23. Best Water to Drink? | Impacts of Hydrogen Water On Your Gut & Brain with Dr. Paul Barattiero of ECHO H20

I really want to talk about water. The different types of water impact on the body, why people should be drinking hydrogen water versus alkaline water.

There's no reason legitimately why altering the ph of water would do anything for the body. So hydrogen is critical for the function of the body. And everyone talks about longevity. But let's look at the people that are over 100. What are they doing? There was nothing you could link together except for their gut bacteria. We have so many chemicals in our water today. If there's nothing else someone can do, clean the water. Don't have your body be the filter. Filter, buy a filter. If you don't get it out of the water before you put it in your mouth, you're forcing your body to get rid of heavy metals, pesticides, pharmaceuticals.

If you want to be putting the best water in your body, period, full stop, end of story. It should be ultimate human. Welcome to the Ultimate Human podcast. I'm your host, Gary Breca, human biologist. I'm really excited about today's podcast. We go down the road of everything anti aging, longevity, biohacking, and everything in between that takes average humans and makes them ultimate humans. And I'm really excited because today I have one of the foremost authorities on water in the world on the podcast. I'm really blessed to have you on here. Welcome to the show. Dr. Paul. Dr. Paul has a background in alkaline water in the study of hydrogen gas. Hydrogen water, water filtration systems. And I brought them on because I even get confused as a biohacker about what kind of water should I be drinking. You know, the estimates are anywhere between 60 and 80% of our. Of our biome is. Is water. Obviously, our mitochondria use an inordinate amount of water every day to create energy. Denosine triphosphate that powers human beings. And if we're 60 to 80% water, then water's got to matter.

Yes.

And, you know, when I'm working with a client, very often I say it's what you drink, what you eat, what you supplement with, and what you do. And if you line those four things up, you're already on your way to being an ultimate human. But there's so much information out there that I feel like people get paralysis of analysis.

I agree.

I mean, there's filtered water, there's distilled water, there's alkaline water, there's vitamin water, there's hydrogen water. So pretty soon you're like, what the heck? Wait a second. You know, they all claim to do the Same thing.

Yeah, they're all the best, right?

Yeah, they're all the best. And, and I'm not saying there's anything necessarily wrong with them, but the people that tune into my podcast are the people that are really. They want to go next level.

Yes.

Right. None of them are tuning in to be average. No, they're tuning in to be ultimate humans. And my journey around the world is about finding the, the, you know, the right research and the right scientifically backed evidence to support any of the claims that we make that this is going to be beneficial for your health. And the outcome is never to say you have to buy my ebook or sell a product or buy a special supplement. But I really want to talk about water. The different types of water, their impact on the body, why she people should be drinking hydrogen water versus alkaline water versus filter water versus carbonated water or what have you. So very happy to have you on the show. Welcome to the show. Why don't we talk a little bit about your background and your journey to where you are now as one of the world's leading authorities on hydrogen water.

Thank you, Gary. I, I always drank water like everyone else.

Well, I hope so. You'd be dead if you didn't.

Yeah. And, you know, water to me, years ago was all about what you wash your car with, what you shower in and you drink it. Right. That was it. That's where I was at. And 10 years into my marriage, I've been married 29 years now. And 10 years into my marriage, my wife was very sick. She had thyroid issues, gynecological issues, very, very acute anemia and short term memory issues because of yeast, we found out later. But all of that was helped with water. And so that's where my introduction to water came. It was really in a. And a search, a journey to help my queen be better. Because I was 31 years old, married 10 years, and was like, well, what.

Made you think that this might be a water issue? I mean, those things, I can see the, the correlation with water, but, you know, most people wouldn't go, okay, well, there's no. She's got gynecological issues, memory issues, cognitive function, all kinds of maybe molds and parasites or what have you. Maybe it's the water.

Yeah. And I didn't, I didn't even come up with that.

Okay.

So initially I had some friends that had an organic food store. 9, 11 had occurred. They lost half their business because people weren't flying to Disney World to come. And they would come and stay in, you know, the timeshares or whatever. And they would get organic food from them.

Okay.

So they lost half their business. They were friends. They came to me and said, can you help us out weather this storm so we don't go out of business? I said, sure. And as a result of that, they were still struggling because it took longer than everybody thought for people to start traveling again. Sure. And so they, they eventually paid back and, and I said, look, don't worry about the interest, just do the principal. Right. Let's just let you know I'm here for you guys. Right. As a thank you. And that was the greatest decision I did, was for interest.

Because where these tipping points come from.

Yes. Because then they said, hey, we want to take you guys on a cruise with us out of Fort Lauderdale. We want to go on this cruise with this carnival ship, the Liberty ship. It was the, the maiden voyage.

Okay.

Nine day cruise. They brought water with them on that cruise and I thought it was the strangest thing in the world.

Wow.

Why would you bring water?

I actually sometimes travel with water, so I know how they.

So they brought us for, for us. And of course, I drank this water that they had started selling and believe it or not, they brought in water to their business and that's what saved their company from a revenue perspective.

Wow.

They ended up having 200 people a day coming and filling up gallon jugs of this water. That was great. So they're telling me it's the greatest thing since sliced bread and headlights on cars. Right. And all this kind of stuff. And I'm like, I don't know anything about this. At that time in my career, I was all focused on diabetes and not having people lose their legs or toes.

Right.

And so that was. My whole world was diabetes and prevention of limb, basically limb salvage is what we would call it. So we get on this cruise, mind you, my wife is on her first day of her cycle. She's doubled over in pain. She's going to be, in my understanding, she's going to be in the room for the entire cruise. Only two days. It was a nine day cruise. So two days of that cruise she might have gotten.

Wow.

And I was like, well, that kind of stinks because I'm going to be, you know, not with her. Right, Right. So I drink this water they bring. I feel nothing. I'm not levitating off the ground. I'm not flouting, you know, sprouting wings on my back and flying.

Right.

I'm not feeling anything. But I was extremely healthy. And have always been in my life. But my wife drank the water, and she said to me, and she clenched her fist and she said, I can't stop drinking this. My body is craving this water. And I thought, what?

Wow.

What is. Okay, right again. I wasn't there yet, right? And so she started drinking the water, and within two days, she was participating in the cruise and feeling amazing. And I'm like, wow. Whoa. I can't deny that something's here. I don't know what it is, but something. So here we're having loxom bagels at breakfast, and I'm asking the guy, hey.

What'S up with this?

Like, Jacqueline's with us. Like, I can't deny that, right? And he goes, oh, Paul, you don't even know. Like, everyone's issues are going away. And he's, like, making claim land, right? Like, he's talking. And I'm like, okay, slow down, slow down. I. I want to ask some questions. And he couldn't answer them because he didn't know what he was selling, really. And so he goes, hey, come to my office. The guy who sold me these machines is coming. He. Whatever. So he comes. I listen to him. He's talking about wounds. He's talking about all kinds of stuff. I go up to him and ask a question. You said the water could help with wounds. What's feeding the fibroblasts?

Because now you got the hook because you're in the diabetes world. He said, wound. You have this.

And I knew about wound care.

Firsthand account with your wife, which might have been anecdotal, but now, for sure, he's talking about your work.

I couldn't deny it, right? So I knew there was something, but I'm like, what is it? So I asked him, what's feeding the fibroblasts to. To drop collagen in the wound bed, right? What is it? He goes, no idea. I said, okay, you lost me. Because if you're standing up there for an hour, spouting all this stuff off that it's doing, and you don't know what the mechanism is, shame on you, right? Shame on you. You should not be doing that. Because I believe it's sacred ground when you stand and lecture and are sharing information, and if you haven't taken the time to understand the mechanisms and what's going on internally, you shouldn't be doing it. You should get someone who can. So they lost me, right? So. But I couldn't deny that I helped my wife. My wife kept going back and getting that Water within six months. It took a six month period. Her cycle was normal.

Wow.

And I was like, no other changes?

No other than she's added this water to her routine and she's drinking this water exclusively?

Yes. So she was going to their store and getting a gallon or two at a time and coming back and drinking it. And I had no idea. So I said, whoa, whoa, you're still drinking the water? She's like, yeah. I'm like, well, I can't deny the effects, right? So, but I want to figure out what the mechanism is because they were telling me, oh, it's alkaline. Alkaline. And I didn't believe. I'm like, I know it's alkaline, I can test it. But there's no reason legitimately why altering the ph of water would do anything for the body because it's not going to get through stomach acid.

And we know too. And correct me if I'm wrong, that alkaline water doesn't make the body alkaline. Doesn't actually change the PH of the body. Or as you said to me off camera, people would die from drinking a can of soda because the ph is 1.1. Right. So it's actually very, very, very acidic.

Yes. And, and here's the thing. When you have water coming from an electrolysis type device, the hydroxides. Oh, minus is why the water increases. So on one side you have H plus, which is a hydrogen ion, that's going to reduce ph, but it doesn't.

Mean make it more acidic.

That's right. And then the hydroxide will increase ph, but they're not, they're not stable, they have no buffering capacity. And in fact, from a stoichiometric perspective or a big large equation, right, you would have to drink 10,000 liters of a pH9 water to buffer the same amount of stomach acid as a quarter teaspoon of baking soda. That's how little buffering capacity alkaline water has.

And I've been aware of this for a long time. I've always said that I'm not anti alkaline water. I just want people to understand that the alkaline water will not make their system alkaline.

That's right.

So the benefits of drinking alkaline water aren't necessarily that it makes your blood alkaline.

Right.

It's probably also happens to be filtered and it's clean water. And there's benefits obviously to that over drinking tap water.

Right. And so, I mean, I sold in my career, before I started Doing hydrogen systems. I sold thousands of alkaline systems per month because it helped my wife. And I could not deny the results. I didn't yet understand the mechanism of why it was helping. I didn't agree it was ph I. But I also didn't want to not help people because I didn't understand.

Right.

Everything perfectly myself yet.

So. So what sort of made the transition from alkaline water, which you're kind of messing around with, and you're selling alkaline water systems to. To now where you are so the king of water. And you know, the hydrogen water filtration systems that you. That you manufacture, which I happen to personally have. I'll just disclose that I have two of them, one in each of my homes. But what is it about what did you discover along this journey that made you go, I've found the fountain of youth. I found the source of what really water can do in the body. And what was that?

Yeah, and that's exactly what I did kind of feel. I'm like, this is the holy grail. And what that event was is I knew my wife was being helped. I didn't understand why I had taken literature that companies or the alkaline water people were. Were sharing and saying, this is why it works. And I read all of them and said, this is all backwards to what I understand in water chemistry. So I went to a dear friend of mine who had a PhD in water chemistry from Emory, and I said, chris, will you look at all this stuff? I'm. I'm finding that it's all nonsense. This is backwards to me, but can you please look at it? And of course, he was staying in my house at the time. He's from Delaware. And he says, yeah, I'll look at it. And he came back to me and said, you're right, it's all backwards from what my. I mean, I have a PhD in water. I kind of know water. It's all opposite of what water chemistry is and what it does, except for this one study. I think your answer's in here. And I said, what? And he said, look here on page 34 of this study on this graph, it's saying that this is the mechanism of healing. And it's. And all it was is two letters, dh. And I said, dh, what is that? And he said, dissolved hydrogen. And I was like, as soon. As soon as he said that, Tiffany, you ever had that moment where you just feel the chills from head to toe?

Now you have to be a real geek to feel chills from head to toe from seeing the word distilled Hydrogen. Hydrogen. But I know your pain.

Yeah. I just knew because selling the alkaline systems, I knew hydrogen was on the cathode. Right. You can understand water chemistry. Oxygen's on the anode, hydrogen was on the cathode. So I always kind of felt it had something to do with hydrogen, but I had nothing to say. Here's a definitive now I had this study finally that showed dissolved hydrogen was what they were claiming was the reason, the benefits. And it just concreted in my mind like, oh yeah, that hunch was right. Now we know. Right. So of course it felt true to me, which is right, I think why it affected me so much. And I said, oh my gosh, thank you. And off I ran to go and figure out hydrogen. Well, I tell you what, once I understood hydrogen and that was my topic of search. Oh my gosh, I found stuff that was hidden.

Oh, me too. Thousands of art, peer reviewed published clinical research articles which by the way, we're going to make available.

Sure.

To, to the podcast listeners. I'm going to put a link below, maybe even a link to your hydrogenwaterstudies.com so if you want to read any of these studies, they can. I've personally read, I wouldn't say the majority of the studies on that site because there's about 1200 of them, but I've read some of the big ones on Parkinson's, inflammation, autoimmune. I mean, it is scary, the positive impact that it's had. It's almost like you don't want to mention it because you sound like a witch doctor. But, or you know, or you, you.

Make claims like it's a miracle. Crazy.

Some of what I read on there with my own eyes were, were miracle studies and I thought they were very well conducted. They're very well done for sure. And I, I even wrote down some of the ones I read. I read a study on Parkinson's, Irritable bowel syndrome, joint pain. There were several on joint pain that I just found astounding. Where people were reporting complete remission.

Yes.

Of systemic multi joint pathologies like pain.

In their joints, especially ra.

Yeah.

I mean, yeah.

Rheumatoid arthritis, Parkinson's disease, early onset Alzheimer's and dementia. Irritable bowel syndromes. There were dozens of studies on irritable bowel syndrome. And you know, we work with a lot of clients that have irritable bowel syndrome in fixing methylation.

Sure.

And we know that methylation has hydrogen byproducts. But when I read the combination of using hydrogen water with fixing people's methylation or even just hydrogen water as a standalone is pretty, pretty impressed, for sure. Hey, guys, if you've been watching the.

Ultimate Human Podcast for any length of time, you know that one thing I do not do is push products. I do not just let any advertiser into this space because I believe that the products that appear on the Ultimate Human Podcast should be things that I use every day in my life to improve my own physiology. One of them is something called the Echo Go Plus. The Echo Go plus is a hydrogen water generator that you can take on the go. You essentially take the top off of this bottle. You pour bottled water in this and repeatedly, it will make high part per million hydrogen water. You press this little button, you'll see these bubbles going up in the water. That's hydrogen being created in the water. There are all kinds of peer reviewed, published clinical studies on the benefits of hydrogen water, including reduced inflammation, better absorption of your supp supplements, better absorption of your foods, better balance of the stomach acid, and it feeds an entire class of bacteria in your gut. Hydrogen water, in my opinion, is the most beneficial water that you can drink. And now you can take it wherever you go. You can go to echo echo h2o.com. That's echo e c h o h2o.com. Enter the code ultimate10 for a discount. Echo h2o. Enter the code ultimate10 for A discount. And now back to the Ultimate Human Podcast.

I can tell you that there are three, roughly, I mean, 3,000 articles, 1250 studies, 217 or double blind human studies on 200 disease models right now, before everyone freaks out and says that's too good to be true, Right. I think we need to understand that hydrogen is supposed to be in the body. And everyone needs to understand that you are supposed to create hydrogen in your intestinal tract during the fermentation of food or digestion. So before everyone says, oh my gosh, I know it's shocking, but I didn't create hydrogen. It's been here for a while. And if we look at the body chemistry, it's all carbon hydrogen chain. So hydrogen is critical for the function of the body. And what I think people really need to understand is that you are supposed to create hydrogen in the gut. And this is what part of flatulence is. So we'll call it fart therapy or something, right?

Call it fart therapy.

Yeah.

So everybody should be farting a little bit.

They should.

Yeah.

And so what's beautiful is hydrogen is a reducer. That's its primary role. It reduces oxidation. So we know that oxidation is normal, but oxidative stress is not. And the problem why we have so many disease models is because many people have oxidative stress and that the combination of oxidative stress and chronic inflammation is where disease comes from.

Oh, no doubt. I've always said that inflammation is the root of all evil. And reducing inflammation, if we could do it systemically, obviously is not only a recipe for longevity and anti aging, but it's also a recipe for optimal health.

Yes.

So, so now you've, you've discovered that the key is hydrogen. Right, Right. And so now you have something to sink your teeth into. So now you start sinking your teeth into dissolved hydrogen.

That's right.

And by dissolved hydrogen. Because I know that hydrogen is in the air we breathe. It's in some of the water, has to be in the water we drink by structure. Tell me about the journey then towards hydrogen waters, you know, specifically.

Yep. So when we talk about water, it is H2O. So that's one of the big misnomers or misunderstandings. People say, well, isn't hydrogen already water? Well, it is, but it's not. Because water is now a liquid. You don't have access to the gas, the hydrogen and oxygen gas, they are now a liquid. So you don't have oxygen and hydrogen as a gas anymore. And in water, normal water, you'd be drinking, you have no hydrogen gas. You can have some oxygen gas from turbulence and water going through an aerator in your faucet or whatever, and you'll see some bubbles and that's oxygen because it's just mixing with air. But you do not have hydrogen. So what we're really doing, or what you have to do is you have to break up water molecules to the H2O and get rid of the hot oxygen and just dissolve the H2 molecules, the two hydrogens.

Which by the way, is, is part of what the Krebs cycle does inside of our mitochondria. So if we were to go inside of a cell.

Right.

And, and then find the mitochondria and then go inside of the mitochondria, the little motor that's spinning in the mitochondria. The Krebs cycle is a voracious consumer of water. And the first thing it does is split it apart.

Sure.

It takes, it pops the oxygen off and pops the hydrogens off and uses it in different parts of the cycle.

Melanin can do that. You know, there There are some studies out of Australia that melanin, you know, light coming through the eyes with melanin can separate water. Well, the body is fascinating.

So we don't have excess hydrogen in the liquid water that we drink.

We have none.

And, and you're saying if we were able to get excess hydrogen in there.

Yeah.

Then.

And the way it should be happening, the body naturally in the, in our gut, our gastrointestinal tract, really specifically in the colon, we should have predominantly anaerobic microflora. And within the family of bacteria, bacteria.

That don't use oxygen.

Right.

Anaerobic, yeah.

And. And they like fatty acids and fiber as their source of food, whereas aerobic bacteria likes carbs and sugar. Right. So.

Right.

People that have carbon sugar craving, it's because they have too much aerobic bacteria versus anaerobic people that eat salads that have high fiber content and maybe have loose bowels. It's because you don't have the bacteria to, to process the fiber.

Right.

You know, and so one of the.

Things I talk about a lot is that very often your sugar cravings are coming from your gut, your gut flora. You change the gut flora, you change the cravings.

Amen. So what, what we need. And, and years ago, years ago, I came across a study that showed that the, the aerobic bacteria wants a positive electrical potential in the tissue. Anaerobic, or what we call strict anaerobes, they want a negative electrical potential. And what's perfect for them is a negative 300 to a negative 400 millivolts of electrical potential.

Okay.

This is not electricity, it's electrical potential. It's what's called an antioxidant charge, but it's a potential. And what that does is, is it creates an environment or what we call a biome or terrain. So for the terrain to be correct, in the gut, it's electrical. And so years ago, when I read this study, I was like, oh, gosh, we can do that. So when we go, when we process water, we can impart a negative electrical potential to water very easily by adding hydrogen. By adding hydrogen, because hydrogen is electron rich. And so we know that the orp, what's called oxidation reduction potential of water doesn't. So we know ph doesn't survive stomach acid. Orp, we don't believe survives stomach acid, but hydrogen gas does. Hydrogen gas will go through the duodenum or duodenum into the small intestine and then into the colon. And when it's in the colon, it'll change the polarity back from the Disrupted.

So maybe this is one of the reasons why one of the studies that I read that talked about a very positive impact on immunity.

Yes.

And 70 of our immune system comes from the health of our gut, for sure. And so by actually improving our gut flora and gut biome and maybe restoring some of those bacteria that don't require oxygen, that specifically don't like oxygen, but can use hydrogen.

Right.

That this would be linked to bolstering the immune system. So if we're able to put more hydrogens into the gut, we can restore gut flora.

Right.

And then get the benefits of the restored gut flora.

Right. Because hydrogen will work to create the train. And if we look at humic acid, like a lot of probiotics and stuff is humic acid, well, that produces hydrogen. So the reason these probiotics actually do something for us is because they're hydrogen producers. If we look at human. That's your main effort. Well, it's a band aid, because it's only going to last a short amount of time. You got to take taking the pills. If we get the terrain in the biome changed, the bacteria will come back and live there. And within the anaerobic microflora family, we have these really cool bacteria called hydrogen trophs. I did a dissertation. Hydrogen trophs, hydrogen troughs.

So the word hydrogen on hydrogen trove bacteria.

Well, on hydrogen, yeah.

And it's gonna say that might have been the most boring thing in the world.

I loved it, of course, because.

Of course you did.

But what I did is I looked at 4, 000 centenarians, because everyone talks about living forever and everyone talks about longevity. But let's look at the people that are over 100. What are they doing? And there was no food, there was no religion, There was no part of the world. There was nothing that was. That was. You could link together. Except for their gut bacteria.

Wow.

Was the one thing they all had in common, because I believe longevity comes from gut.

Oh, no doubt. I would absolutely support that.

So. So if we have these hydrogen trophs, which we should have when we eat fiber and fatty acids, short chain and medium chain fatty acids, and then fiber, beneficial fiber, water, soluble fiber, then they, those hydrogen tropes, convert those fatty acids and fiber into hydrogen gas. And what's really beautiful is they will consume 30% of the hydrogen gas they've created as their own energy source. And then the rest goes either out the tailpipe or into the body through the intestinal tract to modulate our function of our body.

So, so then simply by drinking water that's had hydrogens added, we're feeding the gut bacteria, we're changing the floor of our gut, we're making it more hospitable to the bacteria that are actually doing things like reducing inflammation, interrupting free radical oxidation, and possibly even bolstering the immune system. And all of those things that are actually coming as a result of the gut being healed. But the hydrogen gas, you know, excess hydrogen gas is what's causing it. I also read a pretty interesting study about athletic performance and a parabolic effect on athletic performance just by switching from filtered water or water with basic electrolytes, like a, an electrolyte packet to water that was hydrogenated. So tell me, like, how would it affect physical performance?

So based on we, we do have professional athletes and we have amateur and we have weekend warriors. Right. And the study, I don't know what study read, but the study that I, my favorite was a study on elite athletes and they were soccer players.

I think that's the one I read on your site. It's on your hydrogen.

Yeah, it's the hydrogenstudies.com hydrogen studies.com. so these were elite soccer players, pro. And they either consumed an, they did a crossover with them. So they had placebo water or they had hydrogen water and they would change in one week intervals. And so at the end of the study, it showed there was no lactate buildup, there was no what's called exercise induced muscle decline. So those drinking the placebo water, which was typical water, they would have muscle decline at the normal place they thought they would. From a fatigue perspective.

Yeah. That what we call doms to lean onset muscle soreness.

Yeah. And they were doing knee extension. Just so everyone knows who's listening to this. They were doing knee extensions to. Yeah. To see when, when were they not able to do them as well. And so at the end of the study, they showed with those drinking the hydrogen water, there was no fatigue period. There was no lactate buildup in the muscle. There was no, I mean, there was a number of biomarkers they were using, but the reality was there was no fatigue. And then the recovery times were much lower.

Right.

And so that's what we've noticed as well with athletes is they say they can go a lot longer. And where this is really beneficial, of course, elite athletes, but also people that, let's say they're, they're aging and they can't get quite to a mile, but they want to run a mile again, they can get there with drinking our water.

And so you know, we know too that sedentary lifestyle is now the leading cause of all cause mortality. So it means we've got a lot of sedentary people. People, we have a lot of obese people. We also have a lot of people that don't make the choice to be sedentary, but for whatever reason they're physically impaired or they have an injury. So for non elite athletes, I mean it's still good for them to consume hydrogen water because it's going to have the benefits of the gut circulation, reduction of inflammation.

Yeah.

So. So then tell me about you. You're fascinated by this study. You know that it helps your wife. You're on to the.

Yeah.

You're on to hydrogen now.

Yeah.

Dissolved hydrogen. And so now what are you doing? Trying to figure out a way to get dissolved hydrogen into water.

Yes. And, and I was selling. It just so happened I had done research on water. I didn't choose the one that, that other gentleman did, you know, that, that my friend had. Because when I, when I started testing it, I couldn't find the properties in that water. When the machines were brand new, they, it did have hydrogen, but then after a short time it didn't. And so I was trying to figure out what was going on. I, I learned later that in the electrolysis chamber, calcium and minerals in general that are positively charged, they have an affinity to the negatively charged cathode. And you can get calcium buildup on the electrodes. And once you have even the smallest amount on the surface, you can no longer dissolve hydrogen gas because the hydrogen bubbles coalesce or group together and they're too large to dissolve. You don't have pressure forcing them in a dissolved state, so they just go out to atmosphere. And so what, what my first cycle was, was making sure that we had hydrogen in a nano size small bubbles so that they would dissolve in a flow through machine with no added pressure. And so through, through this process, there was a patent created with some engineers that, that we were working with that reversed the polarity of the electrodes every time you turn the machine. So this was the first thing we did.

Okay.

And that made it impossible for calcium to build up. So you could keep hydrogen in an alkaline system. Because what we were understanding is the ph didn't matter, but the hydrogen did.

Right.

But we didn't know how to make hydrogen without making ph water initially, meaning without making alkaline. Right. We didn't know how to have the hydrogen gas, but we then knew how to have the hydrogen gas. Always Instead of two weeks, which is what. What the other machines were doing is after two weeks, there'd be enough calcium buildup that unless you cleaned the machine, you wouldn't have any hydrogen gas anymore, so you wouldn't lose the benefits. And people were telling us, yeah, I felt amazing when I got the machine, but after about two weeks or so, I just. It doesn't feel the same until I clean it. And once I clean it, I feel great again. And we're like, huh, what's going on? Well, we were. What we learned is that the hydrogen goes away because the calcium builds up. So we had to figure that out initially. Quite honestly, the engineers did the reversing polarity to save the electrode life.

Right.

Because once the calcium's on there, they overheat. And. And we didn't know it was hydrogen, but luckily, it also kept the hydrogen in the water. And so we. We just figured out it wasn't like we were brilliant and we were just trying to fix one problem, and we fixed two.

Right.

And so that was huge. Well, fast forward years later. I created Echo in 2009, 2010, 2011, with a focus on hydrogen as the conversation, because now we have the patent that makes it so we'll always have hydrogen in alkaline water.

Right.

And then it was a few years later that I created the first machine, the Equinine Ultra, which combined the alkaline and acid water so that you'd have a neutral ph. And then I ran it through a filter so we could get rid of the hypochlorous acid that was created in the acid water. So now we would have a nice tasting water that was hydrogen and neutral ph. That was the first generation of machine traded back in 2014. Okay.

Okay.

So that was the Echo 9 Ultra. And we figured out some things and then said, oh, let's do it even better. And that's what led to the ultimate machine that we have today, which makes four different types of water. But in that process, we created a module, what we call the hydrogen module, that uses a proton exchange membrane where the cathode never touches water, ever, so you can't get calcium buildup.

Okay.

And what we're really doing now is we're harvesting hydrogen and oxygen. We're sending oxygen back out to the environment, and we're dissolving in a ventry circuit or a dissolving chamber, just hydrogen and mixing it with the pure water.

So when you drink this hydrogenated water, you know, number one, what could somebody expect to feel? And number two, how long does the hydrogen stay in the water? Because, you know, sometimes I go to, you know, 711 and I see there's a lot of hydrogen water now, which I assume is valid. Some of it comes like a squeeze pack.

Yeah.

Some of it comes in, in aluminum canisters. You know, my experience tells me that you can't really dissolve gas in a water.

Right.

But maybe you can if you dissolve it to such a particle size. It just stays in there and then. So once somebody, let's say, puts one of these under their countertop or gets fills a glass with hydrogen water, how long is it viable?

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So we have tested it through gas chromatography and your half life is at three to five hours, depending on the temperature of the water. So if you put it in a glass that is open to the atmosphere, the hydrogen is going to go and, and it's three to five hours for half, which would still be a therapeutic concentration with our water. Okay, so six to eight hours would be your max. And so if people aren't drinking glass water in six, eight hours, we have.

Yeah, yeah, we have to fill it up and you drink it for six to eight hours.

But the reality is if you put it in a container, and this is the problem There are people and companies trying to sell hydrogen water. Hydrogen is number one on the periodic periodic table. It's so tiny, it'll go through metal, glass, plastic. It goes through. Because it's so tiny. If we put it in a bottle that's sealed with no airspace, no path of least resistance for hydrogen to go up into the airspace, you can only lose 0.1 parts per million per day. And this is just a round number.

Okay.

It's not exact science because it would have to do with the volume and temperature and you'd have to get a lot of equation right for Boyle's law, basically.

Sure.

Boyle's law governs how long a dissolved gas will stay in a liquid at whatever atmosphere you're at.

So is there any validity to hydrogen water that you could get at the supermarket or is it probably lost a lot of its.

The ones that I have tested, not all of them, but I've. The ones that I've tested do not have the concentration that was claimed. And they're very careful to say that at time of. There will be an. When it talks about parts per million, there'll be an asterisk and it'll say down on the fine print at time of production.

Okay.

So there's only one substrate that's been identified that holds hydrogen in, and that's an aluminum. Very thin aluminum sheeting. It kind of looks like the bubble gum wrapper. Remember Wrigley's gum from years ago?

Sure.

And so that's why the flexible containers that, that, that are there. The problem is the top is plastic.

Right.

So it's going to go through that eventually anyways because you don't have the film entirely, wrapping the whole thing, trapping.

The gas in there.

So the ones that I've tested don't have the concentration. And quite honestly, it's way more expensive to pay five bucks for 12 ounces of water.

Right.

I mean, imagine if gas was that expensive, people losing their minds. So I, I created like sport bottles years ago that you have a rechargeable battery. You can just put clean water in it.

This is one of them right here, right?

Yeah, yeah. So you, you know, you, you can just push, push the button and you can see hydrogen going in.

I can see it.

And then out the bottom is a port.

I've got this one too.

Yeah.

Oh, there is, there's a port out.

The bottom right there. You see the little.

So be breathing that.

Yeah, yeah, There you go.

Oh, that feels great. So that's creating hydrogen water. And, and what is the part Concentration that's in here.

So there's two time cycles, there's a five minute and a ten minute. Five minutes will give you two and a half parts per million. Ten minutes is up to four and a half parts per million. We, we tested through gas chromatography. Again, we always do that, but I mean, it's tough.

I do notice when you open this, after a while, a bit of a pressure. Yeah, you can hear that. You can hear it pop.

Yeah.

So that means that a little bit of hydrogen's gotten out, but there is still some. That's.

Oh, yeah, there's a.

Plenty dissolved in them. So for somebody that only wants to, you know, the best they want. They're. They're like, I want to drink the best water for my body.

Yeah.

Water that's slightly alkaline, that is also hydrogenated.

I wouldn't say the ph matters at all. In fact, what would be better for their stomach is even slightly below seven would be fine. If we look at the water on the earth, it's five and a half to 8.4 ph coming out of the ground. It depends on the mineral content.

Right.

Your ph is typically because of mineral content, or in electrolysis devices, it's hydrochlorous oxides.

And so no real truth to higher the ph, the healthier the water.

Not at all.

I'm glad that we're dispelling that myth.

Yeah. In fact, in fact, it can be harmful. When I was selling machines, about 15 of the population have what's called a Herzeheimer effect when they drink water because it throws their system out of balance.

Right.

If we understand our body, our stomach is highly acid. I mean, bile is one and a half bh. And so putting an. And so let's check out the environment, which should be like a 3, 3 1/2 ph with gastric juices. You put a 9 1/2 ph, you're going to. Any buffering that's done at all can be harmful for people who can't produce hcl.

Okay.

Because the stomach is going to immediately dump hcl and to reduce the ph again. And if you can't produce hcl, you and you give someone alkaline water, you just put a burden on them.

Right. Because you're now putting alkaline water past the duodenum. You're putting alkaline.

Well, even in the stomach.

Yeah.

The body can't help itself, but it's trying to write itself to put the ph down so you can break things down. So hydrogen.

So if you had a neutral pH. Water.

Yeah.

That was highly hydrogenated.

Yep. That's your perfect p. That's your perfect water for brain, for gut, for immune, for energy. That's really what you need. And I want to emphasize on clean water, because we have so many chemicals in our water today, it's shocking. It's shocking. And so if there's nothing else someone can do, clean the water. Don't have your body be the filter.

I say it all the time.

Buy a filter, right? Buy a filter and get the stuff out of water. You don't. Because if you don't get it out of the water before you put it in your mouth, you're forcing your body to get rid of heavy metals, pesticides, pharmaceuticals, blood pressure medication, you know, all kinds of stuff that's in the water.

I read the study recently on. On the amount of pharmaceuticals in the water. I always knew about glyphosates and obviously chlorine, fluoride. I want to get out of the water. Bacteria, viruses, of course, we want to get those out of the water. But microplastics now and, and even, you know, trace. Trace elements of pharmaceuticals that have gone down the sewer treatment plants are not really effective at getting those out. And then it comes back out of our faucet. And. And you're drinking all that. So you. Does the filtration system that you have essentially distill the water and then add the hydrogen? No, it just cleans it.

I do. Like, I mean, distilled water in the medical community has always been the gold standard for water because typically a patient's coming in with issues. You don't want to introduce more issues into the body and chase down issues.

Right.

And so typically they would use distilled water because it's pure. So they would know we're not introducing any other ag, you know, aggravator, effectively, we're not adding a. Something else.

Can distilled water also pull, like, electrolytes and things out of the tissue? And eventually high volumes of distilled water could be bad for you.

That is one of the many misnomers that's not true.

Ah, okay.

So you have, you have this belief system, and even some naturopaths, doctors and things believe it because they've heard it so much. But it's completely untrue that reverse osmosis or distilled water will pull the minerals out of you. And, and let's. Let's have fun with that, because I love having fun with it. Let's have a little fun with that. If you Drink water and it's supposedly pulling the minerals out of you. Where are they going? Because the water's still in you. I mean, you're mostly water. So where's that going? And number and really, why, why would the water need those minerals so badly that it would pull it out of you? Like it doesn't make any sense because the body needs it, but the water doesn't need minerals.

Right.

And, and so that, that's the second point is water doesn't need minerals. Water is perfectly stable at H2O by itself.

Right.

And I mean, it's really only H2O at pH of 7. Right?

Right.

If you change pHs, it's not really H2O, it's mixtures of other things. But the reality is the minerals in water is not what we need anyways because they're inorganic minerals.

Right.

It's because the, the water has gone across the earth or from a mountain or rain or whatever, and it's picking up minerals from soil and that is from rock. So these are not mint. I mean, unless people are licking rocks or sucking on rocks, I don't know. But the point is minerals we need are from food. Vegetables that are growing on the earth will pull up the inorganic minerals.

Right.

And make it organic. And we're not talking organic like non pesticide. We're talking about the state of the minerals. We need organic minerals because that's what is bioavailable to us.

Right.

We should not be counting on water as our, as our mineral source.

Right.

At all. Because they're inorganic minerals from rock. So and then my fourth point is, how do we know for a fact that this idea that reverse osmosis or distilled water is not going to leach minerals from you? Well, if you go to Seattle and you test the total dissolved solids in water, it's about 5 TDS, which is lower than most RO water.

Okay. So lower than most reverse osmosis.

The tap water that you're going to get in your house in Seattle, Washington is 3 to 5 TDS because it's coming from a mountain that has granite. There's nothing to get in the water because granite's so hard. You know, you're not picking up lime, you're not picking up calcium.

So theoretically that would strip minerals out of your body if it.

Yeah, and we would see, we would see everyone sick.

Right.

Seattle. But you also have South Carolina, North Carolina, Atlanta, Georgia that have almost no minerals in their water naturally.

Okay.

And so we just are not seeing these trends in health challenges or crisis in those areas. And so, and then you go to, you go to Switzerland, you go to Germany. About half of Germany you have no minerals. The other half you do, you know.

But you don't see differences.

You don't see, we don't see them.

So then, you know, the, the big takeaway from, from this is that if you want to be putting the best water in your body, period, full stop, end of story.

Yep.

It should be. Hydrogenated water is water with excess hydrogens to feed gut flora for bacteria, for inflammation, for its oxidative reduction potential for your brain.

Yeah. You know, we, we do what's called EEG. I'm sure you do. We have a Brain Master 21 channel, you know, EEG that we can use in our office. And, and then, and I used a doctor in Tampa who does brain mapping as well.

Okay.

And he took 10 patients and one of them was a 62 year old female. He did nothing else but give her 16 ounces of echo water, our water. And within three minutes he saw a 32 change in plasticity of the brain.

Wow.

58 normalization of alpha and beta waves. And then when you look at the actual graphics, it's beautiful because you went from almost a full red in the brain, which was high function, you know, the brain's overworking to green, which was normal function. And it was three to five minutes. So we see that change in individuals with, whether it's a neurologic or just ADD or ADHD or whatever, they will say, oh, I feel more clear right now.

I notice when I travel, I'm not able to drink hydrogen water. I do notice it.

Yeah.

So one of the reasons why I just got a system for my place in Colorado, because we spend so much time out there and I drink the water right out of the glacier. It's awesome. Glacier fed spring water, which is great. And I know that the water is healthy. But yes, again, you know, for those people that just want to go next level.

Yeah.

With their water, hydrogen water system will add the excess hydrogens that can actually have all of these additional benefits.

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Well, so it's interesting because when we look at brain and I think we have what, 62 studies on Parkinson's alone. And, and, and the studies on hydrogen are pretty amazing because it'll say like disease modifying effect with Parkinson's disease. I mean, it's pretty strong language. But I want everyone to understand it's not hydrogen actually going to the brain. It's gastric ghrelin. So you have leptin and ghrelin. Ghrelin is a master hormone in the body. A lot of people call the hunger.

Hormone the hunger hormone. Yeah.

But what actually is intriguing about ghrelin is it everything from circadian rhythm to, you name it, ghrelin's involved. If you were to just go on Wikipedia and type in G H R E L I N ghrelin, you would spend a year doing a topical study on everything ghrelin affects in the human body. And the, the most effective way to selectively stimulate gastric ghrelin is hydrogen.

Wow.

Better than a tyol. Better than mixing atenolol with. I mean there are ways they've looked at getting more ghrelin into the brain. And literally, when you drink water with hydrogen gas and it hits your stomach within three minutes, the ghrelin secretions, what's called striatio ghrelin. Right. Will go to the hippocampus, the hypothalamus, and the brain stem.

Wow.

And it begins to have brain function be peak.

Wow.

You'll. You know. So that's one of the first things people say is. Is, yes, it increased my energy because you're offloading the mitochondria from hydroxyl radicals. That was. That was the first study in 2009 that nature medicine published was that hydrogen was a selective antioxidant. And what it means by selective is that it only reaches and reacts with cytotoxic oxygen radicals. It never. It never touched the radicals that have a physiological role. It only combated with the cytotoxic or cell.

Amazing. I've never actually heard that term, selective cytotoxic radicals, meaning that it's only going after the ones that are causing inflammation, that are causing cellular damage. Because we. We sort of know now that aging is a mitochondrial disease. Right. It's a progressive decline in mitochondrial function. So then theoretically, anything that improves mitochondrial function either delays or reverses the aging process, which sounds like this does.

Well. Yeah. Telomere. You have huge benefits with telomeres. Hydrogen water in a healthy cell will lengthen telomeres, which you want.

Right.

In a cancer cell, it'll shorten them. Because you want a haystack. Right. You don't want those cells duplicating. The other major thing in all, there's 117 cancer studies, and what it talked about was that it benefited apoptosis, which is cellular death.

Natural, natural cellular death.

Yeah. Cells that are duplicating incorrectly, it destroys. Well, somehow cancer turns off apoptosis, and so hydrogen returns it back on. That's very, very beautiful.

So, Paul, at the end of every podcast, I ask all of my guests a secret question. It's not so secret now. It's all over the Internet. But the question is, what does being an ultimate human mean to you?

That's a good question. That's a good question.

And there's no right or wrong answer. Don't get me wrong.

I would say being the ultimate. To me, being the ultimate human being is serving, loving, and lifting others.

Wow.

And forgiveness. I would tell you. So many people try to hold serving.

Loving, lifting others, and forgiveness. Yeah, that's going to be a tough one to beat. That. That's a good one.

Well, I just say so Many people are hurt intentionally, unintentionally, and they want to hold claim on that person for that damage. Right. For that harm that they're doing. And forgiveness goes both directions. It frees both. Right? And I think so many people are dealing with difficulty to forgive others for abuse or harm, and it affects them. And I don't think they understand how much it affects them from a health perspective, from a mental place. And I'm not saying it's not difficult because people do some really harmful things to each other on this planet we live on. But I would say if we learn how to forgive and just understand, we're all messed up. We all do stuff to hurt each other intentionally, unintentionally. And if we can learn how to forgive and allow people on their journey.

Wow, that's amazing. Well, I mean, this has been amazing, Paul. I mean, I feel like we could sit here for two more hours, but I try to keep these podcasts to 60 minutes or less so that people can listen to it on their commute. If you'd like more information on the, you know, the hydrogen water filtration system or just links to the studies that we discussed on the podcast today, or even links to all 12, 50 of the hydrogen water studies, I'll make sure that I put the link in the. In the down below. And you're welcome to wander around those studies like I did. I probably read six or eight of them in depth myself. I only read the human trials or a lot of rat models on there, but I also, I read the human trials. I did read the one on the soccer players. So I hope you guys found this podcast beneficial. This is Dr. Paul from Echo Hydration Water Filtration Systems, and I look forward to seeing you guys next time. It's just science.