 Welcome to the Dr. Gundry podcast. There's one super antioxidant you're probably getting every day without even knowing it. In fact it's been shown to help fight inflammation, boost your energy, and protect the health of your brain. And study show can make a huge difference for the health of your entire body. I'm talking about hydrogen. Yeah the most abundant element in the universe. The same thing that's in the air you breathe and the water you drink. And there's a really easy way to supercharge this molecule to reduce inflammation, boost recovery, support a healthy heart, and improve the appearance of your skin. Well and my guest today is going to tell you all about it. He's Tyler W. LeBaron, the founder and executive director of the science-based non-profit Molecular Hydrogen Institute. And today he's going to explain the cutting-edge research on hydrogen and how it can help you feel healthier than you have in years. And actually I'm really excited about this episode. I had the pleasure of talking with Tyler a few months ago and stay tuned this is really good. So Tyler welcome to the Dr. Gundry podcast. My pleasure thank you. Great to have you here. Alright so very basic question to start with. What in the world is molecular hydrogen and what effect does it have on our bodies? Yeah most important question. Molecular hydrogen we are referring to hydrogen gas. So it's a molecule and often so you look at water. Water is a molecule and it has the oxygen and hydrogen. So it's like Mickey Mouse you know has the oxygen here and the two hydrogens and those hydrogens are attached to the oxygen. And so just as we can't you know drink water to get the oxygen that we need we also can't drink water to get that type of hydrogen. The hydrogen gas that we're talking about is a gas. It's the alternative energy source that everybody's after right because it's three times more energy energy gents than gasoline. So what happens is you have a hydrogen atom that has a proton electron and another hydrogen atom that has a proton electron and they marry each other. They combine together to form the H2 molecule. So this is a smallest molecule in the universe smaller than oxygen and that allows it to easily enter into our cells. So talking about cellular bioavailability for example. I mean obviously if you want to get the benefit of something it actually has to get inside of the cell right? Good point. Well hydrogen gas being so small can actually do that. So that's what we're talking about. Hydrogen gas. Molecular hydrogen or dihydrogen. Okay so you know you bring up a good point. So there's hydrogen in water so why not just drink water and then we'll get that hydrogen. It just won't come off. Exactly yeah it doesn't come off. It doesn't just come off like that. Water stays as the H2O molecule and we have to get that H2 gas. That's why water is not explosive but hydrogen gas is explosive. When you actually use water to put out a fire. And so all these you know the propulsion systems that are you know rocket fuel. Rocket fuel uses hydrogen. Yeah hydrogen oxygen they combust together to form water. And that's why even our hydrogen powered cars drip water out of the tailpipe right? Exactly yeah. Okay all right so what I mean come on let's get down and dirty. What effect is hydrogen the gas having at the cellular level? Get nerdy and teach us a little bit. Well you know it's it's we don't know all the exact mechanisms of how hydrogen gas is working at that molecular biological level. We first we can look at some of the observations. That's the first step in science is first demonstrate that a phenomenon is actually occurring. And so in the earliest research started in Asia for example you administer hydrogen gas whether it's dissolved in water or through inhalation. And you're seeing these D's effects such as prevention of the development of Parkinson's disease in an animal model. Or you look at markers of inflammation and you see clearly that hydrogen gas decreases inflammation or oxidative stress right? This is another huge one and I'm sure everyone's familiar like when you cut the apple in half and it turns brown or rust that's oxygen or oxidation and every single time that we breathe we're starting to slowly oxidize ourselves. And hydrogen also helps to decrease that excessive oxidation that's going on that leads to the aging in many diseases. So the mechanism by how that's happening it still remains a little bit elusive but what we do see for example the hydrogen gas in terms of like say the free radical and anti-oxidant aspect. Hydrogen gas is able to activate what's called the NRF2 keep one pathway. And you probably know that with like with what you've done before with the plants and everything it's a very important pathway. It's what is the transcription factor that when it activates the genes and the DNA it essentially it regulates over two or three hundred subtle protective proteins and enzymes that are involved in anti-oxidation detoxification. And so you have your proteins like glutathione people have heard before if it's peptide, superoxidus mutase, glutathione peroxidase, all of these that are our body's own or our endogenous antioxidant self-defense system. And taking hydrogen gas able to activate this pathway which in turn up regulates or increases our body's natural antioxidant self-defense system. And that's one of the ways the hydrogen gas is working to offer some of these benefits that we're seeing the preclinical and clinical studies. Okay now I know you've trained over in Asia to learn most of this and as we've talked before there's like over eleven hundred research papers primarily in Korean and Japan and even China written on the effect of molecular hydrogen. Yes? Yeah yeah there's probably about 1500 publications so far on the benefits of molecular hydrogen. Then probably around 80 clinical human clinical studies that have been conducted so far of course most of them most of the studies are in animals because that's how science progresses right? But when you consider that actually a good article takes between three to five years from conception to publication. I mean it's a lot of work to study to do an article and do aero of the research over and over I know right I mean it takes a long time so when you consider that 2007 started the whole area of hydrogen research if you will and now 12 years later there's around 1500 publications that's that's exciting actually I mean it's not a lot but the fact that it's that many in that short amount of time yeah it's it's growing exponentially. I got interested in this actually before I even met you reading a paper human clinical trial that molecular hydrogen water actually reduced oxidized LDL in human beings and actually quite dramatically and I went wow that's pretty cool and so what you're saying is the least what we think is happening is so this is activating the nerve pathway in RF2 and having us produce more of our own intrinsic antioxidants right and just as an aside there's another new paper that was presented at the American Art Association this past week that shows that LDL cholesterol has nothing to do with anything in terms of causing heart disease it's actually the small dense LDLs that get oxidized. Oxidized small dense LDLs. Exactly that are in fact the troublemaker and our whole shift of our research and our treatment should be to prevent oxidized LDL and so again I'm intrigued because wait a minute I I can drink a glass of water with hydrogen in it and lower my oxidized LDL. Yeah that's the idea I mean that there are several clinical studies that that demonstrate and some really powerful animal studies in fact one of them in a apo-e protein knockout mice so apo-e protein is very important to basically get rid of the bad cholesterol if you will and if you don't have that protein you can develop atherosclerosis very quickly for sure. Well in this animal study the drinking of hydrogen rich water totally prevented the development of atherosclerosis and so that probably you know it was then translated into humans that the paper you're talking about where they are drinking hydrogen water and yeah you know to see less oxidized LDL and also we see benefits like with the macrophages that's what happens when the LDL gets into the you know into the intima for example and then the macrophages come and they get oxidized and just this cascade and that and hydrogen gas like we talked about it's the smallest molecule in the universe so it has no problem getting in through the cell membranes to where it needs to go and now it can help to to mitigate that oxidation so that's one area but then there's inflammation because those macrophages they're sending out cytokines those are pro-inflammatory cytokines and that's going to all these other signalings and it's going to cause all this this problem well hydrogen gas is another area that it really helps to suppress or mitigate excessive inflammation it can for example when TNF alpha it's a cytokine activates NFKB well yeah so when that gets high that's going to activate this transcription factor NFKB NFKB is going to just huge inflammatory marker well molecular hydrogen can down regulate NFKB or NFKB but but anyways when that's down regulated that you're going to have less inflammation and so we see both on the areas of anti-oxidation and the anti-inflammatory effects of hydrogen that's could help to account for some of these observed benefits. Now dumb question hydrogen has been around forever and we've been sending rockets literally forever literally forever that's right it was the number one yeah what prompted anybody to say gee we should look at hydrogen in this way yeah who had the crazy idea yeah well and and actually it's interesting because we you would think if hydrogen gas does have this amazing biological benefits that were starting to potentially discover we we should already know about that right but but there's a couple interesting things so first maybe maybe we did know about we just didn't pay attention so there was a paper it was a book that was written by an Italian medical doctor in 1798 I mean just a little bit after hydrogen was even named and discovered and it was this this inhalation of basically exotic gases and in this there's a small description that he talks about the inhalation of hydrogen gas has an anti-inflammatory effect that was that was so long ago and then fast forward in then in 1975 there was an article by Texas Texas A&M and Bailey University published in science I mean that you don't get a journal more prestigious true science right and and they found that hyperbaric hydrogen treatment was very effective with these melanoma skin tumors basically just totally regressed the growth of the tumor it was amazing probably though it's not really feasible to do hyperbaric hydrogen therapy for a human just because hydrogen gas is explosive it's going to be the Hindenburg all over exactly so I think what happened then is so in 2005 people you know they were looking okay we have the the hydrogen gas being produced by our intestinal bacteria right maybe this is going to be therapeutic so a lot of converging IEDs they got to this concept that maybe hydrogen does have biological effect so 2005 and I talked to Dr. Ota he's the one who publishes nature of medicine publication 2007 and and this is his story he thought it he heard about it he was a mitochondrial researcher and he's like okay well let's let's try it and so they did and 2005 they started and they found that actually yeah it did have these therapeutic effects so they did more studies and they published that paper in 2007 in nature medicine again a top publication but but the interesting thing though is in that publication he showed that at physiologically and clinically relevant concentration so below the fun billy level and and at levels that you could do in a clinic so it's not going to explode but it can still be therapeutic is still beneficial for you and that when that paper was published now that's what got the research to just kind of skyrocket so there's a lot of research after that so that's maybe my explanation is one that has been a lot of research has been done well not a lot but it has been suggested for a long time but no one's really paid attention to it and then two the research not really relevant at the time because people thought well yeah but you can't really it's not really clinically viable but now we're seeing actually it can be very clinically viable and to the point that we're at now so now wait a minute so most of the air we breathe is hydrogen hydrogen yes is in the air right but the percentage so air has about you know 80% 79% nitrogen 20 21% oxygen oxygen and then the hydrogen concentration is I see 0.00000055% so not much it's not enough to absorb any therapeutic effect right okay the constant this concentration in our cells is not going to be high enough right so what you're saying is if I could make have bacteria fart hydrogen then that's one of the theories on why having fermenting bacteria producing this stuff might be good yeah actually that was I said it like in one of the earlier publications I think in the 80s it was suggested hey hydrogen gas has a very very low reductive potential even lower than glutathione maybe it has a biological effect we should check this out then in the see the foresight Institute there in Boston, Massachusetts they did a study with lactulose so lactulose is a non-digestible carbohydrate yeah right but it's also basically medicine and what but when it's metabolized by the intestinal bacteria it produces lots of hydrogen gas correct so what they did in the study is they took E. coli and did a genetic knockout on the hydrogenase enzyme so the the bacteria could metabolize the E. coli but upon metabolism it would not produce hydrogen gas so when they administered lactulose the hepatol or liver protective effects of lactulose totally gone interesting but when they gave the hydrogenase positive E. coli back in so now the E. coli could metabolize the lactulose but this time produced hydrogen gas some very significant hepatol protective effects so suggesting like you like you said that maybe a lot of the fibers that we are eating those benefits are mediated by the endogenous production of hydrogen gas now there's these large clinical reviews from you know huge journals huge populations looking at taking different carbohydrates of different medications and actually measuring the production of hydrogen gas and showing that yeah there's appears to be a correlation that those who are taking getting more hydrogen gas produced by the intestinal bacteria seem to thrive and survive and live longer and live better. Okay so I'm pretty convinced and that's why you're here that molecular hydrogen is the real deal so how how in the world you get the full range of benefits of molecular hydrogen? Yeah it's a great question of course still earlier on part of and part of the research again the preliminary studies and preclinical and clinical studies are very promising but but the fact is and we still don't really know you know how effective is hydrogen gas really like in a clinical sense in this specific disease you know there's no 10-year study you know really demonstrating beyond shadow of a doubt if you will that that hydrogen gas has a therapeutic effect. It has a high safety profile so people want to try it I feel like that's that's great you know and the research is very promising but but there's different ways to get the hydrogen gas right one of them so how do we do it yeah one of them is of course inhalation of hydrogen gas and that's actually that the Japanese government a couple years ago approved inhalation of hydrogen gas as an advanced medicine for the treatment of post-cardiac arrest syndrome and and this is just as a side tadnick because it's a pretty powerful that the reason why is because typically when you when you start the heart for a surgery or something you do a therapeutic hypothermia because if you don't this as an animal study looked at this then let's say there's only 43% survival that is what what this one study was showing 43% survival if you don't do the therapeutic hypothermia by doing a therapeutic hypothermia it increased to say 77% survival so it's a big deal that that's why it's the standard protocol right so in the same study they they use hydrogen gas instead of therapeutic hypothermia and with this group and the in survival increased to 92% with hydrogen gas better even better than therapy for hypothermia exactly and then when they combine the two hypothermia with hydrogen gas is a hundred percent survival which you can't actually beat 100% so preclinical studies and others as well as other now clinical studies are showing this is really good so the government in Japan approved this as a class to be medical device and now they're doing a very large study with 360 patients and maybe 20 different hospitals to see the true effects of the hydrogen gas in these clinical settings and in fact even here in the USA there's work towards getting FDA approval for an IND and investigate a new drug to study hydrogen gas for pretty much the same the same idea during extracorpial circulation for during a heart surgery actually you and I talked about that earlier when I was doing research with the heart transplant so we can talk about that later but anyway inhalation of hydrogen gas is one of the ways to get it and you can actually buy these machines they're expensive I actually have several patients who have purchased oh is that right these machines for home use but that's yeah you have to be cautious because again you don't know how much hydrogen gas are you really getting into the body for example because you know typically in the clinical research you know it's around 3% hydrogen gas but that's the total amount going to the body you have to look at the total production milliliters produced per minute and then compare that to your breathing rate and all this stuff but then you have to be cautious because it is explosive you know so that there's a lot of things this is a very new emerging industry so don't have a cigarette while you're you're inhaling yeah exactly yeah don't inhale that before okay so all right so that's not practical at least yes it's not I mean it there it it depends I mean you know tomato tomato you it can be done and people do do it but I'm just saying if you're gonna try that just be careful about it that's all don't don't just think oh it's no problem just you know just just do your research so inhalation is one way there's there's also intravenous hydrogen rich saline injection which is interesting and has some potential some great effects and and but a very practical and probably the easiest way and the most common way done in research is simply taking the gas and infusing or dissolving it into water and then drinking it because as far as I know everyone drinks water anyways so it's pretty pretty simple to incorporate into your life is just drink hydrogen rich water okay so wait a minute now we're gonna bubble the hydrogen into water and why won't that combine with the water to make more water excellent question so when you dissolve the gas into the water it it's just dissolves it into the water it doesn't react with the water to form like h3o or h4o or some novel structure again if you take hydrogen oxygen and put them together they actually don't ignite or explode unless you light a match unless you light a fire right that's so so that's why you can dissolve it into the water the problem with dissolving in the water is as soon as it's dissolved you do need to drink it quickly because it'll just go right back out and that's my point doesn't it does not attach to the water molecule or anything like that doesn't change the pH doesn't do anything like that so once it's dissolved in there and you make your hydrogen water you need to drink it so what I I can make some hydrogen water but if I for instance put it in my plastic water container what's gonna happen yeah if you can do that but again because hydrogen gas is the smallest molecule eventually it yeah it'll go right through those the plastic containers now there are some ready-to-drink products but they there's specifically done you know using aluminum type containers no cans or pouches but it has to be very cautious with all of that right so anyways that can be done but when terms of like plastic and things like that yeah it just goes right through okay so if I go on Amazon I can find lots of hydrogen water generators for home use most of them come from Korea or Japan yeah China or China yeah yeah what do you think how was the Latin word a caveat impeture right buyer beware right yeah some of those may may work in order to get you dissolved hydrogen but see for me I mean I'm really mostly focused on on the research of hydrogen and so I had to have some experience with someone look at some of these products and and the problem is a lot of companies that want to use the medical literature of hydrogen to sell their product which you know again scientifically I would say well how much research to really have or whatever but but even more importantly is is the product that they are selling does it actually provide the therapeutic doses or concentrations that we're using in research and often the cases no they're not so a lot of these products you're talking about they're they use electrolysis right and they have these electrodes on there and some of the problems there if they don't have the right membrane then maybe they're gonna get ozone produced chlorine produced during oxidation because chloride will be oxidized to chlorine gas you'd be drinking that maybe electrodes aren't fully clean or they're not fully inert with the platinum for example and so you get maybe on a electrode material heavy metals type in there and then even if all of that is no problem everything is working fine well then I just I've seen and heard there's problems often with consistency of how long the process actually lasting you first get it makes a good concentration although most of them only make like very low concentration like 0.2 to 1 milligram per liter or or PPM and what do we need yeah well what are the studies exactly right we don't actually know what we need okay but but we do know what what we have used in clinical studies to show therapeutic effect right so that's a good yeah so we want to exactly yes okay I'm gonna get back to that I just wanted to say about these those those units really quickly often there's lots of problems with their quality control even after a couple of weeks or months they might they may stop working start producing those therapeutic levels so you always have to constantly be testing and measuring the concentration there they can work fine but you just have to be very you know vigorous in terms of testing and making sure it's still working right to get that therapeutic level or dose and what is that dose and level again we don't we don't really know but what what are we using in the clinical studies showing the therapeutic effect and and that concentration is typically between well as low as 0.5 ppm or 0.5 milligrams per liter but is very rare and and some studies so there's no benefit there but most of them are around 1.6 milligrams per liter or 1.6 ppm and and some of them are as high as you know five or you know seven milligrams per liter you know or even higher than that and so it appears from some of the human research but a lot of the animal and cell culture studies that in some case not every case but at least in some cases or maybe in many cases there is a dose dependent effect so so the higher the dose of hydrogen the more likely or the higher the probability that it'll exert a biological effect and be beneficial at least there's never a time at least in the research that I've done or I've seen where a lower concentration is either less effective as a high concentration so basically a high dose of hydrogen is either as effective as or more effective than a low dose so so in research we typically want to just give high dose because it's very safe you doesn't there's no toxic build-up in your body you can't OD on hydrogen if you will and so getting a high dose of hydrogen it just ensures the probability that you're in the bell curve if you will that you're gonna get benefits if there are benefits to be had so I can't possibly explode by drinking hydrogen right yeah you would get hyponatrymia from drinking water okay yeah yeah so let's talk about I know a lot of people say well I drink alkaline water oh yeah and that's the same as hydrogen water yeah take it oh yeah that's a common misconception the conflation of the concept of alkaline water with hydrogen water and possibly because we think of alkaline water we think of high pH and pH potential hydrogen hey we're talking about hydrogen the more hydrogen the more alkaline right but it's actually almost the opposite and and very different pH was potential hydrogen of course the P is more of an exponent inverse exponent logarithmic function and the hydrogen they're talking about is not hydrogen gas molecular hydrogen but the hydrogen ion which has no electrons is just an H plus it's a proton right and so pH that H and pH has nothing to do with what we're talking about and we're talking about molecular hydrogen this hydrogen gas and when you take dissolve hydrogen gas into water it doesn't change the pH so there's there's there's no connection at all between the alkaline water aspect and the hydrogen water they're totally different now there is a correlation some of the early research which is a very interesting story because some some of the early research they found that this what's called alkaline ionized water actually had some therapeutic effects and it's like how how does this happen because an alkaline water alkaline pH is not going to benefit the human body correct I mean we you know yeah we are alkaline our bodies are alkaline but alcohol but water is not a buffer and to put it in perspective one teaspoon of baking soda it's a little teaspoon of baking soda which is actually you know sodium bicarbonate our body's natural buffering system a teaspoon of baking soda can utilize as much acid as 700 liters of alkaline water at it at a pH of 10 so you can't say that again because the most important part of this podcast may have just been set I want to say it again yeah so so one teaspoon of baking soda can utilize as much acid as 700 liters of alkaline water at a pH of 10 come on so that alkaline water thing that I'm buying at the store for $3 I'm better off having you know a pinch of baking or or just breathing a little bit more right because as you breathe that that's how we control our pH the best is by respiration so if you just excel out the CO2 yeah you would get you would increase your blood pH more that's what your goal was if you just excel more so so it doesn't work but but then that so that question then was well then why were these studies on alkaline ionized water what why were they showing this antioxidant effect anti-cancer effect anti-diabetic effect anti-inflammatory whatever these effects were like how do you explain this because it doesn't make sense that water could do this it would despite having alkaline pH so there were stuff put about like oh it's no micro clustering structuring enigmatic you know stuff but that none of that has is valid and and the evidence that people have apported I just just don't work but what it turns out is when you make this alkaline ionized water using electrolysis which by definition is the decomposition of water into hydrogen gas and oxygen gas during that electrolytic process this some of that hydrogen gas that's produced ends up getting dissolved in the water so when you drink alkaline ionized water fresh alkaline ionized water you may be not all the time because different machines and you know calcification stuff but you may be getting small amounts of dissolved hydrogen gas which are responsible for those therapeutic effects and in fact we did a study on non-alcoholic fatty liver disease we took rodents and we gave them alkaline ionized water okay the real story is it's really interesting but these researchers they took alkaline ionized water because they were like well this is really cool so they are there was figured out this is true like all the stuff they took alkaline ionized water and they compared to control water and they did the study and guess what no benefit nothing and they're like why is this not working and they're like it they were so sure that it would because they follow the protocol everything else did so they ended up talking to me we and we talked for quite a while and like okay let's do it again and I was like but what is the hydrogen concentration and they're like oh we don't know and so we measured the concentration of hydrogen it was quite low like 0.3 milligrams per liter 0.3 ppm and so okay let's do the exact same study but let's do also a low concentration around the 0.3 milligrams per liter and also a high concentration of hydrogen and high just means higher it was only like one ppm or something maybe lower than that we did the study and same thing the low concentration of alkaline ionized water so again high pH had this you know negative ORP that people talk about you know all this stuff had everything zero benefit but the but the higher concentration of hydrogen very significant obvious benefit and on non alcohol-thated liver disease in this animal study and then actually we later with another group we did a clinical trial on non alcohol-thated liver disease and very very very positive results wow so all right so we're not gonna breathe it are the machines maybe maybe not well how at home can we do it I mean are there tablets that'll do this yeah I mean there are in fact that study just mentioned that non alcohol-thated liver disease we actually use the tablets because we we're we wanted to see okay a higher dose of hydrogen how it's gonna work so we use actually do echo MRI technology to actually measure the liver the fat deposits in the liver and saw these benefits but in a study we actually use these hydrogen producing tablets and I say hydrogen producing because of course a tablet it's not it's not a hydrogen tablet right like a solid hydrogen or something but but the way the tablets work is that they contain a special form of reactive metallic magnesium that when you add to the water it reacts with water H2O and it kind of liberates that H2 right and so you produce the hydrogen gas and you can see all the bubbles coming off and if you want to get you can get a lighter and light it on fire you know it's that's kind of fun to do sometimes when you're born careful do not do this professional researcher on a closed course that's right but but yeah so those tablets are you know they they I find value in them for the research because we get a high dose of hydrogen I think I think also because of course we use the placebo tablet also they give us the same amount of magnesium but I think just for the general consumer I think it's also nice because most people are deficient magnesium anyways true and so they're able to get some magnesium that way so should you we talked off camera should you do this all day every day every time you drink water or put a tablet in or should you dose yourself once a day or break it up what's your thoughts yeah I don't know I mean first off we still thanks for being honest yeah yeah well and even more honestly I'm very excited about the hydrogen research don't don't get me wrong but my disclaimer still we we still don't really know I mean we like I said there's no ten-year long-term clinical trial three five million dollars you know unequivocally showing something like I'm excited about this because the prospects of it being therapeutic and beneficial that we see in cell culture tissues animals and humans are very promising there's a lot from many research in many groups and I'm just I'm just one mere small person you know in in the midst of academia doing doing some research I mean I'm not you know I have so many publications is a lot more out there and so I'm excited because it's very safe and has a great potential so with that being said what is the best way of dosing if you will in the hydrogen again I don't know on that aspect just because they don't have you know all this stuff but but we will say how do we do it in the clinical research and and what is based upon maybe some of the mechanisms of hydrogen gas maybe okay perfect how do we do it in clinical research yeah well the way so we just did a study that we're in metabolic syndrome actually using the tablets also because we wanted to try this high dose and see if it replicates some of the earlier studies that that you actually mentioned earlier and we used three tablets three times a day and the on the idea there was that way they would they would take the tablet they would put it in the water as soon as it would dissolve they would drink it immediately in basically in one goal so that you get as much hydrogen gas as possible and and that would get a high level of concentration in in their cells and they did that three times a day because I think you know when you look at on a cellular level you wanting the concentration of hydrogen gas has to reach a certain micro molar concentration a certain level in the cell in order to have a therapeutic effect so by getting a high dose of hydrogen just an intermittent high high level of exposure at once could be very important to get that high concentration and also because hydrogen is more of a gaseous signal modulator that's right yeah to get to get that effect so I like I like that idea in fact you'll find this interesting that earlier study I talked about with the APOE knockouts they originally were doing this with inhalation actually 24-hour exposure to hydrogen gas because you're like hey if hydrogen gas is this molecule then total exposure to it could be great so the French essentially in the beginning they they saw a beneficial effect and then it kind of plateaued and it kind of went away and but and what some of the research thinking is some of the methodology and things open up the open up the animal cage hydrogen gas would come out so it's almost an instrument have the exposure they switch it to hydrogen water and then the benefits could just continue to be there they didn't go away and a similar study was done with the in in Parkinson's disease where they exposed the rats 24-7 to hydrogen gas and then the other group drink hydrogen water the other group just had fiber lactulose actually and the other group gave were given intermittent exposure to hydrogen gas and if it was found that the continuous exposure of hydrogen gas had no benefit in in Parkinson's disease lactulose didn't really have any benefit either actually in this in this model other cases yeah they may and then the intermittent exposure actually was statistically beneficial so again we see it's important to have this intermittent exposure but none of those were as effective as simply drinking hydrogen rich water so Tyler is there anybody who really ought to do this or I mean is it good for everybody who should do this so first off because hydrogen gas is safe so people can use it you know children pregnant people and anybody can do it so I would say the people who want to take that risk if you will because it is safe but you know we don't like I said we don't know all the clinical effectiveness and everything try it a lot of people I have just reported back so many anecdotal testimonials granted who knows maybe it's all possible right but true but it's something that is safe and the preliminary preclinical clinical studies are very promising so you know those who are interested in your anti-aging and your health and your wellness or you know maybe if you're trying some sort of intervention it's just not working just just try it I mean just just give it a try and see if it helps you or not and if it doesn't okay if it does that's great but but I guess I would I would I just be cautious because again we don't know if it really works and to what extent and everything but if but for those who are open-minded and biohacking type area and then trying to find some a solution what we do have something that has some preliminary data so for some people when they first take the molecular hydrogen and again this could all be possible but these are just some things that I have frequent herd of people who are trying it sometimes they automatically feel like almost like a head rush of even mental clarity or just like wow they feel something some people who are often in pain they they'll be able to there's a pain just drastically decreases especially like at night time people have like aches and pains and they can't really get a good night sleep they report that they're able to sleep through the night with all the aches and pains and then just having more energy we did publish several articles actually on exercise performance for both in the elderly as well as in younger people that hydrogen may increase a decreased rate of preserved exertion decrease lactate or lactic acid people call you know muscle fatigue basically so and then there's also with a publication and healthy individuals that just decreased the basically it's called this the sympathetic nerve activation so makes you more parasympathetic so some people when they take hydrogen they fill not only a sense of mental clarity but almost more more calm or kind of relaxed and it has an anti-anxiety and antidepressant and there's some animal studies in fact we actually do the study too in helping with the increase in resilience to acute and chronic stress and so people just kind of noticed able to handle stress better and be more parasympathetic and just have more energy and cognitive clarity. Can I put it in my coffee? Yeah I mean as you could I guess one of the concerns would be because hydrogen gas is the solubility is based upon temperature so it would probably evaporate very quickly. How about a smoothie? Probably the same thing because you're probably it probably it depends on your method of dissolving the hydrogen gas into the smoothie but again you don't probably don't take the smoothie in a few minutes it probably takes the whole while so particularly if you've made hydrogen water and then made your smoothie yeah that's great information all right what do you detract what do you say to your detractors that oh come on now hydrogen water really yeah are you just the next alkaline water? Well it's funny because I felt myself sometimes on their same side of like yeah is this legitimate like it's it's crazy hydrogen gas is a neutral molecule and and so to for it to have a biological effect my background is biochemistry and and I'm just like this is so weird this is so strange so it wasn't how it's in Japan in 2013 they go to university and like doing some of the research and I've seen these effects and now of course I see I've seen it many times and I'm like something is going on here and so yeah to my responses you know look at like nitric oxide for example for back in the 70s it was proposed that this endothelial derived release releasing factor was a gas nitric oxide and people wanted to laugh that out like no gases can't do that especially you know something is particularly you laughing gas yeah right you know it just it didn't make it didn't make sense to them that nitric oxide would would do that but then of course it was later confirmed a decade later and then a decade after that they won't know when the Nobel Prize right for something that's crazy yeah exactly so who knows but it's it's very looking at the next Nobel Prize winner here no no maybe hydrogen gas will be subject to know I do it's possible but I'm just yeah all right Tyler's been great haven't you on where can people find you find out more about you sure yes so my website molecular hydrogen Institute comm again we're just tried to just provide some information some education so you can learn what is and what is not hydrogen I do post stuff I just on some of my social media you can follow me on Facebook and Instagram Tyler W. LeBaron is my IG is what you say right yeah Instagram handle anyway you're welcome to follow me and I post some of the stuff when I'm out of the country doing research and you know some of the new publications that we do yeah it's it's a fun journey so just join the hydrogen revolution all right very good all right thanks again for coming on my pleasure all right it's time for audience question a YouTube viewer ask our muscle building and longevity in verse related and if so what is a good middle ground that's actually a really good question and it comes up because we talk about mTOR and those of you who have read my books or listened to our podcast mTOR is actually very important in producing we can measure the effect of mTOR by insulin like growth factor IGF-1 and we know that IGF-1 when it's at high levels actually promotes muscle growth and that's why bodybuilders for instance who are trying to have huge muscles want large amounts of IGF-1 when we're young we produce large amounts of IGF-1 and that gradually decreases as we get older and in fact all of my super old individuals who are in their late 90s early 100s who are thriving actually have very low levels of insulin like growth factor IGF-1 and that appears to be one of the markers for successful aging okay so how do we balance the two there are very good studies that show the more muscle mass you carry into late life the better off you are in so many ways for one thing muscle is the consumer of sugars and proteins that you eat and the more avidly the muscle consumes sugar and protein the lower your insulin level is the lower your blood sugar is and the lower your hemoglobin a1c is all of which correlates with improved longevity recently spent a day with my friend Walter Longo's associate over in Lisbon and we are talking about this very effect they firmly believe that after the age of 65 you should increase your protein consumption because you don't absorb protein well after the age of 65 I actually disagree with them because my research shows that people don't absorb protein well after 65 because of damage to the intestinal wall and in my clinics we find that people who are very protein deficient as elderly individuals when we get lectins out of their diet and we restore their microbiome even though we're actually decreasing the amount of protein they eat their protein levels in their blood go up so don't be afraid of you know you I got to build muscle all the time but you don't absolutely need a lot of protein to build muscle so but it's a great question all right that's it for the Dr. Gundry podcast we will see you next week and please visit Tyler fascinating stuff that's all for now before you go I just wanted to remind you that you can find the show on iTunes Google Play Stitcher or wherever you get your podcast because I'm Dr. Gundry and I'm always looking out for you