419: Unlocking the Benefits of Hydrogen Water for Health, Longevity, and Metabolism with Alex Tarnava

I had chronic inflammation, you know, at first a hundred times abnormal and then 10 times abnormal. And it was hydrogen that really helped it go down. And now I don't have to take any anti inflammatory drugs.

Hi, I want to welcome you to Midlife Conversations.

I'm Natalie Jill, your host and I help midlife women redefine and rebrand aging. On this podcast, I do what I do best, taking complicated information and conversations around aging that are relevant to us now and breaking it all down simply with actionable steps that you can implement.

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I also regularly interview some of the most inspiring people living in their best midlife years. On this show, I cover topics about our health, hormones, navigating weight, blood sugars, our mood, focus changes, even our relationships, career changes, beauty and more.

Hydrogen water is a lot more than just trendy. We've heard a lot about it lately with the baths and the bottles and tablets are what I've been using lately. And it's a lot more than just something trendy. This is something that can really impact how we age. It can impact weight loss, it can impact our gut health, our inflammation, a lot of different markers that will really help us with longevity, age, optimizing aging. Well, listen up midlife women, you're going to want to hear this. Today I've got Alex turn turnover on and what I the reason I wanted to have him specifically is he's the inventor of the patented and clinically validated open cup hydrogen tablets. So if you've seen those hydrogen tablets on the market, most likely he's behind them. He's the one, it's his formulation that's doing this. I've been using a very specific rejuvenation brand from Drink HRW with hydrogen tablets and I wanted to have him on because I have a lot of questions about this versus a bottle, versus filtration systems versus hydrogen baths and how do we weed between? How do we navigate all the information and know what's true, what's not, and where's the science to back all of this up? Thanks so much for being here today, Alex.

Happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Let's start with just really basic. What is a hydrogen tablet? Why is hydrogen water something that people are looking at and isn't water in General? Water is H2O. Water already has hydrogen. So what makes this different?

So the hydrogen tablet, it actually doesn't have hydrogen, it's splitting hydrogen off the water. So that H2 that's in your H2O. The tablet is actually just liberating that to make it available to you, because our bodies don't have a mechanism to break apart water to get the hydrogen gas. Right.

Okay. So you're drinking water, you're getting hydrated, but you're not actually getting the hydrogen that it's in the name. Okay, got it.

Exactly. And think of this kind of like a bioavailability standpoint. I'm sure a lot of people listening know that magnesium oxide is not bioavailable. So you need to take a bioavailable form of magnesium. Well, the hydrogen is the same way when it's attached to water, basically our stomach acid. Our body can't break that molecular bond, so we can't have access to the H2, just like we can't have access to the magnesium when it's bound to oxide. So tablet is working, and it's actually using magnesium, which is a cool part, because you're ending up getting a very bioavailable form of magnesium, you know, as a byproduct, but it's liberating the H2 so that it's available in our body.

Okay, I think I understand. I'm going to go a lot deeper here because this is. This is a. It's an interesting subject that is confusing for a lot of people, including me. Why is this important? Like, why do we need to be taking hydrogen tablets and. Or even if people are doing hydrogen in a bottle or hydrogen bath, where is that even coming from? Why is this important? And where did that come from?

So the short story of this is we evolved to anticipate hydrogen gas in our cells at all times from the very beginning of evolution. Since we were a single cell organism, hydrogen has been with us. And the way we evolved and carried hydrogen into modern times was by breaking down by fermenting fiber right in our small intestines.

Okay.

So we have bacteria in our body that. That breaks down fiber and it releases hydrogen as a byproduct. Well, the problem here is, throughout the majority of human evolution, we consumed 100 to 150 grams of dietary fiber per day. So we were making tremendous amounts of hydrogen. Now, the average person on a standard American Diet is getting 1 to 3 grams of dietary fiber.

Wow. And then you even take people not on a standard American diet, like doing high levels of keto or even carnivore, they're getting very low levels.

Yeah. Like potentially zero. Right. And then, because what we've done in, like, horticulture, we've stripped the fiber from most of our food sources. So over the last several thousand years, 10,000 years, we've tried to make our food more palatable, easier to eat, softer. Right. So even someone on like a raw food, vegan diet might only be getting 60, 70 grams of dietary fiber a day. We just cannot get the levels that we evolved to anticipate to produce this H2.

So I want to make sure I understand correctly. So our bodies used to, when we would get enough fiber, make its own bioavailable hydrogen. Did I hear you correctly? But because we, because our diets have changed, Even if you're healthy, if we're not getting that level of hydro, not that level of fiber, our bodies cannot make that. So what happens when we're lacking this and we're not being able to have that?

So this happens with any other living thing. When you don't give it its food, it dies. And this is one of the causes of, like microbiome dysbiosis.

Yes.

Right. That we're hearing all about. Right. So hydrogen plays critical roles in our microbiome and in the bacteria in our system. Some of the bacteria are making hydrogen, others are consuming it as part of this gaseous flow with other gases in our system. So what the research is showing is a large percentage of middle aged and older metabolically impaired people.

As much as 80% of them either make very little amounts of hydrogen gas or none at all when they're given a fiber. And instead they make methane. Right. Which comes with a load of negative.

That's the gas, the tooth. Okay, wait, I just had a whole light bulb moment here. Maybe this is completely not accurate or, but, or maybe I'm putting a whole link together here. So I never really understood why fermented foods were so good for the gut. Is that, why is that because fermented foods or we're kind of creating that.

So I'm not a microbiome expert, but I, I know personally with me, if I eat raw cabbage, I get really sick and I don't actually break down that fiber.

Okay.

You know, and some of it passes through me. But if I eat sauerkraut, I have no problem. Right.

But I'm wondering, because you said your body, if we had enough fiber, is, is creating basically the hydrogen byproduct. So I'm wondering if we're, when we're fermenting food, if it's sort of doing that too.

It could be right or it could be making it easier for our bacteria remaining to break it down to thrive. That's an interesting question. I work with a couple of professors who are microbiome experts. So I'm going to ask them.

Okay. Because I just, I just connected that. I'm like. Because I never really fully understand why fermented food would benefit the gut. I eat fermented food. But that would make sense now if we're, if we're bas doing that. Okay. So when we are. So like when somebody eats too much broccoli or too much fiber at one time and they're not used to eating it, it's breaking it down, but it's creating methane. Is that, did I hear you correctly? And that's why they're getting gas versus this.

So basically, as you're killing off the hydrogen producing bacteria, other bacteria take over. And what the research is showing is the bacteria taking over are methane producing bacteria that breaks down the fiber and produces methane. Now this is important because we know that higher breath methane is associ with basically every disease outcome. Right. We know that higher breath methane, like as we age, we have more methane in our breast and less hydrogen.

Okay.

Oh. In looking at research on centenarians, so people who are over 100 years old, such as in Okinawa, Japan, they have higher breath hydrogen than the average young person. So their lifestyle has helped them retain the bacteria to produce a hydrogen coming out. So this could tie in. You know, we have some really cool effects that we've shown in the elderly about improving biomarkers of aging and also functional outcomes like sleep and fitness and reducing pain. So we've had some really cool results in older, older adults.

So when people sort of roll their eyes at hydrogen water and say, well, is it? And my husband's one of them, he's like, you know, well, but isn't water H2O? If I'm hearing you correctly there? It's yes, you're getting that, but you're not. It's not. Like you just said, it's not bioavailable. So you're just getting the water, but you're not getting that.

Exactly. Right. And think of it like this chlorine gas is poisonous. Right? And sodium metal, you drop it in water, it's going to explode and create like shrapnel everywhere. Might light on fire too.

Okay.

But you combine those two and they become table salt. Right?

Okay.

So the compound, once you change a compound, it behaves very differently than its parts.

Right, got it.

So water behaves very differently than hydrogen gas. And we specifically need the hydrogen gas for these functions in the body. And our bodies can't break the Hydrogen gas off water. You know, we need to do this through another method, either chemical reaction or electricity.

Okay, so let's go down some of. I want to. There's a bunch of things I want to ask you, but I want to start first with just the ways that we can get hydrogen water. And then I want to talk about just the different various benefits and why we need to pay attention to this. So when I first learned about hydrogen water, the first way I learned about it was hydrogen bath. So I took what is that doing? And other than relaxing me, I felt relaxed in it. I don't know what it was actually doing. So talk to me about that first.

It'll get better into say your muscles and, and like your connective tissues than drinking the water. So actually I have bath tablets that were developed, drink HRW actually distributes them and we have a couple clinical trial on the bath tablets showing reduction in muscle pain. Right. We actually were equivalent to the Rice protocol. So rest, ice, compress, elevate after grade two ankle tears and pro soccer players. So there's some really cool effects from bathing. But when you're bathing, it's not getting to your internal organs and then there's inhaling hydrogen. So breathing it in.

Yes.

And when you're breathing it in, it gets into your lungs, you know, it gets into your muscles similar to like bathing and you know, a bunch will get into your heart, but none really is getting into your gut and getting into your liver, you know, and that's where hydrogen water comes in. And that's why hydrogen water, like drinking it, drinking it comes with the biggest metabolic benefits because it's first getting into your, your stomach. It's interacting with your microbiome, it's improving your microbiome and your short chain fatty acids and improving your gut health. It's reducing like inflammation in your gut, Calprotectin. And we've shown this in clinical trials on the tablets specifically, which are the highest dose and concentration of any tech in the world. Then it's into your liver, you know, and it's driving liver homeostasis and sure, basically it's driving a lot of the metabolic benefits we're seeing. And that's why say with the tablets exclusively getting this very high dose in the water, getting into your gut, getting into these internal organs. We've shown, I think it's in six clinical trials, we've shown weight loss and improvements in cholesterol and blood pressure and all of these, all of these important things that so many in the western world are struggling with. Now.

Okay, I'm going to come back to that thought because I have a lot of questions there. But I want to go back to the bottle versus tablet for a minute, because when I first. So I started with hydrogen bath, then I switched to. I went. And I thought, I have to have a hydrogen bottle. So I went down two different brands of hydrogen bottles. In fact, I even featured this on the show a while back. And what I liked about the bottle is it was cool. Like, you press a button, it lights up, it makes bubbles. It was like, oh, this is cool. What I did wrong first is I was drinking too much of it, so I was, like, drinking it all day long, which I have now learned you.

Don'T want to do.

Yeah, yeah, Y. Um, let's talk about that first. But why do you not want to drink hydrogen water all day long?

So hydrogen is something called a mito hermetic effector, and I know almost no one is going to understand that. So I'll go one down, step down. And it's hormesis for the mitochondria. And the mitochondria is the powerhouse of our cells that create scanner.

Okay.

Right. So hormesis is a stress that we've adapted to that's mild enough that we become stronger from. So exercise is hormesis. Cold exposure is hormesis. The sauna is hormesis. Fasting is hormesis. These are all forms of hormesis that throughout evolution, we experience so frequently that our bodies were trained to become stronger from them. And this is why hydrogen being with us from the very beginning of evolution, since our last universal common ancestor, the single celled organism that spawned all life on the planet. That's why hydrogen is so critical as a seductive stress. It plays so many roles. Now, if you're sipping on a low concentration of hydrogen all day, that would be like doing a single bicep curl every 30 minutes. Oh, actually going to get a workout. And in fact, it could be chronic stress. You could start getting, like, tennis elbow and things like that from doing that.

So for me, it gave me a stomachache, honestly. Like, I was just. I couldn't. And I was like, what's going on my stomach? And then my husband was like, maybe it's because you're using that bottle all.

Yeah. So, I mean, we know with all sorts of hormutic stressors that if you blast it intermittently, you want this peak of stress and then recovery.

Okay.

That's when we see benefits. Like, for instance, when we put, you know, say, pigs under cold Exposure. Right. If you make them cold for a couple hours a day, really cold for a couple hours a day, and then they warm up, their inflammation goes down, their oxidative stress goes down, they lose weight, they develop more white adipose tissue which burns fat or sorry, brown adipose tissue which burns fat. Now if you make them a little bit cold all day long, the opposite happens. Their inflammation goes up, their oxidative stress goes up and they form more white adipose tissue and they get heavier. Yeah. Right.

Okay.

So hydrogen, because it is an adaptive stress, it's likely the same. You know, at, at best you won't get the same benefits of getting the spike in stress and recovery. And at worst it could actually be a low level chronic stress.

So this is an interesting weird marketing thing because I'm watching a lot of these bottles, there's a lot of those bottle companies out there now. They're like, all the reps are like carrying their bottles around all day long. So it's just, it's a little bit of a mismatch there because it looks trendy but it's not actually healthy to do it all day long.

Yeah, it's a challenge, right? Because unfortunately how our industry works is in most companies they see a trend and they just copy what the other company that they learned from it said. And when 99% of these companies don't actually understand how the molecule works and have never read any of the science, everyone's just copying bad made up information.

Right. But the bottles look cool. So I get it, that's what, that's why they're doing. But it's not actually how, okay, now let's talk about the bottle. If you used it right ver a tablet. Now I, I, I'm understanding reading that the tablets are going to be a lot more bioavailable. You're going to get the right dose. But I want to hear it from you. Explain that to me.

So the, the best bottles on the market are getting about four and a half to five parts per million. So what, what people need to understand, companies are advertising parts per million. But what's more important is the dose.

Okay.

Because parts per million is a concentration. Right? So four and a half to five parts per million. And the bottles are 250 milliliters or a little over eight ounces. So you're getting a dosage of 1.125 to 1.25. Right. Milligrams of hydrogen. You know, one of those cycles with the tablets you're getting over 12 parts per million in 500 milliliters or close to 17 ounces. So you're actually getting a dosage of 6 milligrams of hydrogen. So you're getting five or six times more hydrogen from the tablet than you're getting from the bottle. And that's the best bottles when they're brand new. Now with the tablets, because it's a fresh tablet every time, you're getting the same dose every time you take it, you know, provided you prepare it properly with the bottles, because they're working by pressurizing, you know, and gaskets are leaking and breaking, everything like that. And it's different for every bottle, but some of them down in a week, others in a few weeks, others in a couple months. And you don't know how much hydrogen you're getting. So you might have gotten four and a half day one, but in two months you might be getting 0.7. And now you're not getting even close to a therapeutic level.

So it's just not even consistent. Okay.

Yeah. Well, it's just like any machine, they start deteriorating the more you use them. Right. And the biggest thing is the gaskets. Right. Like.

Think about, like, for people who have, like a soda stream, you know, and the bottles start being less effective at keeping it in. That's why you have to keep buying bottles. This is the same concept with the. The, like the portable balls that you push for hydrogen every time you use them. That increase in pressure puts stress on the bottle.

Yes.

And then they work a little bit less every time.

Makes sense. Okay. Okay. So I'm doing the tablets now, and I actually. And if it's funny, I did one. I had. I went for a walk right before we recorded this, and I took one right after because I'm doing this every day, and there's an instant boost in energy to me. So I don't know if that's in my head, if it's placebo, if that's doing something.

We have. We have two clinical trials actually showing the hydrogen tablets either alongside or versus caffeine after acute sleep deprivation in young, healthy people.

Okay.

So in the first study, it was really interesting because, you know, this boost in energy is the number one testimonial we. We heard for years.

But even without caffeine, I would imagine. Yeah, sure.

Yeah. So the first one was just hydrogen versus caffeine.

Okay, Right.

And they put grad students basically under 24 hours sleep deprivation. Right. Playing video games all night long, and then had them take either the hydrogen or the caffeine and then do something called the attention Network test, like before and after. And hydrogen was equivalent to caffeine at improving the Attention Network test, but they affected different domains of attention. So caffeine affects alerting. That's why you get a bit jittery. Right. And you know, looking around, hydrogen affected orienting.

Right.

So that is kind of that calm energy you feel from hydrogen. Yeah. So then we did another clinical trial and this one had four groups. So there was a placebo group that had placebo and placebo, then there was hydrogen and placebo, and then there was a caffeine and placebo, and then there was a caffeine and hydrogen group. Right. So it was a quadruple arm, quadruple crossover study looking at all these same. It was a different set of grad students that did a similar experiment and everyone got put under an fmri, Right. To look at their brain chemistry. And it found that the hydrogen groups, either with or without caffeine, had a far more robust improvement in brain metabolism than caffeine did. Right, okay, so more regions of the brain were normalized then.

That's amazing. Well, I can tell you I absolutely can feel this. Not like a jittery caffeine feel. I can definitely feel like an increase in energy and focus. And I did this. So we're, we started recording at 3:00pm My time, which is. Would be like a more downtime. And I. So I took it like 30 minutes before and I. There was a definite boost of focus and energy. So I like it for that reason. So that you can feel. I know we talked a little bit about gut health, but talk to me about this whole metabolism and weight loss and what you shared there.

So metabolism is very complex. There's a lot of moving parts, right, from, from glucose homeostasis and insulin sensitivity and, and some of the hormones that regulate our, our hunger, like ghrelin and GLP1. Right. So we're showing, we. We've shown to. To affect insulin sensitivity. In clinical trials, we've shown to affect cholesterol. In numerous clinical trials, we've shown to.

To affect cholesterol as in lower cholesterol and in fact. And typically lowering it.

Yeah, typically when they're slightly elevated. So hydrogen, you can kind of think of it as like a supervisor in your cell, you know, when things start going wrong. So our bodies have evolved to be pretty efficient if circumstances, yeah, are. Are favorable to us. But everything that goes on in life, right, all these external stressors, right. Eating the wrong food, all of these things Starts knocking our body askew so that things start running a little improperly. A little improperly or a little improperly. Hydrogen is like a supervisor coming in and looking like, this dial is too high, this dial is too low, and adjusting back to harmony so everything is working smoothly. Like, think you owned, like a factory making shoes, you know, and on the one line, there's the tongue, and on the other line there's a sole, and the other line there's the shoelaces. And on the other line there, there's like the shell. If one of those lines is making not enough or too many things start piling up and the. The factory isn't working properly. And that's what happens with everything on our body. Like, for instance, inflammation and oxidative stress. Those are bad words to most people, but they to the function of our body. What's bad is when they're either too high or too low. And usually in most diseases are too high. Right. So hydrogen has shown to regulate them to where they should be. Right. So 19 times out of 20, it's lowering inflammation and oxidative stress, but one out of 20 times, for a beneficial response, it's raising them when that's what our body needs.

I want to talk about that a little bit more because I want to explain that because people have automatically put inflammation as bad together. And you're. What you're. If I'm hearing you correctly, chronic inflammation is bad and not ideal. But the temporary inflammation, like you would get from a workout or from. You have an injury and your body swells to heal it. Like, those are.

Exactly. That's our. That's our defense mechanism. And we need to basically release these low levels of inflammation and oxidative stress to signal our body to recover. Right. So like, after a workout, we. We release a little bit of information, but then our body recovers and our chronic inflammation actually goes down because our body starts operating.

Yeah.

So the cool thing about hydrogen, it's shown in research in rodents to actually increase the acute stress during exercise. So it says if you're exercising harder than you are, okay. And then return it back to proper function faster. So it's like you worked out harder and recovered quicker than exercise alone.

Makes sense by doing all of.

Oh, go ahead. Sorry.

No, I say this is. This is good because I think there's too many times we just are associating like, you want no inflammation. But that makes sense what you're saying.

100. And it's the same thing with some of these hormones that. That affect hunger. Like, ghrelin was the popular one for a long time. People call it the hunger hormone. But ghrelin has a lot of functions in the body, right?

Yeah.

So ghrelin regulates our insulin response. It's. It regulates glucose homeostasis. It has a lot of neuroprotective effects. So what happens when people are healthy? Your ghrelin is supposed to be very high, right. When you're fasting, and it's supposed to drop to nothing after you eat.

Okay.

Right. But in metabolically impaired and obese people, it just kind of stays in the middle all the time. So you're always a little bit hungry, even if you just ate. Right. So in one clinical trial, we showed to regulate ghrelin back to the proper function of the. The spike and the valley. And now I can't talk too much about them because they still need to go through peer review. But we have two studies, one in mice and one in humans, where we showed to regulate GLP1. And this is very different than, than a drug like Ozempic or Manjaro, which basically are just throttling GLP1 like crazy, right? Because.

What do you mean? Explain that to me. So, see, your body, your body already has glp. Some people are blunted, some people's are more active. So when you look at taking some of the GLP1 drugs or even microdosing it, you're saying it. Explain what you mean by throttling it. Like, because I thought it would, like sometimes in some small doses, help your own increase. But what did you. What do you mean by throttle it?

Well, it could potentially by losing weight and returning back to proper glucose homeostasis and insulin sensitivity. But so what happens in the early stages when we're first becoming overweight or obese before our glucose and insulin are affected?

Okay.

Which there is a period where we could be obese, but our metabolism is still working. So first our GLP1 starts trying to naturally raise, right? To. To fight off what's going on, what our choices from food. And then due to various sensitivities and dysfunction, our GLP1 just kind of shuts down. So in chronically obese people with, with dysregulated, like glucose and insulin, their fasting GLP1 is lower than a healthy person. And then they, after they eat, they don't really see much of a rise, which is again why they keep eating more and more. Whereas in a health, you know, it's like at this level and then you eat and it spikes and you don't want to eat for hours after that.

Okay.

So hydrogen in these couple studies is showing to, to regulate that back to proper function. Right. To restore it to have this metabolic repairing effect. So it's not the same as taking something like an Ozempic or a Manjaro, which what they do is they just throttle GLP1 so it's high all the time. Time. Right. Okay. So that's why you're always feeling full and that's why you don't really ever want to eat on them. So that is great for short term to lose a bunch of weight and maybe get your blood sugar down and your insulin sensitivity back up. But that's not a long term solution. If people keep on taking tons of GLP1 agonist drugs for their whole life, you're not going to eat enough protein, you're not going to get enough fiber, you're going to be in like chronic deficiency for a lot of things. So the goal should always be to return to proper function. How our bodies evolved to work now.

In the biohacking space. And I've had a lot of guests on about this and you know, I talk a lot about age optimizing. We've had, I've had many guests on about microdosing glp. So not doing the full weight loss amount, but small amounts.

And I actually do that. Right, okay, great. Microdose. Something else that that is, isn't approved yet. It's called TESS offense.

Okay. So I'm a fan of my clients that do that. Like I, I totally get the science and research. So I. But you know, at very small levels. So some people, they're obese, but they're doing this for blood sugar regulation or and inflammation and there's a lot of promising things there for those people could using hydrogen tablets with this benefit. Is there any, is there any negative to that?

None that we know of. And actually to date, in every preclinical and clinical trial that we've looked at hydrogen with an active pharmaceutical. Hydrogen has potentiated the pharmaceutical and work synergistic.

Amazing. So that's what you're doing. I'm assuming like you said, you're microdosing but you're also doing hydrogen tablets.

Yeah, I'm microdosing. I'm low dosing this Tesa fen, which I mentioned, which it works completely different. It's going through phase three clinical trials right now. It's actually a really cool drug. It was originally developed for Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and it found some good results there, but not much better. Than drugs on the market. But they found that the number one change and reported side effect was weight loss. Right. So if you think of like antidepressants like SSRIs, right. They're like selective reuptake inhibitors of serotonin. So this is a reuptake inhibitor of dopamine, serotonin, and noradrenaline.

Oh, wow.

So it takes away all of your, your reward center for doing things like gambling or drinking or doing drugs or overeating. So basically you, you taste and you're like, oh, that tastes good. And you just put it back down and you have no urge to overeat. So that's a really cool one. That, that.

Well, it's interesting because even, like, even Some of these GLPs are showing promising things around addiction and ST. I think there's a big link there with dopamine and sugar. Like, it seems like both of them started kind of as diabetes or dementia, like Alzheimer's drug, which is also on that spectrum of because of too much sugar. So it's like, it's a whole interesting. I love how this all works together. And then so it'll be interesting to see these studies come out with the hydrogen with that too. Because I'm just happy that people are moving in the direction of this research here because we had obviously a big problem with the obesity epidemic and this blood sugar issue that's creating, we know, dementia and Alzheimer's and all these things too.

And I think these drugs will play a great role in.

Again, regulating some of these addictions. And food is an addiction. Right. For a lot of people. And you can know how to have a perfect diet and how to be healthy. And then you might get weak in certain moments.

Oh, for sure.

With the microdosing of the Tessa fencing and Tirzepatide Banjaro, which I take. Like, I used to love red wine. You know, I drank way too much red wine.

Yeah.

And I'd eat healthy on almost all my meals. But then the night that I had a little too much red wine, maybe I order late night pizza or like dig into ice cream. I get it. As you get older, like, that has bigger and bigger consequences. So, for instance, now on these microdosing, I've had two drinks in the last three and a half months and I didn't want to have either of them. Them, they were both at business meetings where they ordered glass. So I felt obliged to have a glass with them. Yeah. So I, I think you don't have.

The craving for it. The craving for it goes Exactly.

The craving is totally gone. So, you know, it's helped me like even at the time because I've done two rounds of stem cells in the last three months. So I have not worked out in three months.

Right.

Because you can't lift weights or do hard exercise after stem cells. Because I'm trying to regrow some of my joints. So even with not working out in three months. Months, I've still lost 25 pounds.

That's amazing.

Just by not having these cravings and these urges. So I, I think these are huge for people. Just my worry is you want to use it as an assistance, not as your total solution.

Totally. Well, and I say that to even people that go full in. It's still learning the right habits and doing other things to. It's. It should be the aid, not the solution.

It's like the aid to help you. Exactly.

So back to the hydrogen tablets for a minute because it sounds like. So you're, you're hopeful that this is more than you could have even imagined. Like you're, you first looked at these for inflammation, for gut health. For now you're seeing this promising with GLPs. And what else are we. What I mean, this just sounds, it almost sounds like too good to be true. And like, why are we not all taking this?

I think we will. So I think what has happened, we've hit our first critical mass, you know, in the Western society. So even going back three years ago, yeah, I told people what I do. Maybe one in a hundred had heard of hydrogen water. And if they had, they were either a hardcore biohacker or they were integrated practitioner. Right. Or they were a patient or, or like we're being coached by a biohacker, integrative practitioner. Or it wasn't common, you know, pro athlete. Right. Like no one had heard of it. Now when I tell people what I do, I'd say close to nine in 10 people have heard hydrogen water. They don't yet know it's good for them. They don't know what it is, but they've heard of it. So the next critical mass, and I think It'll take roughly 10 years. If the research keeps progressing at the rate it is, within 10 years everyone will just know this is good for me and I need to take it and I need to take a high dose and it's going to be ubiquitous in society. It's going to be absolutely everywhere.

That's great. And I like it because it's like, it's not expensive, it's an easy thing. And it's just, you just drop it in your water. It's like, it's, it's so easy. Do you take it once a day, twice a day and do. Is it important to take around working out or does that matter?

So I shift around my protocol every few months. So sometimes I take it once a day in the morning and I take a really big dose. Okay. I'm a bigger guy and I have osteoarthritis in 11 joints. Right. So. And I still, when I'm not, you know, recovering from stem cells, I kickbox three times a week, lift weights twice a week.

Week, yeah.

A lot of hiking. So I need like four or five tablets a day to really get my inflammation in check. And for people listening, basically when I got into this, I was competing as if I was a pro athlete. I was training like four to six hours a day.

Yeah.

And whether it was a virus or mold, we never quite figured it out. But I had an autoimmune response. Okay. So I, I had chronic inflammation, you know, at first a hundred times abnormal and then 10 times abnormal and was hydrogen. That really helped it go down. And now I don't have to take any anti inflammatory drugs. And that's amazing. When I do my blood tests every few months, typically my hscrp, so a marker of inflammation is not detectable.

That's amazing. You know, it's so interesting because anytime I've had somebody on like in this research of the biohacking space, they have their own story, you know, that they went through this. And that's why I think me included, I mean the reason I got into health and, and wellness is my own journey with, with issues and genetics and all and all the things. So I feel like that's how we get almost obsessive and learn and figure these things out. And then you think this is going to apply the masses?

Yeah, a hundred percent. Like it always starts with like you first, like us first dealing with our problems. Right. Like, you know, necessity is the mother of all inventions. Right. I was absolutely desperate with what I was going through and then I went down this long rabbit hole. And by the time I got something working and it worked for me at first I'm like, like, okay, right. And I distributed to like some friends and family and then I started getting reports back like, wow, this is really helping me out. And then I'm like, there's something here. Right. And that's what got me down the road to commercialize.

Totally. It's just so confusing, Alex. And I'm just Gonna, I'm just gonna have compassion for like my listeners here because they're probably not just listening to my podcast. There's. There are other sources too. Right. And it's. It is. I try to bring a lot of information here so we can all be our own health detectives and learn. But it's. Sometimes it's hard to know, like, what are the actually important things, like what is the minimal things and like, what do I have to like, what are the important things to add? Because you can go down this whole rabbit hole of adding so many things in what I tell. I'll tell you all that I like about doing hydrogen tablets is it's literally you're just drinking your water. Like you just add it to your water. It's not like a big pill you gotta swallow. You can, you can do tasteless ones or you can do one with flavor. I actually have both here. I have this. I asked him before we started, like, what's the difference between the regular hydrogen tablet and the sport one? And he said, honestly, the sport ones really just were adding flavor to it because athletes want flavor. I don't personally choose to do the flavor one because I don't want sucralose for me. But you might choose to be okay with that. I'm just being extra nitpicky. So I use the white bottle, which is just as. Doesn't have that when it's. And it's just easy. And I'm doing it once a day. I do mine in the afternoon. Does that matter, Alex?

No. So what I'd say like mid afternoon for a pickme up is a great time, or before exercise is a great time. The most important thing is you want to be on an empty stomach. So if you're going to eat.

Okay, I didn't know that.

Maybe drink the hydrogen water five to 10 minutes before you eat because it takes about 10 minutes for the hydrogen to spike in our cells.

Got it.

And then it starts going out. So the reason why you don't want to eat it and conjunct or drink it in conjunction with eating is one of my patents that I found out is that fiber with hydrogen gas, it actually has a cool effect they create like gels and foams. So in the future I, I'm trying to figure out how to develop like lotions, right? Like, like beauty skin. But what that means because they're relatively stable, you're not getting it into your cells in your internal organs, just passing through.

Ah, so, okay, yeah.

So don't drink it right after you've had a big, like, carbohydrate, very heavy meal, you won't be getting the benefits. Got it too. It'll be stabilized in there. Just do it as anytime. Two to three hours after you've eaten.

Okay. My other two questions about, specifically about taking this. How much water, minimal, do you need to have with it? How much max, does that matter? And then why is there magnesium with it?

Okay, so Basically.

Optimally, it's 500 milliliters of room temperature water water. Now we, we developed it for room temperature water because that's the easiest temperature to chug rapidly.

Yeah.

So people can't chug cold water very well. They can't chug hot water. So we did it for room temperature, you know, maybe plus, minus like 70 Fahrenheit. Right.

Okay. What's the math on this? 500 milliliters. Sorry, I'm not. How much?

About 16.8 ounces.

16.8. So two glasses of water. Two small glasses of water, basically.

Exactly.

And that's for two tablets? For two tablets? For one tablet.

One tablet. That's optimal. So if you put it in just one cup of water.

Yeah, Right.

Like about eight ounces, you're still going to get a good dose, but you're going to get about 4.5 milligrams instead of the 6 milligrams. So you retain more H2, but it's not a doubling effect, it's linear.

So, okay, so big glass of water, room temperature.

You know, because our clinical research has varied with athletes, we always use 500ml, because athletes can drink 500ml rapidly. Me, in the morning, I use this big cup. It's one liter.

Okay.

Like 34 ounces, basically. And I put four or five tablets in it and I check it all at once. Most people can't do that. Right. So in most of our studies on metabolic impairments, which are typically people in the middle age, we usually do about 12 ounces of water.

Got it.

And you're going to be again closer to about 5 milligrams of H2 in that 12 ounces. And then in older people bowl, we'll do 8 ounces. So you're again closer to like 4 1/2 milligrams of H2. So the best amount of water is the amount you can rapidly consume, because that's the most important thing. You don't want to sip on it, you want to chug it down as fast as you can. So if you can only do that in 8 ounces, do it.

You're better doing that. That makes sense.

If you can do it in 12 or 17, do it in 12 or 17. Drink the amount that you can. Can comfortably chug down.

Yeah, that makes sense. Why is there magnesium with it?

So the magnesium is actually how we liberate the H2 off the water. So this isn't magnesium, like a supplement that you buy at the store.

Okay.

This is the element magnesium. So metal magnesium, you know, it's the white and fireworks. It burns at 5,600 degrees. Right.

So it's not going to make you run to the bathroom or make you fall asleep. It's just like.

So the cool thing and the reason why magnesium will make you run to the bathroom is when it's not bioavailable. So, for instance, a good laxative is milk of magnesia, which is magnesium hydroxide. Right. So magnesium hydroxide is not bioavailable, which is why it acts as a good laxative.

Makes sense.

In our reaction, first, what happens? And it first actually does become magnesium hydroxide. That's the initial reaction. But hydroxide is a function of ph. And we add sufficient amount of organic acids like malic acid, which comes from apples, and tartaric acid, which comes from grates, and the acids buffer off the hydroxide, which just leaves MG2 plus, that's free magnesium ions. So that's the exact form that our body needs to become bioavailable.

Got it.

So basically, the reaction to make the hydrogen is also producing the most bioavailable form of magnesium for our body. So it's getting that double benefit. That means your stomach doesn't actually have to do any work to get. Extract the magnesium.

Okay, Got it. Okay, y'.

All.

So this is. I'm gonna link up in the show notes. Exact one I'm using. But. But the long story short is we need to be adding hydrogen in. And I'm using tablets is what I'm using. And I'm gonna link up the. The time, the true longevity ones that I use, which are awesome. So I'm doing it. I was doing it in the afternoon, but now I'm listening to him. I'm probably gonna. To try to shift to the morning on that. Like, the first thing I used to do that with the bottle. I would drink that and then go in my sauna. So I think I'm gonna. I'm gonna.

I'll report back on that definitely. If you do the sauna in the morning. Yeah. So hydrogen has actually shown to. To potentiate other hormitic, you know, agents like Sauna, like exercise, like cold exposure. So do it before you have another adaptive stress like the sauna and will actually potentiate the stress and limit negative outcomes. Outcomes.

I love that. Okay, yeah. So, so I'll link up the one I'm using you all in the show notes but if you also go to midlifeconversations.com forward/ hydrogen I'll make sure I redirect to that. So midlife conversations.com forward/ hydrogen and I will make sure that redirects to exactly the one that I'm using. And like I shared, there's, there's one in a black bottle, the sport one and there's one in the white. The sport one has a flavor so it, that, that's, there is a little bit of sucralose. You might not care, but there's a little bit of sucralose. The white bottle that's just plain. There's no flavor. It's easy. So it's whatever, whatever you prefer. Well, gosh, this was so helpful today. I think we all need to be adding. I can't wait to see these additional studies, especially around GLPs. This is incredible.

Oh yeah, they're going to keep churning out and you know, that's one thing I always tell people about the tablets. Like a lot of these other companies, all the other technologies make tons of claims. Unfortunately, a lot of the claims they're making taking are from the clinical trials that are on the tablets and when they're delivering like a fraction of the dose, you can't actually say that legally or from a scientific perspective. Like if you take 1/10 of an Advil, it's not going to work. Right. So if you take 1/10 or 1/50 year, 1/100 the amount of hydrogen, it's not going to work the same. Right. Because hydrogen works in a dose dependent manner like any other molecule on the planet.

So I'm not going to knock the bottles if people love them, but I would say I started with the bottle, but the bottles are expensive, they're pricey and like you said, it's not a consistent, you don't know how much you're getting and it's not, it's not the same level.

So and the big thing, right, like some of the bottles, when they start off like at the four and a half, that that is ample to see some benefits in the gut and in. And to start seeing them in sports performance.

Sure.

But we know extrapolating from the rodents in the early clinical trials, we probably need 10 milligrams of hydrogen to see an effect in the liver.

Wow.

Right. So only the tablets can, can deliver that by doing a couple of days to get to the, and how hydrogen works. First it diffuses through our stomach lining and intestines and then it goes to our liver and passes through our body. So the higher the dose of hydrogen, the more areas of your body it's getting to. Right. And when you think of all of these things like inflammation and oxidative stress, they start localized and then become chronic. So if you're only affecting them in a small area, it might not be properly driving down your like chronic issues. Only by getting a whole systemic effect will you start getting these chronic systemic issues resolved.

Yes. I'm so interested too in how this affects skin around aging too. And I think we're probably just scratching the surface there, but if you think about a lot of the stuff that changes in our skin is due to inflammation. So I'm so, I'm also curious how it affects that.

And there are some clinical trials on, on hydrogen water and skin both bathing in it, applying it topically and drinking it. And most of them have been on like models like eczema, dermatitis, stuff like that. But there's a, a couple small studies in the elderly on reducing wrinkles after hydrogen beta.

Yeah, well, I'm thinking wrinkles, but also age, spots, all that's like kind of inflammation and you think about like sun damage inflammation too. I'm just curious. I mean I'd be, I wouldn't be surprised if we found that it's helping with that too.

Yeah, I, I, I think it's an interesting area of research and it's an area that, things like that, that, that I'm actually quite interested because those same reasons why we get inflammation, a lot of these skin issues, they actually affect us chronically, you know, in our arterial walls, in our, our brain and our muscle. So with, with the True Longevity drink HRW brand, I'm an advisor for them. I originally founded that brand, but I exited it a few years ago because it was a conflict and I, I licensed my IP everywhere. But there's a really cool product I developed for that brand years ago called ageless defense.

Issues like wrinkles and everything come from something called glycation, advanced glycation and product cross linking. So I developed this product with all of the natural ingredients that have shown to either break apart ages or inhibit their formation. You know, and the Drinkager team does.

I need to, I'm gonna have to take that now. Too, then. Okay, that's good. That's good to. Yeah. Because glycation, I mean, that's a whole other topic there. But that's why I used to love, like, roasted marshmallows, and now all I think about is glycation. When I'm like, wait, fire, sugar. No, glycation.

Yeah. You start thinking about it more and more. Right. Like in a scan, grilling your food.

Yeah, yeah. Like, all the burnt stuff we learn that's.

Yeah, yeah.

We're just contributing to glycation. So I literally cannot use look at a roasted marshmallow or some more without thinking I'm aging my skin rapidly or.

A nice crust on a piece of bread or.

I know.

Anything. Or a nice brown steak. It's just very.

Sometimes science is ruining it for me. I don't know.

I agree. Agree.

I'll still have some more every now and then. I'm not gonna lie. Like, I know it's not healthy, but whatever. But I do think I think of that every time I look at a roasted marshmallow. I'm like, glycation. Well, gosh. Well, thank you so much, Alex. This is super helpful today. All right, everyone, I will link all this up in the show notes. If you want to learn more and you want to see the exact tablet that I'm taking, you can drop in your water. I'll be dropping in mine before my sauna in the morning. Moving forward, thank you so much today, Alex. Thank you.

Yeah. Thanks for having me. And me.

I hope you enjoyed the episode. Thanks for taking time out of your.

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