogen. And this does show state safety, but also potentially shows a reason why hydrogen is therapeutic in the first place. It's a romantic story when you consider hydrogen the number one of the elements of the periodic table of elements. Right, number one first element. The Big Bang, however direction, want to take it. Hydrogen is considered the father of all the elements. It's what powers the sun, and then we have a life created on Earth and potentially it started in the deep sea hydrothermal vents and hydrogen it could have been used as a first energy source that started the genesis of life. And now we're seeing with the hydrogen hypothesis with hydrogenosomes and mitochondria that hydrogen was actually the key that forged the bond of making eukaryotes to plant animal cells out of bacteria. So, hydrogen was involved in the beginning of the universe, the genesis of life, the evolution of life. And now we have developed a symbiotic relationship with bacteria on our skin or intestines. Right. This is a huge thing. The probiotics. Everything is there but this but our intestinal bacteria produce hydrogen gas also. I mean, lots of hydrogen gas, liters, liters a day of 10 liters or more depending on the individual.
Dr Mercola:
If you're empirically oriented, like the United States, it would be like 200 gallons.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Okay, a lot. Just from an evolutionary perspective, the fact that we've always been exposed to hydrogen gas. Perhaps through evolution, we've conserve some of the targets, we've developed targets. And this is why we're seeing the therapeutic effects of exogenous hydrogen, administered in the cells. And we know that the hydrogen gas produced by intestinal bacteria is therapeutic. And we've seen, for example, one study from the University of Florida with the Foresight Institute in Boston. They did a genetic knockout in the e-coli and they found that the administration of a lactulose into animals, rats, that had e-coli that could not produce hydrogen gas. Well, they would metabolize the lactulose, the non digestible fiber, but there was no benefit to the fiber anymore. And then they put the bacteria that could metabolize lactulose and produce hydrogen gas. This hepatoprotective effects were reinstated, suggesting, at least in this condition, the benefits of the fibre were mediated by the production of hydrogen gas.
Dr Mercola:
Yes, let me frame that because a lot of people may not understand what you said and give you my clinical experience. So lactulose is a non digestible sugar. You don't have enzymes in your body to break it down. These things gut bacteria do, and it is actually considered a drug. It's a prescription drug, and I used it when I was in residency training for people with hepatic encephalopathy, and I believe it's still used and it works. How could a non digestible sugar get people out of hepatic encephalopathy, which is brain damage or as a result of liver failure. So how does that work? It makes no sense. But it worked and it was used is still being used. And I never understood. I don't think anyone most anyone out there out there understands how it works until you share this with me earlier.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Yeah, and maybe these other ones carbose and things. They're suggesting there that some of the cardiovascular protective effects are mediated by the increased production of hydrogen gas. But then the question remains, well then if this hydrogen gas is so good and you're producing so much of it, why would ingestion of hydrogen rich water, which is not not near as much hydrogen gas as you do from the other method, why would that still be therapeutic?
Dr Mercola:
It's literally orders of magnitude lower, right?
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Yeah, we're talking if you consider the saturation, you know, about 18 milliliters of hydrogen gas it's not much in comparison, but we still see in the animal and human studies and plant. Yeah, which is very interesting because all eukaryotes have this ubiquitous effect. But we still see it's very effective and in fact, when one of the one of the studies actually at Nagoya University in the Parkinson's disease model they showed that a continuous administration of hydrogen in the air was not effective at preventing the progress of disease. But an intermittent exposure was effective but not near as effective as drinking hydrogen rich water.
Dr Mercola:
But that is key, that you just sort of encapsulated the treasure chest of how to understand hydrogen and get to work. So expand on that point because cyclical or intermittent exposure as opposed to continuous, you've got to understand that.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Yeah, again, we need more research to really understand the primary targets and molecular mechanisms have how it works. But it does appear to be more of a gaseous signal modulator, and at the way single modulators work is it needs to have this intermittent type exposure otherwise you get habituation or the subsequent attenuation of the signal. And that's what we're seeing with hydrogen gas. And in fact, in that study I mentioned earlier with the mice, that was vitamin C, so this one approaching E-coli knockout, I think I got those two confused. But in this study they originally tried inhalation of hydrogen gas and they saw good effects. And then they disappeared. And then they tried drinking hydrogen rich water. And the effect was significant during the entire study and was more effective than then other methods is very. It was published in 2008. But again, is this idea of this interment type of exposure. And I think this helps us to understand how hydrogen gas works, is the type effect, getting the hydrogen into the body, inducing a cell modulation of some sort, and then the net's gone, and that's gonna alter the gene expression.
Dr Mercola:
I think it's related to some universal biological phenomena that really requires this intermittent cycling pulsing effect and I absolutely personally confirmed it. And belief is true for diet. So, you know, I wrote a book. Fat for Fuel, which talks about helping people get into ketosis because it's so therapeutically beneficial. But you can make mistakes like I did, to think if it's so good, let's do it continuously. Just like if hydrogen is so good, let's do it continually. Well, the problem is, if you do it continuously, it stops working and you get worse. You actually get worse with ketosis, that's why you have to cycle in extra carbohydrates, probably, you know a few times a week. Once you reach that, which probably increases hydrogen gas production, more than likely.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
It may. You know, there's there's so many effects of hydrogen gas. And I guess we didn't quite finish the safety portion.
Dr Mercola:
Okay, with divers and everything.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Yeah, so the effect that hydrogen guests produced in the intestines is a great indicator of its of its safety. We're always exposed to basal levels of hydrogen gas in our blood, in our breath, all the time, so anybody can have it; you know the pregnant, the child, everybody produces hydrogen gas itself, it's very safe. They have used it in deep sea diving to prevent decompression sickness since the 1940s. And their human studies showing the safety of hydrogen gas are very powerful is showing at millions of times higher concentrations. I mean, you know, 10 atmospheres of pressure and higher of hydrogen gas, 98% hydrogen gas, very high levels with no chronic toxic effects. And so it does appear to be very safe. Now, I'm not saying there are zero side effects, we don't know. We can't say that there may be certain conditions where hydrogen gas could be bad for, but what we've seen so far is hydrogen gas is safe.
Dr Mercola:
One speculation is to take it continuously, because then you essentially aren't able to get the benefits right? Sure, but you're not because you're not going to benefit your almost indirectly causing damage because normally you would be exposed to cyclical exposure from your gut or from other sources.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
That's an interesting idea.
Dr Mercola:
So, I mean, essentially you're not going to get a side effect from taking this. Unless you really abuse it because then you're just not getting the benefits, right? Right.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Yeah. Well, and we really this thing, we really need to see more clinical studies and some of the clinical studies that I have been out there quite powerful. I need to tell you, you're gonna love this, okay?
Dr Mercola:
You just got back from a lot of research.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Yeah, I was in China. I spoke at one of the Chinese about medical symposium there, and then previously the one in Japan. Um, attended. But I just remember this study this quite powerful. A couple studies, actually, but I want to talk about one of them. They compared inhalation of hydrogen gas, about 3% hydrogen gas inhalation with a cerebral infarction. Okay, which can cause a stroke and is very problematic. And they had 50 patients; 25 in the hydrogen inhalation and 25 in the control group, in the control group, it wasn't just air they inhaled - they actually compared it to an approved medical drug. And of course, that's a scary thing to come to consider. Because what if you're in the hydrogen group and you don't know if we're gonna be therapeutic or not? You'd rather be in the in the group that's been proven but clinically demonstrated to be getting well. They were able to do this study because the animal studies and different things were very, very powerful. Well, they did this study, and they found that the group on the hydrogen was significantly more effective than the approved drug on on all the measure parameters, with no side effects. So this is again if you can't tell us why I'm so passionate about hydrogen it because we should. We have a molecule that is simple, safe, easy to administer and has actually has some really significant therapeutic potential. And there was just another study just barely published and for mild cognitive impairment, Alzheimer's disease and if you looked at the genotype, those with those with the ApoE4 genotype is very susceptible to Alzheimer's disease. In fact, about 50% of all Alzheimer's disease patients are the ApoE4 and when we look at the effects of hydrogen, drinking hydrogen rich water. It was a one year study, about 100 patients, or so, they found hydrogen was significantly therapeutic at helping in this disease, and that's big because there are no, at least that I know of, there are no approved drugs that are effective for Alzheimer's disease.
Dr Mercola:
But there are proof strategies. Strategies are different, I'm talking drugs. Okay, there's no question. But it's interesting you mention the ApoE4, because I've interviewed Dr. Dale Bredesenisn't before who I really view as one of the world's leading experts in Alzheimer's, and gets it on a very profoundly deep level. And he shared this amazing insight about ApoE4 and related to the fact that almost all humans, all of all of our ancient ancestors, were all ApoE4 double homozygous.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Is that right?
Dr Mercola:
Yes, and it actually benefits health. Okay, if you're able to apply what is designed for, which is that we were never designed to eat, If you're ApoE4, especially, you were never designed to eat continuously, you've got to do fasting. That's interest, and if you don't fast, you're going to get neurodegenerative changes that progressive to Alzheimer's. So get this whole cycle of benefits.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
If that's true, I don'tI know if that's true, it's new to me, but it's interesting, because hydrogen, one of the pathways hydrogen seems to mimic Is that a fasting. So if you look at the article published in the Journal of Obesity, which was a nature publishing group also, and they found that hydrogen was able to induce hepatic growth factor. FGF21, Fibroblast growth factor 21. Well, that's that's huge. That's this induces energy metabolism. And when they compared in the study, they found that effectively drinking hydrogen rich water had the same effect as drinking about a 20% caloric restriction. Okay, and then there was an additive effect, when there was caloric restriction and the ingestion of hydrogen rich water. Okay, for example when we fast one of the first hormones you start to produce is ghrelin, ghrelin is the hunger hormone, but it's also it can increase growth hormone levels, it is very neuroprotective, and has anti inflammatory effects. It's very good for the body. Hydrogen can induce gastric ghrelin production. In fact, that was shown to be one of the primary mediators in benefiting Parkinson's disease from drinking hydrogen rich water. Many animal studies, including a double blind, placebo controlled clinical trial was about a year long of 100 patients, or so also showed hydrogen was a very effective in Parkinson's disease. Now, they're just finishing up a three year a clinical trial of a few 100 patients. But, what we see is hydrogen is able to benefit Parkinson's disease, likely via inducing gastro ghrelin production. So we have ghrelin production, mediated by fasting and also FGF21, and the increase and the whole energy metabolism. So it's very interesting, hydrogen seems to mimic some of the same pathways. So it's interesting that you brought that up. Maybe there's some other correlations.
Dr Mercola:
I've got another question for you, too. So you've talked about its benefit in neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's, and also for cerebral vascular access and heart disease. So, two of the other big diseases out there would be, obviously, cancer and diabetes. Are you aware of any studies that have looked at hydrogen applications?
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Sure, yes. So if we look at diabetes and we can put that in, like with metabolic syndrome, there's several clinical studies in the metabolic syndrome. In fact, we're just finishing one article, one animal study with a high fat diet induced non alcoholic fatty acid liver disease.
Dr Mercola:
It should be a high carb diet that does that.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
That's true too, right?
Dr Mercola:
Yeah. Omega 6.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
So that's something we can we can investigate later also, but this is just a model that's been very commonly used.
Dr Mercola:
Omega six, industrially processed vegetable oil.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Well, what we found the results are significant, there are several studies out there. Hydrogen was very effective it at preventing the damage done to the liver. And in some of the metabolic syndrome studies, those with the impaired glucose tolerance, a few of those patients, their glucose levels are brought back to the normal range. There's so much you go into about the diabetes. In some of the animal studies, hydrogen may actually induce glue for translocation by uh, anyway, by a similar mechanism of insulin and potentiate insulin's secretion, we need more studies to show to investigate this. But some of these preliminary data is really showing it's great for diabetics.
Dr Mercola:
Well, what about cancer?
Tyler W. Lebaron:
So, okay, so cancer.
Dr Mercola:
This has been useful modality as an adjunct, certainly not the primary treatment but as an adjunctive treatment in approaching cancer?
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Yeah, you know, I don't know, to be honest. People have looked at it and we'll I'm just cautious. Cancer is difficult. Cancer is not just oh, they have a genetic mutation.
Dr Mercola:
Genetic mutation is secondary to the oxidative damage.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
We have a metabolic disorder, we have genetic disorders, we have so many things right. And so hydrogen helps induce a cell survival, helps induce proliferation. So in some rationale, we could say, well, maybe hydrogen is not so good for cancer, because maybe it's gonna protect the cancer. And we have some evidence for that. But then there's also some good evidence to suggest that maybe hydrogen is very good to combat cancer. In fact, one of the first studies on hydrogen therapy was in 1975 by Texas A&M at Baylor University, published in the Journal of Science. And they found that, uh, they transplanted melanoma tumors in mice and did a hyperbaric hydrogen chamber. Okay. And they found that the hydrogen therapy and this condition was very effective. That regressing the melanoma tumors. Interested. I mean, it was very impressive. It probably didn't continuing the research because it's not really practical to do such a high atmospheric pressure of hyperbaric hydrogen therapy. But then, in 2007 when we showed that we could use feasible physiological levels of hydrogen. That's really what spawned a generation hydrogen research. Then there's other studies on just that. This symposium that I spoke at, there were probably three or four other researchers who talked about their research on cancer specifically and start showing that it had a very good effect at suppressing cancer growth. We need more research and what one of the clinical studies was done with the radiotherapy on, I think, liver liver tumors. And they found that hydrogen was at least effective at improving the quality of life of the patients and mitigating the toxic side effects of the drugs of animal studies showing decreasing the chemotherapy, the side effects of the drugs and chemotherapy, but without alternative, the anti tumor effects. And so I think what you said maybe key. Maybe not as the primary treatment, but as a secondary or an adjunct.
Dr Mercola:
It would be intriguing to see someone do a study where they're integrating hyperbaric oxygen with hyperbaric oxygen.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Actually, that's kind of being done right now, it's a very good idea. Any time you want to combine an oxidant of type therapy, you want to use hydrogen because you always have damage from oxygen therapy that damages the pros outweigh the cons. But hydrogen can help mitigate.
Dr Mercola:
Yeah. In fact, I do that, every day when I'm home, I do an ozone sauna, and before I go into the sauna, I take my hydrogen. Okay. You know, because you know I want to mitigate that. The side effects from the ozone and get the benefits too.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Yeah. Oh, just to cliff it with cancer, we don't know. But as more of the data is coming out, I'm feeling a little bit more comfortable that maybe, especially when there's no other hope insight. Uh, it's probably not a bad idea.
Dr Mercola:
All right, so I'm sure we've stimulated lots of people's interest in this, and there might be running out to their computer and searching Google is how they're going to get this. So I think it's pretty wise now to go into how you can access available hydrogen therapy because there's a lot of different ways and you're certainly an expert.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Well, yeah, so I'll talk in general sense about some of the methods and mechanisms. We don't sell or represent any hydrogen products, so you can go to our website and learn more. But you know, you won't find any hydrogen products. We don't endorse to recommend anything. But there are many ways to administer hydrogen, and that's what I love about it. We talked about the inhalation of hydrogen gas. There are inhalation machines that you can buy. People, make inhalation machines, one of the potential concerns again, I haven't looked at this specifically, it's not what I do. But when you do electrolysis for water, for example, you do produce hydrogen gas. And just by inhaling the gas producer, the catheter that's hydrogen gas, but if those electrodes are not pure or the water you're using has chloride then you could get chlorine produced out of that. And then you could be inhaling that. You'd have to be somewhat cognizant into the details. You don't want to be in handling something that's actually toxic for you. So inhalation is one method. You also have hydrogen rich bathing, a quick digression, you know that the traditions from the fountain of youth and the Ponce de leon, there were all these different things. Some of these healing waters around the world have people have actually gone back to those waters and they've actually shown they contain small amounts of hydrogen gas in them. And so perhaps those waters did have some benefits.
Dr Mercola:
I think that sulfur too.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
So they could just be lacking some constituents, like iodine or something. But it is interesting to some of these connections with hydrogen gas could be in there. But but bathing hydrogen water is a great way to do it. And then, of course, there's just simply just drinking hydrogen water. And there's a number of ways to do that, whether it's just a tank of hydrogen gas and you bubble it into the water and dissolved it under pressure and then just storing hydrogen in like ready to drink cans, for example, or other other pouches. Well, this will work. But you can't have hydrogen water store to, say plastic containers. Because hydrogen is the smallest molecule, it'll dissipate right out of the container.
Dr Mercola:
Yeah, I just reemphasize what you said earlier, one of the reasons why so therapeutically beneficial because it permeates every membrane in your body. There is not a space that it cannot get into. What is your cell membrane? The blood brain barrier, The mitochondrial membranes, it goes there, nothing stops it.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Yeah, it can easily permeate everything. And so you say so if you see hydrogen water and it's in a plastic bottle on the shelf or something it's not real.
Dr Mercola:
That Hydrogen is long gone, right?
Tyler W. Lebaron:
If there was anything in that and maybe that's a clarification some people hear what do you mean, add hydrogen to water, isn't water already h20?
Dr Mercola:
Yeah. Good point expand on that.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Okay. Remember, water, The structure of water looks like Mickey Mouse, right? Have the oxygen. And then the two hydrogen and they're attached to the oxygen. They're attached to the oxygen, like glucose, sugar right it's C6H1206, six carbons and there's 12 hydrogen, those hydrogens are all bound to the carbon or oxygen. So completely different molecules of sugar and water. Right? But they all have hydrogen. Most compounds have hydrogen in them. Hydrogen gas, like we mentioned earlier, was just two hydrogen atoms that are bound together. And that's hydrogen gas. You can take this gas and bubble it and dissolve it into water. It doesn't attach to the water molecules that doesn't make a h20, h30 or any other ending that makes structure.
Dr Mercola:
It doesn't make structured water.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
We don't want to get into this other realm, if you will. It's just hydrogen gas dissolved in water. You can take C02 gas, oxygen gas, and dissolve it into water.
Dr Mercola:
Like sobriety Water?
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Yeah. I mean, okay. Water already has oxygen. So can't you just breathe water? Of course not. Because the oxygen is tied up with other bonds, right? Same thing with the hydrogen. So it's the hydrogen gas. So you can hit the gas, dissolve into water, and then you can drink it, or bathe in it, or do an intravenous hydrogen rich saline injection. There's hyperbaric hydrogen therapy, actually when I was in Japan earlier this year, and there is a hyperbaric hydrogen chamber that has been developed. And so if you can come in there and do a session, I'm not sure how of course how it compares therapeutic wise, but there's so many ways.
Dr Mercola:
There's safety concerns, because it is flammable.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Well, you know, it's only flammable above 4.6% concentration.
Dr Mercola:
Oh, okay. But doing it hyperbaric, at less.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Exactly so if you look at the molar ratio, right, so it's still maybe okay, so it's interesting.
Dr Mercola:
When we think of flammable we think of the Hindenburg, which is hydrogen.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Yes, exactly, and one thing I'll say, you can measure the concentration of hydrogen gas, and you can look to see if it's really there. You don't want to use for example, ORP meters oxidation reduction potential meters. Those are meaningless when it comes to hydrogen water. Of course, if you measure the ORP of hydrogen water, you will get a negative number because hydrogen is a reducing agent. According to the nernst equation, it's Redox balance. It's a ratio, but it's not going to measure hydrogen gas. It's very sensitive to Ph in that case, because it's a Redox couple. And, hydrogen gas is difficult to measure the typical things like gas chromatography or a specific hydrogen electrode to the standard calibration curve. Because hydrogen is not an ion, it's not like oxygen paramagnetic so you could have a sensor for that. But hydrogen is not, it's diamagnetic. So many properties make hydrogen difficult to measure, but there is the Redox titration reagent, H2 Blue which you can get, H2sciencesinc.com or other websites, there's so many places that sell. They sell it on Amazon, Japan, it's in Korea, there's other companies that have their own product. I'm just saying it's something very easy and you can measure the concentration of hydrogen and you can see for yourself.
Dr Mercola:
Let's go over it in a minute or so. What the process is like to actually do it by titration.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
And there's lots of explanations out there, but briefly, you fill up the water, a little beaker of water, say six milliliters of water of your hydrogen water. Now, if there's no hydrogen gas in there and you take the reagent, which has methylene blue and a cloud of platinum to act as a catalyst, and you add that in there, if there's no hydrogen in the water, it'll just go blue and stay blue. If there is hydrogen gas in there and you add a drop in there, it'll turn it from blue to clear. It'll go clear and and then you add another drop and you keep on adding them stepwise and tell the solution stays blue, turns blue and stays blue. And that's called a titration end point. And you just count how many drops that it takes to get there. And each drop was equivalent to about one milligram for liter. So if you added 10 drops, you have one milligram for liter and so on.
Dr Mercola:
And maybe you can discuss that therapeutic ranges or targets with some of these things, because you've discussed the different routes administration, but I think it's gonna be important to figure out what the dosage.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Yeah, and I don't know, okay. We don't know what the minimal effective concentration is, the MED. And there's so many things to consider because especially talk about a gaseous signal modulator that were talking about intermittent exposure. Right, then we need to have not only a MED, but we need to talk about a timescale, a time factor, right? And its half life. And so, all I can tell you is what we have shown to be effective or therapeutic in the clinical studies. And so, if you look at hydrogen water, the clinical studies have ranged from anywhere from you receiving between 0.5 milligrams to 1.5 milligrams and higher even your five milligrams of hydrogen per day. And these ranges appear to be therapeutic. If you get less maybe for some diseases, for some people, for some conditions and some circumstances for maybe a chronic use, maybe it's still effective, but in some cases you may need a higher concentration, and again we need more research. But it appears, at least in some of these studies, that a higher concentration or a higher dose is more likely to be effective.
Dr Mercola:
Especially, if it's intermittent.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Yeah, yeah, it should be intermittent. I think that the research has become more clear on that. But so, IHSA, International Hydrogen Standard Association, that is the current recommendation when it comes to hydrogen products is you should get 0.5 milligrams of hydrogen. You need to be able to get 0.5 milligrams of hydrogen by consuming no more than one liter.
Dr Mercola:
Okay, so that I was gonna say the volume.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
And the reason why is because you could take, okay, well, I'll just drink four liters of this 0.2 milligrams or something. Well, then, maybe if you did that, and that's a very small amount taken throughout the entire day. So the cellular concentration would never ago above, say 4 or 5 micromolar, we need to get higher. Maybe 8 to 20 micromolar in order to induce a therapeutic effect. And so this why we're saying, okay, well limit it to one liter. There's so much discussion going on here, and it's very exciting to be part of. We need more clinical research, and this is actually, I want to talk about the dose in general because when we talk about okay is your 0.5 milligrams or two milligrams of hydrogen. The saturation is 1.6 milligrams per liter, yet doesn't seem like a lot, but actually, it's It's quite significant. And you have to remember, hydrogen is the lightest molecule in the universe, it's molar mass is 2grams per mol, say, vitamin C is 176 grams per mol, so it's a lot lighter. So when you compare at a molecule to molecule or mol to mol, it's a lot. And to do a quick comparison, a saturated liter of water with 1.6 milligrams per liter actually contains more molecules of hydrogen than there are molecules of vitamin C in 100 milligram dose, so they're actually is significance. And if we look at other biomolecules, some molecules operate effectively at a nanomolar range, but we take hydrogen at a micro molar range, so it's enough. But most importantly, we do see the therapeutic effect in the animal cell and clinical human studies.
Dr Mercola:
And, what this study suggests with respect to the half life and that timing of the dose and the frequency.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Okay, sure. So terms of half life, once you for example were to drink hydrogen rich water, depending on the dose that you take in, your going to reach a peak, blood level and breath exhalation. Because hydrogen, when you consume it, it goes into the stomach and absorbs into the blood. And then it gets pump of the heart and lungs, and you exhale a lot of the hydrogen gas out, and you see that peak anywhere between 5 to 15 minutes. And then that that peak goes back to baseline because you have base loads of hydrogen. It goes back to baseline in about an hour or so. So that's kind of 1/2 life of hydrogen. And that's also where we know hydrogen is much is much more in terms of its more of a signal modulator, right, because you can drink the hydrogen water and it's gone. It's out of the system in an hour. But yet it has residual therapeutic protective effects that last for hours, days and even weeks. One of the study's in rheumatoid arthritis. A double blind randomized study is small, but they found that drinking hydrogen rich water was very effective for the disease, and now they're doing a very large study, 170 something patients that they're getting ready to do. It was very effective, and it and in this study they found that hydrogen actually with those with early onset rheumatoid arthritis, they had a remission of the disease, and during the washout period, no one has taken hydrogen during this time, when they continue to monitor, they actually continued to see improvements in the disease for an additional four weeks.
Dr Mercola:
That is odd, because just from what you shared about the mechanism, it didn't seem like that would do that because it seems to be targeting oxidative stress and inflammation. In that scenario, you're actually targeting the action mechanism of the cause, the foundational cause because you're targeting gene expression.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
So by taking hydrogen within three days, we see increases in PGC-1a, for example, produces mitochondrial biogenesis. That's a huge, huge area, actually, but we see decreases in like end fat, for example, or there's so many different transcription factors hydrogen operates on. So if we start altering the gene expression, then some of these changes, as signal modulators can last for quite sometimes we get that those residual effects and this is what I'm very excited to see the clinical studies.
Dr Mercola:
I'm happy to hear that, but I just don't want to get people misimpression. This isn't a magic bullet, just days in cancer, it's an adjunctive factor. It's to be done synergistically with other things that we know are beneficial to produce health and address disease.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
I think that's critical because hydrogen, in my opinion, for example, you can't say hydrogen is a powerful antioxidant. The reason why hydrogen is so good is because it's a weak antioxidant. It's a humble molecule. Okay, it's very mild, and it just it's able to go in and slowly do things that when you talk about doing a lot of things you make by the small and simple things are great things brought to pass right, and that's how hydrogen works.
Dr Mercola:
So you've provided a load of information to intrigue and excite people about this really highly beneficial adjunct to their health. So I wonder if you could provide some recommendation or words of caution, perhaps with respect to anyone out there who's really motivated, wants to get this and starts hopping on Amazon looking for hydrogen. So what would what would you advise?
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Well, first off, the research is still in its infancy. There's so much more to do. We don't have hundreds of years of clinical studies that are just long term. We have preliminary data. We have some pretty neat human studies. We need more. So we're not saying this is a cure all, this is the end. We need more, we still have not proven the actual mechanisms, it's being worked on. I happen to know some confidential information, very excited about it. But these are not published. We don't have this data yet. We haven't proven exactly how it works, which is okay. There's lots of pharmaceuticals that we know have this effect. But, we don't know how they work.
Dr Mercola:
When I went to medical school, we did not know how aspirin worked, but we do now.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Exactly, so it's okay, but we still don't know. Many things about hydrogen Still need a lot more research. And the second thing I caution is, don't don't be thinking like you said, this is some miracle thing is gonna cure everything. We don't know, we need more research. It's just very exciting, we're on the cutting edge right now. And the second thing is, there is a lot of scams, it's a big market and so there's a lot of companies trying to come in and, well, I'm going to make hydrogen. There's companies who are just selling normal water, calling it hydrogen water because I think water's already h20, so they just changed the name. It's not hydrogen. So just because a company claims hydrogen or because the company claims a certain concentration, it may not be true.
Dr Mercola:
But this is easy to check because you can buy this test reagent. What is it? H2 Blue?
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Yeah, and then there's another one out of Japan, they make it in Korea, so you could test it yourself. Just should if it's yeah, and yet there's once you get to know a certain company, you're able to maybe evaluate, you know. So that's my second concern, is caution, right? Is don't jump at the first thing that says hydrogen the next big thing, right? And then lastly, I just want to reiterate again, that it's nothing to do with alkaline water.
Dr Mercola:
Yeah, and I was gonna, thank you. Almost forgot to mention that, because that was some of the excitement. Alkaline water, essentially, and I've written article does not work. It does not work. It's not nothing to do with the PH. If it works, it's due to hydrogen, so why don't you expand on it?
Tyler W. Lebaron:
You know, this is, it is just such an interest in history. So alkaline, ionized water. So the Japanese government's very strict. Okay, they're stricter than the FDA that, you know, in my opinion, the FDA is underfunded, and that's why we have a lot of problems. There's so many issues. But the Japanese government, is also very strict and in order for, they had this idea of applying alkaline ionized water for our culture and later for human use. They had to get the Japanese government approval in order to even start doing that, they did that, and similar, we have the FDA approval for dental floss for example, anything that's gonna be used on the human body has to be a medical device, so they got that approval. But but no medical doctors know scientists out anything of it. It doesn't make any sense that alkaline water could do any of these benefits. Because even if you subscribe, even if you subscribe to the idea that we need to alkali their bodies, you can't do it. Probably some benefit. Yeah, yeah, which which were not even discussing that right? But even if even if you subscribe that you can't do with alkaline water because alkaline water is not a buffer, that's it. That's the key point is to explain that expanded. So what buffer is is a substance is able to. It's able to prevent changes in Ph. Okay, And to put it in perspective if we look at baking soda, sodium bicarbonate, which is our body's natural buffering system, one teaspoon of baking soda can neutralize the same amount of acid as over 700 liters of alkaline water at a ph of 10.
Dr Mercola:
Which is a pretty high pH, most people aren't going to drink a ph of 10.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Yeah, once it goes above the ph 10, according to the Japanese studies, it's not a good idea anyways, but and baking soda has a pH 8.1. So it's not a buffer, so what happened in Japan is they had, nobody really accepted this idea. But it started going in the marketplace, and I started getting a lot of press, especially in the 80s. It started in a lot of press and because people receiving these anecdotal benefits while I'm getting this and this. So they started doing this research in the nineties and then also in Korea, and the 90 started in research, and they found this water's alkaline, ionized water, electrolytes, reduced water appear to have some sort of anti-oxidant and anti-diabetic and anti-cancer effects. And, like, how is this possible? The researchers didn't know read the studies. They they really didn't know that they were just saying this is what we're finding in the research and and but then, as the course of the market grew well, they have to explain something. And now there was this whole idea of the micro clustering and idea, or this ah, if free elections in the water or the negative ORP or this alkaline benefit alone or so many different ideas that were propagated through marketing, but were never scientific, never validated. The scientists themselves never said that, and then continued to do some research. And then what happened was that article in Nature Medicine is published in 2007. So now some of these other researchers saw that publication. They thought, hey, when you do electrolysis of water, by definition, you produce hydrogen gas. What if hydrogen gas responsible as a therapeutic agent? Before that, everyone thought hydrogen gas is just a byproduct, read the article, that's so interesting that like oh, ever produce hydrogen gas or many of them want to mention hydrogen gas, right? Since it isn't because hydrogen's always been considered to be by essentially biologically inert would have no therapeutic effect. And that's why there's idea of active hydrogen, which is a reactive atomic hydrogen, hydrogen radical and as the first kind of idea that of merging, maybe hydrogen has in effect was in the active atomic hydrogen radical form, which is would be totally impossible. It's completely unstable in that form, but anyways, some of these other researchers there are like, okay, that's a simple study to do. So we have Doctor Lee from Korea. He is the pioneer researcher in alkaline ionized water from the 1990s. One of the first persons to show these effects. He's also one of our advisers. You can look him up on our website. You'll see where he started md phD and and all of this. And he started looking at this, well, he did the research and he found, hey, when I take alkaline ionized water and I removed the hydrogen gas from the water even though the pH is the same, even though all these things are the same, the benefits are eliminated. The benefits were eliminated when you removed the hydrogen gas. The hydrogen gas is responsible for negative ORP. If you remove all the hydrogen gas, the ORP does go back up positive, but you only need like, point like 0.5 milligrams per liter to get a negative ORP. So you can have a negative ORP, negative 200, probably won't be therapeutic. And the reason why, there's no hydrogen gas in there, not enough. It was very low level, but anyway, this was shown. He showed it many times, Many studies. We thought our study on nonalcoholic fatty acid liver disease that I talked about that was originally done by the group in Israel using alkaline, ionized water. And they did. They did, just like all the studies. They did electrolysis for a couple of hours. They had a very high pH. Very high negative ORP all these things. They did the study very disappointed because no effect. I then explain to them the hydrogen gas. They did the exact same study, and now we're collaborated on. This is a couple years ago. Collaborated on this for a while now and now, all of a sudden they see the effects of hydrogen. And we did two. We did a low concentration of hydrogen and a high concentration of hydrogen. The low concentration of hydrogen still no effect. The higher concentration of hydrogen was very swollen. I think we had point 0.2, 0.3 milligrams per liter for the low. And then 0.7, 0.8 milligrams for the high, which is still not very high. You could always drink more water, but still this again shows, well, then, the last one in Japan, Doctor Mami Noda, from Kyushu University. She was also one of the first researchers on alkaline ionized Water. She also teaches that Rockefeller University. She's very good pharmacologist researcher, and she had friends come to her who were drinking alkaline, ionized water and say, Hey, Doctor Noda, I'm I'm getting better. How is this possible? And she being a scientist? I don't know. First, I don't know if this is even true. This is very strange. Doesn't make any sense scientifically. But she tried it. In her study, she took animals and she induced Parkinson's disease gave them hydrogen water. And she showed that hydrogen water prevented development of Parkinson's disease. And so she also was curious. How is this possible? Saw that publication Nature medicine and then do the exact same thing. Did this that exact same studies and then remove the hydrogen gas from the water as well simply bubbled hydrogen gas into water, and it was very clear that it was only the hydrogen gas responsible for mediating the benefits. This Parkinson's disease study a different one from the Nagoya University. I need to tell you how how Dr. Kinji Ohno, also our adviser, but that's who I worked with when I was in Japan. How he got into interested in hydrogen, it was also because of Parkinson's disease. Okay? And he heard a lot of these things. But see, Nagoya is the fifth most potential university in Japan. He's very respected researcher, so he's not just gonna dabble into something. So he's heard about this and he's like, you know, I'll try it. So he is in his lab. He also developed a model to to induce Parkinson's disease. And he saw that the drinking, hydrogen rich water prevented the development Parkinson disease and in his words, and you could read it. It's on the website. His quote when he saw in his own lab of his own own eyes that hydrogen had that effect that change his research career and got him interested into the hydrogen biology and specifically to elucidate the molecular mechanisms behind how hydrogen is having these effects and maybe post video, we can put up something and I'll show you what what they saw and you'll see the rats, the differences between drinking hydrogen water and drinking control, but anyway, we need a lot more research. But it's very exciting what we're seeing because we're actually seen that the studies from the animal studies are being transmitted or to the human studies were after seeing that there's there's an effect on humans as well, not just on animals.
Dr Mercola:
That's great. It's itself exciting, really is in, you know, but I just to finish off the alkalizer water myth because most of the alkaline users out there they produce hydrogen gas by definition, but they have to. But here's the problem that most of them also produced scale. Yeah, and once that's essentially it scaled these catalyzer's or what is the actual device that does it? Once the electrodes become scaled, mineral depositions, then they don't work. And you're not not only not getting the low ph or high pH, but you're also not getting hydrogen gas.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Well, It's interesting because the mineral buildup it appears, and we didn't know this until the H2 Blue is available, so we can actually measure right and yeah we see that all of a sudden, after a few weeks of use, first off, if you have a low TDS water, you won't even produce a high pH. But you won't have dissolved hydrogen gas, and this process needs some minerals to act to some nucleation sites to dissolve the hydrogen. And then if you do live in a place that has the higher TDS, but after a few weeks of use, then you can get the mineral deposits on the electrodes, and it prevents that the gas from dissolving in the water. Okay, check the companies and all of them will make a big deal about cleaning the machines, clean elections, whether running acidic water or doing reversing polarity.
Dr Mercola:
And most people don't do that.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
It's a lot of work. Hours of work. Yeah, accumulates. So, yeah, you get that mineral buildup prevents the gas from dissolving because these water ionizers they were all developed for an alkaline ph, not hydrogen gas. In fact, it allows in Japan and a few they did new years ago. Not only did they not know, think about it, if you're a manufacturer and you realize you're producing hydrogen gas. This gas could be toxic. We don't know. So one of the ideas is actually to producing machine that has the lowest concentration of hydrogen gas. But yet, it's still a high ph because they wanted to be safe right? You go to Japan, one of the biggest Japanese companies. They own the largest market share by 70% followed by Panasonic for this area. All of them are changing to hydrogen water. They have their specific machines. They're alkaline water ionizers. They make it okay. Ph will not go above, say 9.5. They had a whole different chamber so they can keep the ph low, increase the hydrogen, dissolve concentration. So everything in Asia is going away from the alkaline water ionizers and finally to the hydrogen gas.
Dr Mercola:
And there's probably still benefit there, but what still has yet to be resolved because the research hasn't been done. Is that your still drinking this all day, so you're approaching a continuous infusion which violates the original principle of making its cyclical or pulse in it. So make drinking it. Although it might be effective, may have only wanted what did not want to drink it all day long or have a higher dose.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
You know, I like you very first said it. We don't know. We need more research. Because if you are drinking it all day long, well, that still in some sense, an interment. But maybe it is too close to continuous. Maybe it's better to take just one high dose in the morning and one at night or yeah, we don't know. But what we do know, it's providing a therapeutic effect. You're not going to go wrong.
Dr Mercola:
You're not gonna hurt yourself.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
There could be a better way, but we need more research to see. Right.
Dr Mercola:
So, uh, I've known you for a few years now. I've been very excited about it and continue to explore it and really excited, too. Hopefully, you know, basically scrubbed through the details and provide something that would be helpful sometime in the future.
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Well, I'm sure that your viewers what would appreciate that there's a lot of scam products out there, but I you know, the research is very promising. And like I say, it's very, very rare that you can come across the molecule that is so, so safe, but yet has such strong therapeutic potential. Right and review of years ago 2013 by Loma Linda University. Very view article then showed that hydrogen had therapeutic effects for the top eight of the 10 disease causes, causing fatalities listed by the CDC, the centers of disease control. So when you look at something like that, yes, hydrogen merits more research, more investigation, more clinical studies. And that's that's why I'm so passionate about this. And I'm very excited to see where things end up with a hydrogen research.
Dr Mercola:
So why don't you share your website, sir?
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Yeah, the molecularhydrogenfoundation.org or molecularhydrogeninstitute.org and again, we are a science based nonprofit, and we're working to advance the research, education and the witness of hydrogen as a medical gas. So you're not gonna find products and things on our site, but you will find a lot of information and we do our best to provide what's going on in the hydrogen area.
Dr Mercola:
Well, great. Any other concluding comments?
Tyler W. Lebaron:
Yeah, if I I hope that you will review this video and review the information on hydrogen. And although we have responsibility, is maybe researchers to understand the molecular mechanisms and targets of hydrogen and do clinical studies because we have a molecule so significant like this and so safe. Perhaps it's also your responsibility to share it. You spread the awareness to other, let other people know about it. There's some people who don't have access to medical care that this could really benefit. And there are also those who have access to too much medical care where hydrogen could help mitigate the toxic effects of the United States.
Dr Mercola:
Okay, absolutely. Well, thank you so much has been awesome. I'm so glad you were able to trick your way to Chicago in the frigid cold. We're able to provide some really solid information for our viewers. Appreciate it.