Part 1 Sleep is Critical – Why Do We Need Sleep?
July 17, 2019Part 2 Sleep is Critical – Lack of Sleep
July 25, 2019More on Hydrogen – Tyler W. LeBaron Interview Part 2
Join us again for part II with Tyler LeBaron, Executive Director of the Molecular Hydrogen Institute. We catch up on the research and expand on many of the topics we originally discussed in part I.
Show Notes:
Visit the MHI here.
5:30 Review in molecules Tyler mentioned
https://www.mdpi.com/1420-3049/24/11/2076
6 min Harvard study
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6488769/
16:35 Hangover study
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19887722
1:33:00 on, I foolishly interrupted Tyler regarding H2 and creatine. He commented that he basically finished his point that H2 could potentially convert non-responders to responders.
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Alex: All right, well, everyone welcomes back. I’m here again with Tyler LeBaron to talk a little bit more about hydrogen. Tyler, thanks for coming and meeting me. I happen to be, what, an hour and a half away from you?
Tyler: It depends on how you travel, but three hours, according to the law.
Alex: I’m in Las Vegas right now for the NHL Players awards. We’re giving away products to the players, you probably saw on our social media. The practice is just a couple of hours away, and there’s a lot more to talk about because a lot of the subjects from our last talk have been advancing quite quickly and we ran out of time and couldn’t touch on a lot of them.
Alex: So, if you are interested in reading more about hydrogen also, go to molecularhydrogeninstitute.com, which Tyler is the Executive Director. There’s a lot of great stuff. You guys do a pretty good job of keeping all the studies up-to-date. You do it once a year, twice a year. Your download-
Tyler: Yeah, and I get so busy, but I try to get as many articles up there as I can. So, right now, at least we’re up-to-date from 2018. It’s been, it’s already been six months.
Alex: Tyler has a funny way of moving, and then, of course, so many publications are coming out that you’ve got to do a download every so often, and then it’s just a flood because every year it seems there are more and more publications. I know two years ago, I had read every single study that was available and I was shocked to find ones that I hadn’t read, but now every time I’m searching there are new ones I haven’t read, and I know I haven’t read all the publications.
Tyler: Yeah, they come out more and more from different universities, and that’s the great thing. We’re seeing more things out of Europe, more things, of course, out of China and Japan. Now we’re starting to see more out of the USA, so it is difficult to keep abreast of everything that’s going on. And so you start to look more into your areas of interest, what you’re actually studying, instead of just everything on anything related to hydrogen because now we have so many studies on plants, for example, as well were before. Well, I’m still very interested, actually. We’re working on a publication on plants, but it is a very interesting area, all of them.
Alex: Yeah, absolutely. There are so many hypotheses papers coming out too. Those are some of the ones I’m missing. I find them cropping up all the time. I sent you that one by text and you’re like, Oh, yeah, yeah. I have seen that just like two days ago. It’s just all the time, every time I’m doing thorough searches and finding new ones. I’m like, I just can’t keep up. There are new ones coming up every day. Speaking of new research and teams all over, you guys just did the pig heart transplant. We mentioned it. I believe we mentioned in our first talk that the big grant for any of our viewers, Professor Osich and I talked about it. He’s really excited about the grants. You guys are getting in Slovakia. And, I’m not sure if you can tell me anything about-
Tyler: We did it.
Alex: You did it?
Tyler: Yeah, we did it. I did post some things on my Instagram. Which, you’re welcome to follow me at TylerWLeBaron. I just started it so I could post some of the different things. But, while I was there, we did the research in Prague. We had surgeons there. We were able to administer the hydrogen gas. We did several ways of administering the gas. Both through respiration, as well as into the blood with the oxygenator because we basically did a coronary bypass and so, instead of going from the heart it would go into a little machine. And then it would be oxygenated there and we fuse the hydrogen gas there.
Tyler: Anyway, it was interesting. And we don’t have the data and analysis at this point right now. Because what we did is after we did the heart transplant and then we resuscitated the heart to see how that’s working. Then we took the heart out and then we needed to take the samples of the heart tissue. And now we’re going to do an analysis on them. So looking at markers of inflammation, oxidative stress, and maybe just so our viewers can understand why we even do this.
Tyler: People actually do get heart transplants. But what happens often is that a heart transplant can go just fine. But then after that, the heart ends up dying, there’s a lot of complications. And that’s because you have what’s called an ischemia-reperfusion injury. And the ischemia, that’s basically just low oxygen. And so you don’t have oxygen there you’re not going to be able to make ATP. Then you have reperfusion, so when you get the oxygen-rich blood to go back throw the heart then, that actually causes most of the damage, surprisingly. Because of course, if there’s no oxygen there, then it’s going to die. Once you do administer oxygen, then the cells are like whoa, I’m not used to this, I don’t know how to metabolize this. All of sudden that’s a burst of reactive oxygen species, free radicals that cause all these metabolic pathological changes.
Tyler: Just published an article in Molecules, maybe you could link that here for the viewers, in Molecules I talked about some of this damage that occurs from ischemia-reperfusion. And Of course, we see hydrogen gas can help attenuate inflammation, and attenuate a lot of the markers of oxidative damage, oxidative stress, then it can make sense that perhaps the use of hydrogen gas during this sort of a heart transplant could help mitigate some of those damages. And it’s a similar article, actually to it was just published earlier, by Harvard Medical School and Johns Hopkins Hospital. They did a study with swine, also with inhalation and hydrogen gas, and they showed very great therapeutic effects on preventing the neurological injury and I think, kidney injury as well, that occurs from this ischemia-reperfusion injury.
Alex: Interesting, very interesting. And speaking of European research, you know, we mentioned it on our first talk, the fatty liver study that’s published now.
Tyler: Yes, we were able to do that I was very grateful to participate in that study, a survey. And, still, it’s a small study, but those results, I still scratch my head, you know, is this really what it is, it’s very high-quality instrumentation that is used to assess the liver.
Alex: And very well controlled it was double-blind placebo control. The placebo was a magnesium tablet that creates C02–
Tyler: Yeah, thank you. Congratulations on being able to formulate that so well, that really helps. It’s so important when we do the studies that we have double-blinded. It needs to be so we can’t differentiate and tell the difference.
Alex: Yeah, absolutely. So for the viewers, our placebo tablet is the same size roughly the same weight as the H2 tablets, they disintegrate in about the same amount of time. And I got them to create kind of like a nano cloud in the same way that the H2 does with which was actually a little bit harder with the C02 because it’s so much easier to go into solution, it’s so much more soluble than hydrogen.
Alex: But we got that down and that trial was not just the double-blind placebo-controlled but it was a crossover too. Wasn’t it? So it was pretty impressive data for my observation and I know the team in Serbia did that secondary analysis and abstract, with the [inaudible 00:07:55], and they had an 11% increase in [crosstalk 00:07:58], insulin sensitivity, which is incredible if it holds up.
Tyler: It’s interesting the liver does tend to be a potential target or one of the organs that seem to be more sensitive than hydrogen when we look at cell culture studies often like to use [inaudible 00:08:15] science because there they seem to be maybe more sensitive to hydrogen. And when you do drink hydrogen-rich water, the liver does get a lot of that hydrogen, because of course, that’s just the way that the circulation works, you go through the portal thing, you go to the liver. And so you’re getting that person highly gas right there.
Tyler: So it was really cool because we did that study earlier, you’re probably aware of where a group that I researched with before. We showed that higher concentration hygiene water was effective for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.
Alex: Where it’s even a low concentration wasn’t-
Tyler: Yeah it was not effective, that’s right. Which, some studies of low concentration are affected but in our case, we found that it needed to be a higher concentration.
Alex: We’ll circle back to this because I want to talk about some of my thoughts on dose-dependent response especially with metabolic issues and mitochondria.
Alex: But I wanted to go in more, I know that you guys are still working on it a lot. So you can’t go into detail. But we mentioned to everyone about the bigger metabolic syndrome study that was going on. And I know you guys are really pouring through the data and writing it now.
Tyler: Yeah, we have all the raw data collected and we’ve done several statistical analyses on it. We just want to be sure with subtle things because the results really are quite good. And then I wonder if maybe some people or some populations are more sensitive than others. So we’re going through basically all the data to make sure that we’re getting things done, right.
Alex: Yeah, it’s really could be really groundbreaking for large segments of the population, if it stands up.
Alex: I’m actually really curious, I wish we, correct me if I’m wrong, but we didn’t measure insulin sensitivity in any way. Right insulin levels so-
Tyler: Yeah, there might still be some things that can be done, but-
Alex: Because we could look in with what they did in Serbia and look at the insulin sensitivity. I’ve been thinking about the last month since I was made aware of that, how much did that have to do with the metabolic syndrome study?
Tyler: Well insulin sensitivity is interesting, because we don’t really know, really all the causes of what causes insulin insensitivity in the first place and so even just losing weight, for example, just losing, improving your cholesterol and all these other bio clinical parameters, which we see in the metabolic syndrome study, then you should ostensibly see improvements in insulin sensitivity and we see the glucose levels were decreased in the study.
Alex: Absolutely. So I mean, I guess my thoughts on this were, we saw in the fatty liver, I don’t think the cholesterol changed in 28 days in the fatty liver study.
Tyler: Yeah, 28 days is not very long.
Alex: No, it’s not. So, my thoughts were going to, well that’s a dramatic improvement to insulin sensitivity. That seems to be coming first, before the cholesterol drop. Right? I’ve just been thinking about it for the last month. Is that a target that we should be looking for, as one of the first issues that starts resolving health needs, to the amelioration and other things?
Tyler: Yeah, I can see that. But I don’t think we can say it can be that simple, either. Because there are many mechanisms. It’s not just [inaudible 00:11:52]. For example, to regulate cholesterol substances which hydrogen gas actually has an effect in that area as well.
Tyler: But we can start having some sort of regulation on ATP binding cassettes and different things, which involves a cholesterol influx. And also several pathways above the cholesterol that you wouldn’t actually see, potentially will not see a clinical change, even though there’s a lot of biochemical changes that are occurring on and so it appears that the insulin sensitivity increase did that first and then followed by this, but actually, that doesn’t necessarily have to be the case, it could still be the other way around.
Alex: Unless this is really good to confuse pathways because getting your perspective on things because you’re a Biochemist right. So sometimes you talk to the researchers and their medical doctors, so they’re looking at things in very different ways.
Tyler: Yes, sometimes they’re the only ways that really matter because I don’t treat patients I don’t draw blood, I don’t do any of this stuff, really. And so I look at things and I want to see the mechanism, I look at maybe even narrow-minded in some ways and in this regard, because you have to, right. And so, medical doctors they can see things from [inaudible 00:13:13] perspective but you’re right, sometimes they end up conflating certain biochemical pathways or something that really don’t make any sense on the-
Alex: And that’s what we talked about last time, sometimes when the studies are written by medical doctors not say they don’t have a biochemist, as part of the research group. They might have conclusions that don’t make sense to a biochemist, right. Now, the results are the same. But the story was-
Tyler: Yes, exactly, that’s why it’s so important for any skeptics or researchers, if you want to know you need to actually look at the research and look at the data, look at the results, what was observed. And then you can come to your own conclusion. Just because, if you see this great study that was done, and you show obvious, there was a clear beneficial or clear biological effect. And then the conclusion is, and so we think that the Disney Princesses put their magic pixie dust on this. Obviously, that conclusion doesn’t make any sense. But that does not actually invalidate the results that were shown in the data.
Alex: Even in unblinded, no placebo control, [inaudible 00:14:29] studies that see no benefit, sometimes their conclusion is it didn’t work because of this.
Alex: [crosstalk 00:14:37], still concluding that it should still work and then people read it and go “wow, so this does work, the scientist said it did.”
Tyler: Yeah, so you need to cautious of some of those things. But going back to your main point. Yeah, sometimes there are studies that are done, the data can be totally fine but the conclusion or the discussion is, well that’s strange, why would you conclude… but it’s okay, there are several studies like that, I guess. In all disciplines, not just hydrogen. I’m talking about studies in general.
Alex: Interesting. I think you guys in Slovakia have been talking with the Serbian team. Professor [Osich 00:15:20] [crosstalk 00:15:21], collaboration. I went and saw him at the American College of Sports Medicine about a month ago and he was really excited to start collaborating with you guys, really pumped about the heart transplant and he spoke about it a little bit on camera with me. So, I can mention it a bit to you now.
Alex: So, he’s finished the case studies now, I mentioned before [crosstalk 00:15:44], it’s really cool data.
Tyler: Got the soft tissue. That sort of thing.
Alex: Yeah, exactly. That’s really interesting and actually just last week, they got the data for concussion. Which was pretty interesting, so that’s being submitted.
Tyler: The case study for concussion, okay.
Alex: Yeah, case study. I know TGI, I know that it’s something that, hydrogen has been studied for there seems to be the clear reason it could do well. It’s very important where I am today, talking to NHL players for [crosstalk 00:16:25], concussions are a big deal there and actually, it’s interesting, it’s the effect on the brain because I know you’ve laughed before and said there’s no data on that but I got to say hangovers-
Tyler: Hangovers okay-
Alex: There was a big party last night and I’m doing okay today and anecdotally, we gave them around to everybody at the party and everyone’s like, “oh wow, I have more energy, this made me feel better.”
Tyler: Yeah there is one study that is indicative of increased detoxification from ethanol-induced toxicity.
Alex: Is there?
Tyler: Yeah, but it’s not the greatest study because they were using RNA-only analysis and not western blot for actual protein monitors and so there are some differences there. So, it’s not as conclusive but it did show increased detoxification enzymes, so it could help maybe, decrease some of the ethanol quicker maybe, decrease some of the negative side effects of the ethanol. Oxidative stress, increased glutathione, super [inaudible 00:17:31] levels. And it’s interesting because of course, I was in Japan.
Tyler: I did research there for a while back in 2013 and one of the things that were quite common and were talked about a lot was how hydrogen gas and hydrogen-rich water were so effective for hangovers and I remember I was visiting with [Dr. Ota 00:20:19], of course, one of the pioneer researchers on this and I said: “you know, if people are talking about this all the time, even these nightclubs or guessing hydrogen to different things and everything, why not do a clinical study?” And his response was, “well we want to do clinical studies, maybe he was being a little facetious, we want to do clinical studies on things that we don’t know if it will work or not. Everybody already knows it’s very effective for hangovers, so there’s no point, it’s a waste of money.”
Alex: Plus you might run into some IRB issues getting people [crosstalk 00:18:29].
Tyler: Yeah, well that would be… in the study I talk about, that was actually in rodents, so it was not in humans by the way but it could be that interesting one as well.
Alex: It surprises me every time. I don’t drink intoxication, that often. As we’re recording this, just yesterday my part six of seven on [inaudible 00:18:52] was alcohol, ethanol.
Tyler: Wow, there’s a dose-response though.
Alex: Yeah, it’s a very steep J curve or reverse J curve, depending on what function you’re looking at. So, alcohol is one of those ones that can be healthy but it’s a very tight window.
Alex: You go a little bit too much and then all of a sudden, it’s very unhealthy and only a tipping point of one or two ounces in your drinks. So, it’s a big issue but every time I need it, it continues to surprise me, how effective it is. It’s just cool, it’s topical, did it today. Its just [crosstalk 00:19:32] interesting.
Tyler: Yeah, I know. I’ve heard a lot of people say that and it would be nice to have a clinical trial and I’m sure in the future, that will be done but it is a very common report throughout, of course, I go to China all the time and of course Japan but it is one of the very common threats, oh got to take my hydrogen.
Alex: Yeah, absolutely. So, I’m not encouraging anyone to drink intoxication but if you do, give it a try. We don’t have clinical data but we’ve got a little bit of evidence, it sounds like there’s sound reasoning on why it can help and everyone seems to think it works, so that’s interesting.
Alex: I want to talk a bit, something that has bugged me a bit, and Professor Osich and I talked about it a bit. The fatty liver disease, the [inaudible 00:20:25] study came out and now I see it being marketed and shared by water ionizer companies that I know make 0.1, 0.2 milligrams per liter or H2, below the therapeutic threshold that even you guys studied in [crosstalk 00:20:40], and a fraction of what we used in-
Tyler: I can understand the concern and it is kind of concerning but I think you have to be somewhat careful too because first off, yes in our study, probably did this four years ago but I’ll try and remember. I think our low concentration-
Alex: 0.2 or 0.3.
Tyler: Yeah, so 0.3, I think.
Alex: 0.3.
Tyler: And there was no effect, so because of the study, I’ll tell you actually, just sidelined to get at that. There’s actually a funny history behind this study, kind of how it happened. The researchers were originally doing this study and they were very excited about functional water and alkaline ionized water because they saw so many positive things about that and so they did the study and they did alkaline ionized water, strongly reduced, electrolyte water is what is termed in the literature even though it’s not accurate but then they did the control water and they did the study and there were no benefits. And they were confused, “well, I really thought they’d be a benefit” but there wasn’t any and they contacted me.
Tyler: This was 2012 or so and we were, “okay, let’s look at this, how did you prepare the water, how did do all these different things?” And then we were able to finally measure the hydrogen gas concentration and we measured 0.3 milligrams per liter, 0.3 ppm and we were, “well, that could be enough but maybe that’s why, it’s not enough for this specific type of disease, maybe it’s not enough and we need a higher concentration, so let us do it again with a higher concentration of hydrogen.” So, we didn’t use another method, so we could make a higher concentration of hydrogen water and a lower concentration of hydrogen water. So we did about the same, 0.3 ppm or so, and then with a higher concentration, which I think was only 0.8 or 0.9 ppm or something, maybe you remember?
Alex: I think it was 0.8. Sergei and I were talking about it, Professor Osich, we couldn’t remember if it was 0.7 or 0.8, it was still a very-
Tyler: Okay, so 0.8 ppm, so it was still three times higher than the other water and then we did the study, we saw that the low concentration again zero benefits but the higher concentration, very obvious conspicuous benefit. It was apparently obvious and it was very cool and it also had a residual, protective effect on the hepatocytes as well.
Tyler: So, that was really neat, so we certainly confirmed several things about this, right.
Tyler: We confirmed that the benefit of this alkaline ionized water again, was from the hydrogen gas in the study because the pH, that didn’t matter at all. When you look through the article, we did all these adjustments to the pH, it did have a negative ORP of course, the negative oxidation-reduction potential which is of course due to the presence of dissolved hydrogen gas and when you remove the hydrogen gas from the water, the negative ORP is gone, also, obviously.
Tyler: So, it had all these properties of electrolytes for a long time, just like all the other studies that were done, that showed up a therapeutic effect but in this case, it was not a therapeutic effect because the concentration of hydrogen gas was not high enough and so, we know that at least in some cases, in some conditions, some studies, you want to have a higher concentration of hydrogen gas, in order to get that therapeutic effect.
Alex: Yeah, and we’re still trying to figure that out and again, we’ll circle back and talk about some of my thoughts on this later. I want to hear your insights. My concern is a lot of these ionizing companies are marketing the benefits of this, actually deliver lower [crosstalk 00:24:33], dose, than the concentration was needed for [crosstalk 00:24:35] only.
Tyler: Okay, yes and no and this is the confusing thing because it depends, it always depends. So some ionizers and take just say, the best ones right. Because actually there are some-
Alex: Some do get a lot higher.
Tyler: Well, exactly. Well, some ionizers actually don’t really do anything at all. There may be just a total marketing scam or something else but they really don’t do anything. And then, a lot of them, they can but then it has to have the right parameters. You have to have clean electrodes, you have to have a source of water that has a high enough mineral concentration, TDS, total dissolved solids. If you don’t have this or if you have dirty electrodes, dirty as in calcified, for example, then the concentration of hydrogen gas will be quite low but if everything is perfect, the concentration of hydrogen gas can be saturation. 1.6 milligrams per liter.
Alex: I don’t know if I’ve ever tested one that high. I’ve definitely seen ionizers get to one or higher [crosstalk 00:25:35].
Tyler: Yeah, I think they get higher than that, even after 2 milligrams or higher, the problem is when you have source water that is that perfect to get such a high concentration-
Alex: Then the calcifier [crosstalk 00:25:45].
Tyler: They calcify really quickly, so now if you don’t clean your machine daily or something [crosstalk 00:25:51].
Alex: It’s ruined forever.
Tyler: No, you can clean it, there are [crosstalk 00:25:55], you can clean them.
Alex: But sometimes the cleaning doesn’t even repair them, I know for a lot of the machines, even after a deep clean, never dissolves hydrogen again. You can test the hydrogen coming out of the nozzle but something about the deep clean. It’s changing-
Tyler: It could change surface morphology on the electrode but that could be because it’s been calcified for so long but if you were just to clean it every day, which, still that’s four hours or six hours to go to work, not like you’re working the whole time but just letting it sit, do the whole thing. But, I’m just saying you have to keep doing all that to keep getting the concentration of hydrogen but then when you do have a high concentration of hydrogen, you run the risk of drinking water that has a pH close to 12. Which for some people isn’t a problem, because water isn’t a buffer anyway, so it shouldn’t really have any negative effect but at that high pH when it’s just continually right on the esophagus and the mouth and everything, that could start to cause problems and some people might feel really thirsty when they start drinking that alkaline ionized water. They feel a lot of thirsts and it’s probably because, well, you know really high alkaline water, it mixes with oil and they call that emulsification, it’s more actually saponification, it’s actually a process called soap making, saponification.
Tyler: To take Lye, for example, sodium hydroxide and you mix that with animal fats, a process that’s been done for hundreds of years and you take that and you mix it together and you make soap, saponification. So same thing, high alkaline water that has the high hydroxide concentration, simplify undergoes a nucleophilic reaction with the carboxylite groups on the fatty acids and you form soap, it saponifies it then followed by emulsification and now you mix oil together but consider that high pH does that. Well, what are our cell membranes made out of? Lipids, fatty acids and so it’s doing the same thing and so now our soft palate [inaudible 00:27:55] receptors are basically damaged or weakened and so now they basically allow water to go in and out really easily and so we always feel that really thirsty sensation. Like I’m just really thirsty, this water is making me really thirsty and it takes us quite a while to drink in the same water for hormesis response for your body to repairs everything and it makes it normal so that you don’t feel as thirsty anymore, while you drink that high pH alkaline ionized water.
Alex: So this is interesting to me because it is a lot of these ionizer companies that are the ones that are attacking my technology and saying it’s not safe. It’s not how water is supposed to be or this and that.
Tyler: It’s the same process though. Electrolysis by definition adds hydrogen to the water to produce hydrogen gas, your tablets do the exact same thing it’s just a metallic reaction adding electrons, natural way. Anyways, that’s exactly the same chemistry.
Alex: It’s hilarious because if anything our tablets are more natural in that sense.
Tyler: Well that’s right, alkaline earth metals, right?
Alex: Yeah, exactly then what they are but no, that’s interesting. To be effective, they could even be damaging to get effective hydrogen. But then when we’re going to dose-dependent response, even if they could get one milligram per liter, even up to two then B12 pH, that’s not the dose that we delivered in the factory-
Tyler: Well that is a good point. Of course, we don’t know if a lower dose would have been effective either for example in our study, animal study, you at least have a pH of 0.8 milligrams per liter but again, that’s a low concentration but let us remember that actually, rodents drink a lot more water, they drink several gallons per day. This actually is interesting, I used to follow some of the ionizer camps out there and one of the most common things they would say is “you don’t start getting the benefits until you are drinking a gallon and a half of water a day,” which is interesting because by drinking more water, you’re simply consuming more hydrogen gas and maybe their machines are producing say, a half a milligrams per liter and now if you only drink a liter, eight ounces-
Alex: But if you’re drinking six liters-
Tyler: Exactly and now you’re getting enough hydrogen gas [crosstalk 00:30:28].
Alex: Like the lower thresholds, exactly.
Tyler: And so in this animal study that we did, maybe the fact is there was a higher concentration but they were also drinking a lot of water and rodents drink a lot more water than we do. So, yes, with your study, we don’t know that a one milligrams per liter concentration out of one liter, so four milligrams a day. We don’t know if that would be enough to have the same therapeutic effects, we don’t know that.
Tyler: All we can say is that we had about five to six milligrams per liter in your study.
Alex: Yeah, six is what they did by GC, I still think it would be higher, I know [inaudible 00:31:10] is finalizing the GC [inaudible 00:31:11] but I think [crosstalk 00:31:14].
Tyler: Yeah, we’re working on that, but either way all we can say because that’s what the study was done. At this dose, this concentration was what resulted in these effects and it is kind of misleading, I can understand use a study with this high dose and then say “look at these amazing results,” when you’re delivering half the dose and it’s-
Alex: Well if that’s the case, half the dose [crosstalk 00:31:43] and the continuous [crosstalk 00:31:46].
Tyler: I’m just thinking of when you have nutraceuticals for example and there are these studies done on high doses of this nutraceutical or this whatever and then somebody else comes and says, “Hey, we have that too,” but they’re using a hundredth of a dose type thing and that’s very misleading [crosstalk 00:32:04].
Alex: And some of these ionizer companies, that’s my frustration, that is marketing it and using it in multi-level marketing [crosstalk 00:32:15].
Tyler: But remember it’s probably not the company.
Alex: But yeah.
Tyler: It’s probably the distributor, but they probably wouldn’t know.
Alex: Yeah, it’s on the distributor pages with thousands and tens of thousands sharing it around and it’s just that I want to talk about it because those machines often will get 1/100th a dose and liter to liter [crosstalk 00:32:31].
Tyler: Well yeah, especially, if they’re not cleaning them or they don’t have that source water, so I can understand that, I imagine that many of the distributors just don’t know.
Alex: And that’s the thing that I think is important for the industry and it’s something that Professor Osich and I talked about is, it’s so important that the IHSA is to start at least setting minimum standards because there are so many products that they don’t know the science, they don’t know anything about how the science works, they don’t know the research, they don’t contribute to the research.
Tyler: Yeah, they don’t contribute and I have seen even some products market that they say hydrogen-rich water because water is already H2O, so they’re like, doesn’t all water have hydrogen? And so they market spring water, any water as hydrogen-rich, which of course, has nothing to do with our research. We do not research water, right. We research hydrogen gas. Now I am interested in water, it’s one of the great mysteries of life but our focus is hydrogen gas.
Alex: Yeah, exactly. So it’s why I wanted to bring it up because I know the IHSA is coming soon to the USA to start testing products.
Tyler: Yeah, we’ve already approved H2 analytics to do the testing and [inaudible 00:33:55] things and we just have to finalize the protocol for the gas chromatography. There are different gas chromatographies out there and so you have to get the protocol that’s right, we have to do it through a number of tests to make sure it’s 100% accurate. It’s a lot of work, it really is.
Alex: And for all the viewers, I put my money where my mouth is, like I say, I’m always the first to hand my product over, for falsification, and for others to test. So I know you can’t talk about calibration and all that stuff but you guys, already have my product. Testing with it, I was first in line and I’m not saying you guys, have any data on it yet, I’m just saying I am one the first, I don’t know other companies [crosstalk 00:34:50].
Tyler: Well there are other companies but we are interested in the tables only because we know that based on stoichiometry, the gas evolutions test, you let us know about the NDI from the FDA, so we have a lot of data we can go off and we’re using a lot of balances and tests and different things. We want to test a lot of different things, so we can really make sure that everything is ISO-type criteria.
Alex: Yeah, exactly. So, I just wanted to say that it’s something I feel really strongly about if I’m going to make a claim, I’m going to give it to everyone who can falsify the claim because I need to be able to defend it. I need that data and if it comes and says you guys data shows that I have a different level, then what we’re cross-referencing between titration, gas evolution, the other GC reports that were done, the Unisense hydrogen probes that, in Beijing.
Tyler: Yeah, in Beijing.
Alex: Data we extrapolated from laser backscattering, we just need to take all that into consideration because there’s still the art of this analysis to figure out its exact accuracy.
Tyler: Yeah, it’s a process but that’s how science works, it continues to improve and improve until it can’t improve anymore, which suggests a higher probability that it’s probably accurate.
Alex: Exactly. A lot of this misinformation that we talked about, I published a month or two ago, an article that you gave it a read. The hundred voices when we talked about-
Tyler: Which one was that one?
Alex: Needing a hundred different channels to talk about hydrogen so that it could get out to the masses and the issues that happened in Japan and Korea with marketers and hourly talks and if I really stand for honest marketing and messaging in science, then I should open the tablets up to more avenues because another manufacturer might not have those-
Tyler: Right, people are going to say whatever they want to sell the product and that’s terrible, we don’t want that, we need to control the message because hydrogen gas, for example, doesn’t give you hydrogen-like food does. It’s a different type of hydrogen but people have marketed it that way.
Alex: I like how when manufacturing the tablets, one of those brands talks like when they find that this doesn’t make hydrogen or not very much, not as much as this other thing. They will be like, but we put crystal energy into it [crosstalk 00:37:43], and they start going into quantum stuff, just making up stuff and saying it changes everything about your DNA, that it will make you healthier and everything.
Alex: It’s one of the things that I believe very strongly now in opening good dialogue. So that we can have accurate messaging and make this available to all the channels because I might no agree with everything that a brand stands for but I can make sure that they’re accurate about hydrogen and I can help guide them and I can help educate them, it’s very important, even still in Asia, we see a lot of misinformation and attacks.
Alex: I know you don’t want to go into it very much but there’s one in particular against me that I’m going to have to go after those people. I’m seeing that they’re buying stages at conferences and basically committing slander and liable because it’s both spoken and written.
Tyler: Well there’s a lot of misunderstanding. Korea for example was one of the first earlier adopters of this alkaline ionized water and energetic water and structured water and frequency water and magic water and other types of waters and some of them, based upon some really interesting science and others based upon a total scam and what the difference between the two is, I’m not sure but there’s this whole culture.
Tyler: I understand your concern but I think you need to consider some of these people have been giving, actually have been giving hydrogen water to their patients and to their families and to whoever for years. I mean years. Over two decades, over 20 years. Because that is two decades. And they’ve been doing this and they’ve been seeing all of these benefits and this whole time they’ve been doing this, they’ve been thinking it’s about some structural change in the water or some energetic frequency they’ve somehow infused into the water or whatever it is. But then they’re seeing actually changes and actually benefits and some of these people are health practitioners, some of them are just whatever.
Tyler: They’re not really scientists and chemists. But they’ve seen these changes and now we’re saying, everything that you believe, everything that you have held so dear to your heart and you have thought is the reason that has healed so and so from such and such and so on. You’re saying that it’s all a lie, it’s false. That’s actually quite difficult to both accept and to deliver.
Alex: I have a quote very similar to that in my three-part series on don’t trust health experts and I target the extreme skeptics and health experts, it was a quote I think by Daniel Dennett and said: “it’s very difficult to tell someone that what they’ve spent their life on is meaningless, that they’ve dedicated their lives to this work” and to say “it’s meaningless you’re wrong” there’s no easy way to say that.
Tyler: Yeah, with one sentence you destroy their entire 20, 30-year career and so some of these people that you’re involved with, not only is that occurring, they’re like “oh my goodness, it’s all about the hydrogen, they actually don’t get it. They’re not fluent in English, they’re not scientists and so it’s not they can, like we just did, we are talking about this very clear study, we take this water, we remove the hydrogen gas, the benefits are [inaudible 00:41:40], we make it very clear.
Tyler: They’re not even aware of the simplicity of these studies because of the issues between English or Korean or other languages and you have so many factors where they’re the ones feeling under attack. As much as you feel that you’re being attacked, they’re the ones, they’re trying to protect themselves and unfortunately, things have been done that are [crosstalk 00:42:06].
Alex: Which is possibly a problem. I’m writing an article about some of the stuff going on in Korea but it’s unfortunate because they have all the data and the reason I say that it’s liable and slander is because they had all the reports, all the data so if they reviewed it all and then went and posted that, then either they don’t speak English and didn’t understand the data, so they shouldn’t have been doing that presentation, right, it’s negligent or they did review it all and still went through with everything, which is intentional fraud, right. So it’s one or the other.
Tyler: I get your point but having been to Asia so much, it is just a totally different way of thinking, I don’t get it but I understand where you’re coming from and it is unfortunate and as much as it makes you frustrated at how some of these pol market their products or their claims, it’s upsetting to me as well as other researchers, legitimate researchers there in Korea too because the Korean government also had recently come down on hydrogen and said it was a scam and there’s no real science behind it.
Tyler: Well why did they do that? Well, they did it because these other people you’re talking about are talking about hydrogen water as some alkaline miracle energetic type frequency quantum hocus pocus bogus stuff or whatever and that is what the government is saying. Okay, so all of this together is hydrogen water then yes, hydrogen water is a scam. And I totally agree, if that’s your definition of hydrogen water then it is a scam.
Tyler: Unfortunately they were given the wrong definition because the people with the biggest mouths if you will. Those who are marketing the most are the ones not researching it in the lab that are the ones trying to sell their products and there doing it incorrectly. Which is why I was saying to you, I think if you want, for me too, if I want hydrogen gas to be out there, in a good, reputable, respectable way at least we understand what we’re talking about, then, these other alternative health practitioners, even if they’re conferences, their companies, they need to have access to their product because they are the earlier doctors.
Alex: And they are and that’s what I talked about in 100 voices, our upcoming series. By the time this comes out it might have already been posted on the hydrogen tablet origins, where I talk about development, people who came before me and how I decided to get into it, and why I decided to private label and it’s these important things. We were talking about a lot of these companies will say it changes the frequency of the water or make magic claims or they’ll say it’s H4O or H3O. They just don’t understand, so yes, anyone reading that says it’s ridiculous.
Tyler: You don’t even need to look at a scientific article because H4O, come on. Or making hydrogen peroxide, I’ve heard that as a common one.
Alex: It doesn’t make any sense.
Tyler: Which doesn’t make any sense at all, right because we’re talking about additional hydrogen, no additional oxygen. hydrogen peroxide is H2O2, right. Anyway, so that one a funny one. But absolutely and that speaks to two levels I think, to understand, number one, that it’s important that these alternative practitioners, these other channels or whatever that believe in good things and that are trying to spread the good word, at least their intentions are pure, that’s what they want, let us give them the correct product, you give them the correct product, the correct information, the correct education. So when they’re talking about this, they at least say it correctly and then number two, as I was saying, unfortunately, a lot of the science that gets out there is not the accurate, actual science that we see in published journals but the marketing staff, right.
Tyler: So that’s why really for me, that’s why I decided I need to get in front of a video camera and let people know about the research on hydrogen gas, this is a real medical gas, we’re talking about. We’re not researching some esoteric frequency thing of hydrogen pH stuff.
Alex: And this is actually what I want to talk about next and I go into this a little bit in my open letter to industry and skeptics with the use of testimonials.
Alex: You have to get your research out there, right. You need a platform to get your research out there, it’s the scientific world we live in because if nobody knows about your research, you’re not going to get grants, you’re not going to get other research teams [crosstalk 00:47:11], to be interested in it because that’s what science is about, you want numerous teams looking at it from numerous angles, replicating work, going down different avenues with the work. You don’t want to keep your research a secret because then what benefit does it have. You are just sitting on-
Tyler: Then if it actually is good then you’re a crook to humanity because you’re taking something that could be beneficial, and if it’s not good and you’re saying you have this magic here but all my research is stuck you in the Russian archives of whatever then that’s a serious red flag.
Alex: Absolutely, it’s a bit of an inside joke about emerging magic water that’s emerging on the scene, right now that has no good evidence but they’re saying there’s all this secret Russian research.
Tyler: There’s always Russian research behind stuff but that is the interesting thing, it’s unfortunate but it’s so true that most good real researchers the last ones who want to be in front of the video camera or out there publicizing in the media about what they’re doing because that’s the last thing, you do as a scientist. That’s science 101, that’s a very general thing. The very first thing that you do when it comes to getting your research out there is first taking your research to other scientists. Get that research to be replicated, get that research to be reviewed and scrutinized and tried to be falsified by other teams, only after it passes all of this stuff then should you come to the media.
Tyler: But the problem is, so many other products or companies try to take that research and jump the gun and get to the media before and they misinterpret and misattribute and totally don’t explain things correctly about what the research really is and so they give that research a very negative view, negative perspective, what’s going on because it’s been ruined. It really does behoove researchers once they have published articles, even though they don’t know all the details, because I don’t know all the details about hydrogen. I have more questions than I bet you guys have about hydrogen but we don’t have to wait until we have all those things answered before we come forward and that’s why I’m just here to say, this is what I’m doing, this is what others are doing, this is what we know but we still have a lot to figure out.
Alex: So, with what you’re saying, it really seems ridiculous that a lot of skeptics will attack scientists for getting on all sorts of platforms to try and give honest messaging, right. About what’s going on, because it’s so necessary. To not just get out and talk about your research but talk about it in channels that might be incorrectly misinterpreting it to give them [crosstalk 00:50:23], exactly-
Tyler: So they’re not really conventional… typically with science, we want to your main academic conferences, your symposia, you talk to other researchers, you go to research groups to both analyze your data, to try to falsify it and figure out what you did wrong with it. That’s why we really want to go to these types of conferences, if we just go to these other conferences to these doctors who just want to accept everything, then it can be misunderstood and misinterpreted.
Tyler: So I get skeptics or others they quickly want to attack any scientist or any doctor that goes to the other non-conventional conventions or conferences and gives their information because a lot of times, those doctors are speaking outside of their areas or they are trying to sell a product or they are trying to do whatever and they’re not doing what you’re talking about. What you’re talking about, I think is critical, that you get a scientist to come to these conferences and they speak about what’s going on in their research and use those platforms to educate the public because the public they don’t know science very well but that’s not always just their fault.
Tyler: It’s often the scientist’s fault because they’re so concerned about being attacked that they don’t want to go out. I don’t have all the answers about hydrogen gas, there are so many things I don’t know, as I said, I have more questions than the audience does, and yet I’m putting myself in this rather precarious position to, oh look at me, I’m going to answer all these questions on hydrogen, well I don’t know. But I’m trying to let you know what we’re trying to do in the research and so yes, people will attack me, like, hydrogen gas and whatever, straw man fallacies or they want to make or say or but the fact is many people want to know the science. They’re interested in science, they want to know what it is and scientists need to come up to the plate and let the people know and it’s unfortunate that it’s challenging because it’s so easy for others to attack them for doing that.
Alex: Yeah, and it happens so frequently and it’s just so unfortunate because you do need a platform to get the research out there. You need this. And the more interested the public is, the more grants are issued to study things. We see sham therapies that we know don’t work that still get thousands of research grants, and I’m saying thousands of grants for individual studies, not thousands of dollars, millions or hundreds of millions of dollars, we know it doesn’t work but because it’s so popular, they just keep getting grants for it, to continue doing research.
Alex: So, when something is new, you need to get a voice out there, to get accurate science, to get people interested so that we can continue researching it. And also for it to be accurate because you want the marketers to be at least reasonably accurate and so the media is reasonably accurate. If scientists aren’t talking about the research and marketers are making these magic claims, then journalists will look into it, and be like, well that’s crazy.
Tyler: Well we had that instance, you and I talked about this before but some of the articles that came out in some of the mainstream news media outlets, originally claimed that the benefit of hydrogen water, the claim was to alkalize your body, that hydrogen water is the same as alkaline water, which is a very common misunderstanding, hydrogen water does not alkalize the body so they automatically made that assumption.
Tyler: Well we know alkaline water is not a buffer, it can’t buffer the acids in our body. Even if one is to subscribe to the claimed benefits of alkaline foods or alkaline diets, one simply can’t do it with alkaline water so, conflating the two together is a serious problem, and that major news media that did that in the past. That’s very unfortunate. And that’s very sad journalism.
Alex: I believe they not just falsified quotes to you but to one of the other people that were interviewed, a professor.
Tyler: Yeah, they fabricated their own quote and [crosstalk 00:55:08].
Alex: Refused to take it down.
Tyler: Yeah, eventually they did make some very important changes, I guess somebody went to the top editor or something, but anyway, you just can’t trust them. It’s the same thing, let us use hydrogen as an example. So let us say hydrogen is somebody’s area of expertise and they’ve been studying it for 20 years. I’ve been studying it for 10 years now and so I understand the things we know and the things that we really don’t know about hydrogen and then they’ll just go to someone else and they’ll just go to a normal doctor, right and they’ll say, hey what do you think about hydrogen? They’re like, I’ve never heard of it.
Tyler: Like they have no idea, there’s now over a 1000 publications, the doctor doesn’t know so, what is any good canned response, if you are a logical, conservative, good doctor and somebody asked you about the benefits of whatever and your answer should be, I don’t know, I’ll have to look into it. Okay, here’s a bunch of articles. Well you can obviously say after that, well there are some scientific studies but I don’t know much about it, so I’m quite skeptical.
Tyler: And so the journalists report back, well these people say such and such but all these doctors say they’re quite skeptical about the benefits. Well as you should be and I’m skeptical about the benefits also, even though I do know all of the studies out there but the fact is, at least I know what the studies say and I’ve actually read a couple of them, maybe even actually have done a couple of them.
Tyler: Anyway, I just don’t think it’s appropriate to say, but there’s an expert on the same platform, they’re experts in totally different fields.
Alex: And it’s that joke, I’ll share this one with you. A lot of journalists think they need to give balanced reporting on topics that have fake controversy about them. If, say, you’re reporting on the weather and one person in your office says it’s sunny, another says it’s raining. You don’t report both sides, you look out the window. Right. And see but journalists don’t seem to do that these days.
Alex: Some of the articles that have been published have said there’s no human evidence that it works, there are now 65 published trials on hydrogen therapy. I think about that many that are either being written or finished, being written, being data collected, or underway.
Tyler: Yeah, right now.
Alex: So there is a growing volume of human evidence and it’s growing quite quickly.
Tyler: And actually most of these, 99.9% of these studies are all funded by governments. They’re not, even your studies, as grateful as we have been for you donating your product, maybe some additional funds to give us some money so we can look at different markers-
Alex: And that’s one thing I want to do as I have said, ad nauseum, over and over again, I really believe in open research. I’m under no publication agreement, I have in some of the studies, donated some extra funds for markers, I’ve always provided product and placebo at no charge. Design the placebos but if I think it’s important if say the grant is restricted, you guys are like, we really should be testing these other things, I donate so we get a better picture of what’s going on. To make a better study. To make those public grant funds go longer because that’s what it’s about. You want better research.
Tyler: Yeah, exactly and that’s what we want. We want to have more research, we want to have more data and that is one of the concerns, in the beginning, well we don’t want to get into a type of relationship where they’re going to control our research or what we can or cannot publish. Because the fact is, if we do a study and we use your product or anyone’s product for that matter and we don’t see favorable results, we want to publish that. We want people, we want to understand, that’s the whole [crosstalk 00:59:38] to understand.
Alex: And that’s the big flaw in privately funded research or even sometimes public research, right. If you don’t have to publish the data, what if a company does a study 20 times to try and prove what they’re doing works and the first 19 sees no benefits but they keep changing the goal post, moving the goalposts, changing the parameters and the 20th time they get it shows a benefit, right. Now they know how to rig the study to keep showing benefits-
Tyler: And that’s the way, we see those problems with, even in pharmaceuticals, how many studies you have to show to get FDA approval. So, there’s a lot of corruption on that side, it happens, we’re aware of that. But there’s the same corruption going on in these other fields of research too.
Alex: Well, for sure. I’ve seen plenty of public studies where I find the registration on clinicaltrials.gov and it’s nine years old and there’s no publication, they didn’t follow it through.
Tyler: Yeah, they should be obligated to-
Alex: It should be the law and that’s what Ben Goldacre is pushing in the alltrials.net campaign that we need all data because we do not know what works unless we have all the data unless we have all the failures.
Tyler: Even some journals don’t want to publish articles unless it has a positive effect because it’s all about impact factor marketing, we don’t really need to get into everything.
Alex: There are flaws in the system at every level that need to be addressed, so this isn’t some single conspiracy going on [crosstalk 01:01:24].
Tyler: Well that is a problem when other people try to bring up a conspiracy thing, well we can’t get our articles for our studies or whatever published in these mainstream medical journals or get them published in whatever because it’s a conspiracy or whatever. That’s not true, we publish all the time in these journals and that’s because we do a legitimate study and we do it according to the scientific method and we submit for peer review and if it’s good, it will get accepted, and if it’s not, and sometimes it takes over a year to get through the peer-review process because the reviewers want to know, what about this? Or have you looked at this? Or are you sure about this? Always trying to figure out what is the problem with your study because it should have not shown any results.
Tyler: That’s the goal of science, the scientist always says, this doesn’t work and if it does work, then you probably have a methodological flaw and if you can’t figure out any methodological flaw and you can’t confirm that it doesn’t work, well then maybe it does work and science just continues going that way but the point is, you cannot fall victim to this idea, well not you, but in general, people can’t fall for the idea that, well the only reason that people haven’t validated that this new magic, whatever, such and such potion, lotion works are because of the conspiracy because you can’t publish this and get journals, that’s really not true. You can, you just follow what’s called the scientific method.
Alex: Absolutely. And before we go further away from the topic, I want to talk about it from a biochemist angle, Professor Osich had that really cool study, really early on in athletes showing a reduced lactic acidosis [crosstalk 01:03:23].
Tyler: Yeah, there are several studies actually.
Alex: Wouldn’t be a direct buffer, in my understanding but there is some good reasoning.
Tyler: It depends on the product, right. Because of course hydrogen gas, as we talked about, has nothing to do with pH, so of course, if you took hydrogen gas and dissolved it into the water, the pH would not change. It could be acidic water or alkaline water or neutral water or whatever, it’s not going to affect the pH, so hydrogen gas alone does not act as a buffer. Now can it have a buffering capacity somehow in the human body? Well, for example, the main buffering system of the body is the lungs and the kidneys, so maybe having impaired lung function from inflammation or kidney function or something, so could hydrogen improve the function of the kidneys and improve the function of the lungs and now the natural pH regulators of your body start working so that can get your pH to be better.
Tyler: Another way that hydrogen gas could indirectly help to maintain a normal pH is during high-intensity type exercise where you do start producing lactate, during the production of lactate, when that’s occurring, you’re also producing high amounts of acid and that’s because you don’t have enough oxygen. Well actually do have enough oxygen, well okay, I’m just saying when you are exercising at a high level, normally you make your ATP, Adenosine Triphosphate in the mitochondria, you make a lot more ATP there but when you start exercising at a higher level the rate by which you can make ATP is not fast enough for which you need the ATP. And so you stop using the mitochondria, you start undergoing glycolysis and during glycolysis, you start producing lactate, and that process of glycolysis, you produce a lot of acids as well. The break down of ATP and your hydrolysis of that [inaudible 01:05:33], Adenosine Triphosphate and other areas, you make a lot of acids and so [inaudible 01:05:40] of lactate correlates with a lot of acids.
Tyler: So, with hydrogen gas maybe you can improve the function of the mitochondria and by so doing, you decrease or reliance on anaerobic glycolysis and so by using less glycolysis you are therefore producing less acid and if you have less acid, well then your pH is normal, right. So there are those ways too but the last thing is you have a look at the product because sometimes, I think actually in that study you’re talking about they used the product that produced hydrogen gas but it also had some bicarbonates, calcium or sodium bicarbonates or something and even magnesium itself.
Tyler: In this form, solid magnesium as it reacts all of these can increase the pH directly and act as a buffer in this case and so those right there could be responsible for preventing an acidotic state but in terms of hydrogen gas, there’s not-
Alex: Not directly but maybe indirectly-
Tyler: Yeah, for those reasons explained, yeah.
Alex: Well that’s pretty much everything with hydrogen. It’s indirect. I want to go right in to talk a bit more about hydrogen and permesus, so congratulations, you’ve had two reviews published in the last couple of months.
Tyler: Yeah, they were pretty good articles.
Alex: I know you’ve been working on the sports review for a long time.
Tyler: Yeah, quite a while.
Alex: So, you’re proposing and you mentioned it on our first talk, that hydrogens a bit of an exercise mimetic.
Tyler: It just sounds good, it’s good marketing.
Alex: As I’ve been pouring into it, looking into it, I’ve been thinking, it’s as much or seems to be as much a caloric restriction mimetic also and it’s interesting because I know a lot of people are using hydrogen during fasts, water fasts. I know you’ve read what I wrote, feel free to criticize me, any thoughts.
Tyler: Sure that’s what I do best. Well first off, I do like the idea of thinking about the fasting mimetic as well only because some of those same pathways that can be activated by fasting, can be activated by hydrogen just as in the same way that pathways and a bit of exercise can be activated by hydrogen as well. Of course, to truly say that it is mimetic, there are certain definitions and terminology that we’d have to really analyze to see if it’s a true mimetic for exercise, a true memetic in fasting but as a general idea, it does seem to fit both of those categories. You could say in some ways that exercise is fasting memetic and you could say that fasting is an exercise mimetic.
Alex: Most forms of homeosis activate [crosstalk 01:08:47].
Tyler: Exactly, it’s just that generally, people understand that fasting or exercising has a lot of benefits and it does so by activating many pathways that hydrogen gas also activates. But yeah there are a lot of really interesting studies with hydrogen… we talked about fasting, just a couple of interesting points with that, maybe. I always say this but one of the first things that happen when you start fasting, most people realize this but maybe they don’t fully get it, though. But the first thing that starts happening when you fast is you get hungry and one of the reasons why is because you start producing this gastric hormone called ghrelin. And ghrelin makes you hungry but it has a lot of therapeutic and neural protective benefits as well and drinking hydrogen water is able to induce gastric ghrelin secretion and so provides those benefits there but the main thing when we talk about fasting, the main thing that is talked about when fasting is talked about is autophagy and basically-
Alex: And it’s interesting because hydrogen is actually shown to regulate autophagy both up and down depending on the bottle.
Tyler: Yeah, and that’s what I wanted to point out which I think is really interesting, firstly you understand that the whole autophagy thing is of course, in our cells, they get older, get senescent or they have different problems. Autophagy just means self-eating, so they can get rid of those bad cells and you don’t want too much autophagy because that’s how you end up getting atrophy or apoptosis or just cell death because of cause the cell ate itself up and it’s gone. But you did need to have a continuous balance, a little bit of eating, a little of not, right. And it just goes back and forth and so you have to have autophagy going on all the time and so you don’t want too much, that’s why fasting for a long time, for months, years eventually that will kill you. If you don’t eat, you actually will probably die. In fact, you will, research has shown that you will.
Alex: I can quote you on that, if you don’t eat.
Tyler: Yeah, I’ve actually looked at the statistics that research has also shown that the more birthdays you have, the longer you live.
Alex: Wow.
Tyler: So, with that in mind, we consider that you don’t want too much autophagy and you also don’t want to not have autophagy, so just eating all the time, that’s always going to be activating the mTOR and preventing autophagy from occurring. So, as you mentioned with hydrogen gas, it’s very interesting because depending on the salt or the need of the cell, if you will, hydrogen gas helps to regulate autophagy and in some cases, it can prevent excessive autophagy, wherein other cases it can help induce autophagy and thus leading to a therapeutic biological effect.
Alex: And that seems to be the case with hydrogen often and that’s why I really don’t like calling it an antioxidant because it can be a pro-oxidant or anti-inflammatory because it seems to regulate a lot of these processes based on what’s needed, right, in the model at the time. Which means it potentially has a lot more applications.
Tyler: Yeah, and it helps to explain the panacea if you will of hydrogen. Because it’s kind of, well not kind of, but literally a red flag like hydrogen gas helps with this disease and this one and this one and this one and it’s just all these things, if it’s a disease, that means hydrogen can help. It’s not really how pharmacodynamics that works with drugs and things. But when we start to understand hydrogen more as an adaptive redox modulator, than say if it regulates some certain pathway, we start to understand why hydrogen gas could have so many different ubiquitous effects.
Alex: And I want to go into this actually because this is really important and I originally said I’d never fully fund any trials because I don’t want that conflict but it’s frustrating how little replication work gets done when it’s all public-funded because teams don’t really want to do a direct replication of another teamwork. They want to find something novel and new, right. So, I’m actually changing gears a little bit and I’m looking into funding, fully funding my first trial as a replicative trial of the public trial.
Alex: It would still be under no publication-
Tyler: As long as it’s under no publication-
Alex: Yeah, it would still be under no publication agreement with the university but it would be no grant funds, so that we can look at these targets and replicate the work because a lot of skeptics will say, “oh this is garbage, there are so many studies on so many different things, very little replication work,” because, in pharmaceuticals, you can just run the same study over and over again, once you’ve found where you want your goalposts, they just do it over and it’s replicative. And that’s actually less telling than something that has such a wide range like hydrogen. We start understanding it more in a broader sense.
Tyler: Well I think the purpose is also different, with a drug, you’re trying to really demonstrate that this drug works for this disease and this target, this organ, this receptor, or whatever. So you work on that, work on that, get the FDA approval, then push it, market, so on, right. Whereas with hydrogen gas, that’s not the goal. We’re trying to understand, some of the researchers are trying to understand its wide range and ubiquitous biological effects and even with drugs, as soon as that patent runs out for this drug, they just repurpose the drug, right. And they say, okay, it worked for this, and now let’s see if it works for this too and they do actually do the same thing with drugs, they just do it over the course of 30, 40 years.
Alex: Whereas hydrogen, we have 100 different races, that people are taking small steps, in different directions [crosstalk 01:15:19]-
Tyler: But that’s actually one of the problems with hydrogen gas because it does have such a wide range of effects on so many different diseases, then people who are interested in Alzheimer’s, I want to look at that for Alzheimer’s. People who are interested in Parkinson’s, for this and then rheumatoid arthritis for this and then metabolic syndrome for this and all these different diseases, instead of a focused concerted effort. Okay, we’re going to look at hydrogen gas for ischemia-reperfusion damage due to coronary bypass surgery or something. One specific thing and we can do many, many studies on that specific thing, then that’s when we can start looking at, what is the dose-response? what is the concentration [inaudible 01:15:59]? What is the best method of administration?
Tyler: All of these things, typically we have to focus on one disease model, then we work on the cell culture, with the in vitro systems with the exact primary targets and what’s it doing in the cells, the animal models, many different animal models for that type of disease and then into clinical studies and then different populations, different genetics, different durations, different administration, all of these things, all very narrow on this one specific disease, that’s the kind of studies that you need in order to really understand a drug and in this case, hydrogen gas.
Tyler: And again because hydrogen gas has all these effects that are all over the map, it’s just really difficult to do all of that.
Alex: Now I do feel that we’re starting to narrow it down a little bit on understanding when hydrogen can be an adjuvant therapy, or at least guess better. Make educated guesses and where it can be very impactful. And in my talk with Professor Osich, we just chit-chatted, with your work, calling it an exercise mimetic, going down that and where I think the most promising data is, at least especially considering the studies we have just published and coming out and everything.
Alex: It is for these lifestyle diseases like metabolic syndrome, fatty liver disease, and his research has been, either in these lifestyle diseases, obese populations or as a performance enhancer for exercise. So, to me, it’s interesting because he’s the first researcher and he is a medical doctor, so maybe he had an intuitive sense of where he thought it was going to work but he seemed to pick good targets, target populations for it.
Tyler: Hydrogen is not a cure-all, for sure. For example, if somebody’s dead, hydrogen won’t bring them back to life. Although there is actually a story about that in Japan if there’s so much damage that’s done, obviously hydrogen won’t be effective in those cases and so these serious things that occur, well hydrogen gas is not morphine or something and that’s why it’s not typically, most people who take hydrogen gas, well I don’t know, you probably know better than me but I was going to say, they don’t really experience, a noticeable thing, right off the bat. Maybe you get different reports but I’m just saying that-
Alex: Some do, I’d say a small, maybe… Professor Osich and I were talking, anecdotally it seems roughly four in five people notice a benefit within at least a couple of weeks-
Tyler: Oh yeah, a couple of weeks, okay, so I would maybe 80% or something-
Alex: One in 10 seemed to notice this rush of energy and tingling through their head within minutes of the very first time-
Tyler: I have heard that quite a few times actually which, I don’t know, but-
Alex: It strikes me because I’d say placebo but everyone describes the same thing, even yesterday.
Tyler: Well people describe a UFO the same way too.
Alex: For sure, that’s true. Even yesterday we were sampling hydrogen water to the NHL players, [inaudible 01:19:37] or their families, their trainers, managers, everything. The one-woman, drank it and she was “how much caffeine is in this?” And I said, “there’s no caffeine in this,” and she was like “I just feel it, my body is rushing, my head is tingling.” So, she knew nothing about hydrogen, it was the first shed ever heard of it, and yet again, it was the same anecdote.
Tyler: I actually gave hydrogen to a friend who’s a chemist, a professor of chemistry, I was just telling him and he was “I’ll try it,” he drank it, not even very much and then he sat down and he was like, “I don’t feel very good,” and he was light-headed and he was “I have lots of energy,” but also a weird rush, that was really interesting to me, because he was not buying anything I was saying. It was interesting.
Tyler: So I admit there is something going on, but either way, my point with all that is hydrogen gas is typically quite a milder molecule and that’s a good thing, it’s not like morphine, is what I was saying. You take and you’re just like, give me another, or something. Maybe.
Alex: So interestingly and I was leading into the exercise and lifestyle diseases, in my reviewing of the literature it seems that the clearest use of hydrogen that we’re observing a very dose-dependent response is in metabolic, mitochondrial-targeted issues. It really seems really clear that so far, the more hydrogen and the higher dose, the better the response from the metabolic syndrome studies to the fatty liver to that mitochondrial dysfunction early comparative study. It seems very clear that as we’ve gone with these higher dosages, the biological markers that are changing, are changing more frequently and to a larger extent. Right.
Tyler: That may be true-
Alex: I don’t want to put you on the spot to make a statement, that’s just my observation.
Tyler: Yeah, I think that we are going to be better off with a higher concentration and as researchers, if we can use a higher concentration, especially, if we can get closer to the total dose that animals end up getting because as I said, they drink so much more water than us, that’s what we would rather do. I wouldn’t say that we can say definitively that yes, the higher concentration is more effective because I just don’t think we have the data. Even with the mitochondrial studies you’re talking about, there were actually some other things that if you look at carefully-
Alex: One wasn’t blinded, one was double-blinded. They were different durations.
Tyler: Yeah, different durations, 12 weeks, right.
Alex: So there were a lot of changes in that one. I’m going more off, we do have two published studies using magnesium [inaudible 01:22:57] for metabolic syndrome, then the fatty liver studies, and then the body composition, [crosstalk 01:23:05] six milligrams of H2.
Tyler: The better benefits, they did drink more hydrogen. They had a higher dose of hydrogen. So I get it, I know where you’re coming from. I’m just-
Alex: I know you’re a lot more cautious, right and especially, this trend and I’m basing this off, three, four, five human studies and one, that you guys are working on, [crosstalk 01:23:32].
Tyler: Listen if I were to guess, I would agree with you.
Alex: And that’s all we can do right now.
Tyler: True, as a researcher I want to use the higher concentration of hydrogen because that’s more in line with what we do in cell studies, what we do in animal studies and that’s what we want to do. I’m just saying we don’t have it, we also need to have the other data showing that it’s not that way. Which we don’t have. And so, that’s going to take a long time but right now, it’s better to hedge your bets.
Alex: Exactly and all I’m thinking, it’s by no means definitive proof. It just seems like I said, you’ve got the two metabolic syndrome studies that were already published years ago, the body composition one, they had six milligrams of H2 for three months in that one, our fatty liver, it was six milligrams of H2 in 28 days and then this new metabolic syndrome one coming out that they got 15 milligrams of H2, it was very high.
Tyler: Yeah, and the results are really good.
Alex: So this is going off half a dozen studies in relatively small-
Tyler: At least what can be said, in low concentration of hydrogen, it can not be stated that at low concentration, will have the same benefits. It might but you can’t say that, because that’s not what was used in the study.
Alex: It’s really interesting how it’s going, I like the direction it’s going but we do need a lot more repetitive work, we need direct comparative studies on that absolutely and even Professor Osich and I were talking about, he wants to see direct analysis, comparing hydrogen to say a mild bout of exercise-
Tyler: And that’s what I was saying, in order to understand its effect as an exercise mimetic, we don’t really know, there’s certain terminology that needs to be tested to really look at that in that way.
Alex: It’s interesting stuff that needs to come out. I really hope that more grants come, as you know I’m talking to a couple of teams in Canada that are very interested in hydrogen.
Tyler: Well I think we’ll get more and especially with looking at emergency medicine. The American Heart Association has funded a lot of the hydrogen research, with that study there done at Harvard. So, things are coming.
Alex: For sure, it’s building quite a bit. We need to know more. I tend to constantly readjust my position as the new evidence is coming out and I know I’m less cautious than you are, so I don’t want to put words in your mouth by any means but I do want to hear your thoughts because I know you are a lot more cautious than I am and I do have my biases, because if the trend is showing that what I have is the best than automatically I’m going to be looking for that confirmation [crosstalk 01:26:47].
Tyler: Well I don’t know but like I said if when we look at the research, especially when we look at cell clusters. I think that’s the most fascinating one because when you drink hydrogen water, you have a lot of cells in your body, 37.2 trillion cells and if you drink hydrogen water, let’s say you get a full gram of hydrogen, that milligrams, sorry milligrams, that milligrams have got to be adjusted all throughout, it’s going to get diluted all throughout your entire body and then the concentration of hydrogen in your actual cells at the cellular level is going to be really quite low.
Tyler: When you look at dose-dependent studies, in the cell culture. We can start out with about 10 micromolar concentration and there’s really not much of a therapeutic effect, then you go to 20 micromolar concentration, now we start seeing therapeutic effects. Well, that’s about the same concentration you get from drinking a liter of hydrogen saturated water.
Alex: So how would it work, to say, really look at it? To use something like the tablets, you know that might get 10 milligrams.
Tyler: Well that’s what I’m saying, that’s what we get to, so then we get to 20 micromolar and we start seeing therapeutic effect and then we go higher and we go higher and in some cells lines and in some models we look at, you can see a dose-dependent effect all the way to 800 micromolar, 0.8 millimolar which is 1.6 milligrams per liter so that would mean that your body is actually saturated with hydrogen gas. So, you can not take enough tablets or inhale, you’d have to inhale 100% hydrogen gas to get to that concentration. You’d be hyperbaric, we could calculate this, this would be interesting.
Alex: Okay, well that’s data I didn’t even know, that in cell cultures you guys have seen the dose-dependent response.
Tyler: Yes, up to a point.
Alex: In some [crosstalk 01:28:55], that’s pretty cool so, I won’t just get into a little bit, I know it’s something that you’re interested in. We mentioned before Tyler’s Masters in sports science.
Tyler: Yeah, exercise sports conditioning and exercise physiology.
Alex: So, we’re adding to our line, as an essential actually it might already be added by the time this gets published. Creatine and I know creatine is actually the biggest topic of Professor Osich’s research, it’s quickly becoming hydrogen but creatine before that, you take it for exercise.
Tyler: Yeah, I wrote a paper on that, let’s see, eight, nine years ago or something. [inaudible 01:29:41] recommendation report. I was just interested in this area and I looked at a ton of stuff and I even did some mass spectrometry studies trying to understand the stability of, because there’s a lot of claims out there that I wanted to understand better but it actually needs to be updated. But anyway.
Alex: Well, of course, eight, nine years and a lot of the research that’s trending on creatine now as an overall health supplement especially in the elderly, I remember shooting you a text, it might have been a year ago or something and I said, I’m really starting to think of creatine more as a health supplement to an exercise supplement second. And that’s how I think of hydrogen. Hydrogen is a healthy aging supplement, it’s an exercise supplement second, right.
Alex: You said yeah, I think I agree, but I’d have to think about it more type thing and-
Tyler: Just only because well I’m just a very cautious person, I don’t like taking anything even vitamins or minerals or anything. I like to really look at things because often things end up hurting even more than they end up helping and I just try to eat a really good diet. That’s the number one thing but I don’t eat really any meat and so my creatine levels would be a lot lower and so I am one of the ones that respond really well to creatine and we understand the reasons why there are responders and non-responders of creatine, primarily based upon the activity of creatine kinase and muscle levels of creatine. You have to increase the creatine by 20 millimoles in order to start seeing those increases.
Tyler: So, just some of the things about creatine in terms of its metabolism in the gastrointestinal tract and different things that I was curious at but if we look at the safety data, which is very obvious, it’s very safe but then we look at some of the clinical benefits for people with various neurological conditions, from depression or Alzheimer’s or whatever, yeah, creatine has some very strong therapeutic effects.
Alex: And my thoughts and when I brought it up to Professor Osich, he said 100%, we talked about it a month ago and hydrogen might be synergistic with creatine in a lot of ways and he told me he believes he wants to do studies on it but in his lab, they believe hydrogen might improve the bioavailability of creatine when taken and that’s an interesting thought be we get those anecdotes from a lot of customers, we need to study that-
Tyler: Yeah, we have to, I don’t understand, maybe I’ll talk to him, I’m going to go down there in a bit but what we mean by bioavailability because creatine, well there’s a lot of things from its absorption-
Alex: It’s potency or something.
Tyler: yeah, because it’s getting into the bloodstream and then it’s getting into the muscle cells, with the creatine transporters are sodium chloride dependent and then it’s regulated by, 65% I think is in the phosphorylated form so, creatine kind of regulates that, so hydrogen gas, it has an effect in regulating some of these [inaudible 01:33:16] activities, it increases bioenergetics. So, okay, so, if hydrogen gas could increase, it has some effects in bioenergetics, it might actually be able to increase the amount of creatine phosphate storage by increasing the amount of phosphorylated creatine that is going to increase the uptake of creatine, that should help convert non-responders to responders. Now that’s actually a really good point.
Alex: That’s actually something that Professor Osich and I were talking about is the responder verse non-responder and we talked about this a little bit. He said that we’re actually starting to study that and see that caffeine, creatine are both compounds with-
Tyler: Creatine we know is responder, non-responder but like I said because a lot of people who eat meat on a daily basis, are actually getting two or more grams of creatine from the meat and so their muscle creatine levels are already quite full and so they are not going to respond very well from creatine unless they do some bio hacks which I’ve talked about before with increasing creatine activity and creatine kinase activity and everything but it actually may be hydrogen gas could do some of that.
Tyler: Caffeine, yeah, I don’t know about but obviously there would be responders, non-responders because people who are habitual caffeine drinkers, for example, you can start having some down-regulation of [crosstalk 01:34:36].
Alex: Caffeine’s a really interesting one, that’s another essential we’re adding. The overall health benefits of smaller amounts of caffeine and one of the dangers-
Tyler: Like how many milligrams?
Alex: 100 to 400 max a day, sometimes a Starbucks coffee might have 300 or 400 milligrams of caffeine and then people drink multiple a day, and now that could be dangerous, right. It could be too much caffeine. We need to remember.
Tyler: Well coffee also has a lot of antagonistic molecules combined with caffeine, so, it’s not just it has this caffeine. So 800 milligrams in a cup of coffee, not that it’s that high but that’s probably not accurate to just say it’s the same as a dose of 800 milligrams of caffeine.
Alex: And then you look at energy drinks, a lot of kids die from energy drinks but these all these other molecules.
Tyler: Well they add I think three overall [inaudible 01:35:36] metabolite, caffeine, and different things and guarana or different things in there.
Alex: Yeah, there’s a lot of different things at play. I know caffeine has been studied in a lot of molecules and because of all this confusion in a lot of products where they’re adding all these things that may alter how caffeine works or sensitivity, we’re just adding pure caffeine, 100 milligrams, a pill. One thing we’re adding again might already be added by the time this-
Tyler: Well caffeine is one of the few molecules that have been demonstrated that can be quite safe and it can have quite a few therapeutic benefits as well.
Alex: And for legal supplements on the market [crosstalk 01:36:31].
Tyler: Well yeah, as far as a thermogenic enhancer, caffeine’s one of the very few that legitimately.
Alex: Works and can work in a single dose, increased performance, in an acute single dose.
Tyler: If I take it chronically, it may actually not work because then you get sensitive to it and things. Yeah, if you’re going to use caffeine for performance it’s best not even to take caffeine unless you’re going to perform but there are some other potential benefits from [crosstalk 01:37:00].
Alex: Controlled use, absolutely. That’s my thoughts anyway. And one last thing I wanted to talk to you about. It’s interesting and talking to my legal counsel and consultants on getting studies. Definitions are so important. Say if we do a study like [inaudible 01:37:26] and we just call it an obese population then say our results can be [inaudible 01:37:38] because it’s restoring proper function in the body but all of a sudden you call it a disease state and now it’s a drug and it’s really funny how regulations and bureaucracy work because if you take an obese population, 90% of them are going to have metabolic syndrome or NAFLD or in many cases, [crosstalk 01:38:02], maybe 70% of them both. Right.
Alex: Its really funny how it works and it’s really funny how studies are often done that are industry-funded because they have to be so careful with the wording even though it’s the exact same thing but then in academia, you’re going to want to define it properly in the research that you’re looking at. Because even in an obese population they don’t necessarily have elevated markers, right. Like it isn’t perfect. If someone overweight they might still be metabolically healthy.
Tyler: Fit obese people are great because they’re often stronger, with lower risks of osteonecrosis.
Alex: Well I was telling you, even I’ve started trying to get back on the road to fitness the last few months and I’m down 25 pounds but even when I hit 265, which was a 90 pound gain from before my shoulder fell apart and hit arthritis in about eight spots but none of my markers were elevated. My fasting glucose was fine, my triglycerides were fine, my blood pressure was fine, my cholesterol was fine. It was just so interesting that I gained 90 pounds in such a short amount of time and there seemed to be no impairment because you’d look and be like that’s morbidly obese, probably diabetes or pre-diabetes and it just wasn’t the case and it’s why some of these things are strongly correlated and it’s why in academia [crosstalk 01:39:52], you’re going to want to look, you’re going to make sure but in industry, they’re going to want to pick obese people and call it that. Right. Because now you can make the claim.
Tyler: Yeah, it’s interesting. I don’t really worry about that [crosstalk 01:40:04].
Alex: Because for some reason lifestyle stuff like metabolic syndrome might be a disease, maybe not but there’s a stigma we can’t call it obesity disease.
Tyler: Yeah, when there are politics and things. It is an interesting area.
Tyler: But when you gained all that weight, you were also not 50, 60 years old. You were quite young still and you were… I think there is something about people who healthy and very fit younger and having just certain epigenetic expressions.
Alex: Yeah, and I stopped working on my upper body but I didn’t stop working on my legs, I was still doing squats every day.
Tyler: We know that squats and things have great benefits for the brain and things, so it’s totally separate organs.
Alex: Yeah, absolutely. But it’s just so interesting. I wanted to bring it up because of the wording in the studies. Everyone will be like, is that claim FDA approved? FDA doesn’t approve any claims on supplements for anything that could be construed as [crosstalk 01:41:14].
Tyler: That’s right because it’s a supplement, the FDA only deals with drugs.
Alex: If you take a healthy population or a normal population and obese is considered that and then talk about markers then it’s restoring proper function, but if you label a group, now that’s a direct disease and drug claim. It’s just so funny how the bureaucracy works because even the healthy population doesn’t approve the claims. You can make the claim and you have to hold the studies on hand in case they ask.
Tyler: Sort of, yeah, they’re not going to approve the claim, they’re just going to say[crosstalk 01:41:53].
Alex: Why are you making this claim, That is what they’ll say. You show them the evidence, they say okay or no we don’t agree, don’t use it anymore. So, they’re a reactionary agency in that sense and they don’t approve any claim ever so if supplement companies are making claims on their label in the marketing, they might be within their legal right but that doesn’t mean the FDA approved it. Because there is no avenue for the FDA to approve that. We could go through 100 studies-
Tyler: You could become a drug.
Alex: But then yeah, you have to become a drug and then it changes the cost, it changes how you can sell it, so, there is no amount of evidence of supplement-
Tyler: To get approved by the FDA.
Alex: Yes, exactly. That a supplement could gather.
Tyler: I hope you realize the very definition of the FDA [crosstalk 01:42:47].
Alex: Yeah, exactly. Well, I think we covered everything we wanted anyway. So, thanks again for coming to town.
Tyler: Okay, all right.
Alex: Thank you everyone for watching.
2 Comments
“Hi Wauneta!
Bath bombs do not exist, but there are larger tablets designed for the bath tub. The unscented ones are the H2 Relief:
Also, we have pasisonfruit scented bath tablets, Vivid H2:
“
Not sure what I’m responding to, but I would like to know where to purchase hydrogen bath bombs (balls). Thanks