Small Victories: De-Stressing with Nature
October 22, 2019Hydrogen as a Stress for Resilience
November 1, 2019Kris Gethin and Alex Tarnava Talk Hydrogen Water
Kris Gethin, CEO of Kaged Muscle and host of The Knowledge and Mileage podcast invited Alex Tarnava to talk hydrogen-rich water on his latest episode, Keeping Your Body In Tune with Hydrogen Rich Water.
Watch the video interview below!
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Time Stamps
How on earth did he discover hydrogen-rich water?! [1:06]
The importance of getting the RIGHT message out. [11:50]
What are the physical and mental aspects of drinking hydrogen water? The science and studies behind it. [13:48]
The ONE thing that excites him most about hydrogen. [26:10]
Can hydrogen reverse metabolic syndrome? [29:08]
What is the ideal therapeutic dosage and how does Drink HRW stand out from the rest? [33:32]
The significance of sleep quality. [44:20]
What is the PROPER way to consume hydrogen tablets? [48:14]
The exciting future for the hydrogen-rich water field. [56:30]
Why he is always looking to gain knowledge and research from other experts in the area. [1:00:23]
Who gains the MOST from hydrogen-rich water? [1:03:15]
About Kris Gethin
Kris Gethin is the author of many books including the #1 Best Seller Body by Design, The Adventures KAGED MUSCLE, and The Transformer which was released in January 2016. Kris’s books and graphic novels have received global praise and have helped and inspired millions of readers.
Kris is the founder of the DTP training method, Director and Co-founder of Gethin Gyms, Main Male Spokesmodel of Bodybuilding.com, and former editor and chief. He is the Director of Trainers for Physique Global and CEO of the supplement brand KAGED MUSCLE which and shipped worldwide and has already become the highest-rated and reviewed supplement company in the world.
Kris Gethin: Hello everybody, Kris Gethin here. Welcome to another episode of The Knowledge and Mileage Podcast. Today, I have Alex Tarnava with me, joining me. If you are viewing this on YouTube, you can actually see I’ve got Alex here from Vancouver. Thank you very much for joining me here.
Alex Tarnava: No problem. Glad to be here.
Kris Gethin: So, we started talking probably a couple of months ago now because I’d been taking hydrogen-rich water for quite a while, and then I got introduced to you and I had some conversations with you. I started using your product, which I absolutely love by the way. There’s a lot of evidence on hydrogen-rich water that I really want to get into today because a lot of my listeners and viewers are really into, obviously, improving their performance.
Kris Gethin: There are various aspects that I know that hydrogen-rich water can help and assist improve performance, et cetera, but obviously, you are the guy and the brains behind that can be better articulate it than I can. So, first of all, let’s go to the beginning because that’s always a good place to start. How on earth did you discover hydrogen-rich water in the first place?
Alex Tarnava: Out of desperation is the best way to put it. I had another business that was very successful or relatively successful, depending on who you are listening to, and it allowed me a lot of free time. So, when I wasn’t traveling on business, I only worked an hour or two a day and the rest of my time I was training. So, I was training for at least eight hours a day. I was training in various martial arts, Muay Thai, jujitsu, boxing, wrestling, and I was competing just regionally in CrossFit.
Alex Tarnava: That’s a lot of hammering on the body. I was at the peak of my physical fitness just training so much. I didn’t have any off days. An off day for me was going and running wind sprints for an hour at the track, and then maybe going for a low-intensity hike. I was training for a CrossFit competition and I got really sick, and my best friend did too. He was training for a triathlon, and he’s a competitive or he was back then a competitive triathlete in Spartan races, stuff like that. He topped five in various [inaudible 00:02:34] those. He’s a guy who ran a 34-minute 10K at the end of the triathlon. So, he was very fit.
Alex Tarnava: We both got sick at the exact same time, and that hit us in very, very different ways. For me, I had a sudden onset of narcolepsy. I was sleeping 16 to 18 hours a day. If I wasn’t getting up and moving, I was falling asleep after sitting on the couch for a minute or two, and I had a basically central nervous system shutdown.
Alex Tarnava: So, my heavy lifts weren’t changed. I was still deadlifting like 500 pounds, but I couldn’t jump on a box. I couldn’t even actually jump on a plate. My chin-ups weren’t affected, but I couldn’t even do a chest-to-bar, and a month before that, I could string together 15 plus bar muscle-ups in a row. So, I had no explosive power whatsoever. So, my deadlift actually didn’t change, but I had no explosive movement.
Kris Gethin: Right, typically.
Alex Tarnava: When they were doing my blood tests, my C-reactive proteins was 34, I forget, I think it’s like milligrams, a liter, or something like that. The healthy range is below three. So, my inflammatory markers were 11 times the high end of normal. I was severely anemic despite having an 8,000 calorie a-day diet, which in green vegetables and meat protein. So, it was very, very peculiar, and my best friend, developed pneumonia and actually had to miss a few weeks of work and go to the hospital several times with pneumonia. So, they don’t know what kind of virus we had or what messed us up.
Kris Gethin: Still to this day have no idea what caused that?
Alex Tarnava: No. No.
Kris Gethin: Were you both swimming together, going to the same gym?
Alex Tarnava: We were roommates.
Kris Gethin: Wow. Okay, I wonder what that experience [crosstalk 00:04:36].
Alex Tarnava: [inaudible 00:04:36] our meals together, because we were both training similar amounts. But when it finally ran its course, I dropped from like 34 CRP to below two in the matter of a three-day blood test. So, something just ran its course. But when it ran its course, I woke up and my body had become like the Tin Man. So, I had no mobility.
Alex Tarnava: I used to have very, very good mobility. I pride myself on it. I could say, throw a head kick while I was moving backward. I played Rubber guard on my left side. I developed arthritis in my left hip. I couldn’t even do a butterfly on the ground when a couple of months before I could touch my ankle to my face, and my shoulder was frozen.
Kris Gethin: Did this have any effects on your internal organs, like your liver enzymes? Did they increase?
Alex Tarnava: They didn’t cast that stuff. I’m not sure. But what happened next is, when they did all the imaging, they realized I developed arthritis and numerous spots, the worst of which was my left shoulder. It was moderate to advanced osteoarthritis, basically overnight. So, I went to 1000 milligrams of Neproxin, so that’s like Aleve, but it was a prescription-strength Aleve. I started getting cortisone injections into my shoulder.
Alex Tarnava: After a couple of months, I kept on… I stopped training martial arts because it was just too repetitive, too hard on my shoulder. My hips were seized. It was just too tough on my body. But I tried to continue training CrossFit. I think I did like two really small competitions after that; team one and another one before I just threw in the towel because I just had no overhead mobility or anything like that.
Alex Tarnava: It was only after several months that I developed numerous ulcers from Neproxin. So, I had to stop and, basically, my shoulder froze overnight. Around that time, I’d also been looking into other ways to regulate my inflammatory response, and I’d bought a hydrogen water machine and water ionizer. I didn’t know if it was working or not, but when I stopped the Neproxin, I sure knew it wasn’t working, so that was disheartening.
Alex Tarnava: I went back to PubMed and started scouring research again and hydrogen kept coming up, hydrogen water kept coming up, and I just got really frustrated, “Why is this machine not working?” It just dawned on me, “How do I even know there’s hydrogen in the water coming out of the machine?” So, I found a test kit, and it had no detectable hydrogen. I sent the machine in to get a deep clean because that’s what the companies said, “Oh, you need a deep clean.” It came back, there was still no measurable hydrogen. I had to triple the input to reduce one drop. So, it was like 0.03 parts per million of hydrogen coming out of this $5,000 machine.
Alex Tarnava: So, rather than being upset and giving up and feeling ripped off, I actually got excited and I said, “Okay, so hydrogen still could work. I’m not getting hydrogen right now.” I started buying all the full studies to see how are the research scientists making hydrogen, and magnesium kept on popping up. I’m a bit of an autodidact. I’m self-taught in a lot of areas. I knew enough about chemistry and spent a little time reading, and I went to hell and back to get all the ingredients required. Dealing with China, dealing with Russia, getting some stuff basically smuggled in to start experimenting making my own tablets.
Alex Tarnava: But then, after a while, when I started taking them, I just had a bit of sober second thought and I thought, “Am I going to be an example of like Dunning Kruger here and win a Darwin award, am I going to kill myself because I think I know more than I do?” I found my founding partner, Dr. Holland, he’s a Ph.D. medicinal chemist. I basically asked him to look over what I was doing and help me out.
Alex Tarnava: At first, he basically called it the worst pseudoscience he’s ever heard in his life. He’s from England also. So, he was a little snarky saying is basically, “I’ve saved you some money, don’t waste your time.” Told me off, and I said, “Hey, I get the skepticism.” I sent him a bunch of the better, controlled studies and he got back to me a week or two later and said, “It looks like there’s enough evidence to pursue this as a supplement. Sure, I’ll take a look.” I kept on just sending him a new study every day as he was working on it.
Alex Tarnava: It was just by chance because it wasn’t what he listed on his resume as his background, that I sent him the study on Hep B. It’s what he was currently in charge of at this pharmaceutical company was working on a cure for Hep B, which I think is through phase three trials now. He’s head of creative for a pharmaceutical company. He called me for lunch and just said, “Listen, all the other studies I have to accept the findings of the researchers because it’s not my specialty, but unless this is frauded, this works, the stuff works. Are you looking to commercialize this? Are you looking for a partner?”
Alex Tarnava: I was on the fence throughout that whole time. I was thinking this could be my new career path. I’m passionate and I’m excited about this. Nobody’s doing it in North America right now. It’s nonexistent. But at the same time, I’m like, “Who am I to develop something like this when I had no background in the area.” Even though I’ve innovated on other products and businesses and such, this was getting into health. So, having him want to join the company gave me a confidence boost and say, “Okay, let’s do this. I’ll figure out the business side, and we’ll make sure we do it right from the science side.”
Alex Tarnava: So, from there, it was three weeks to refine our formulation on the bench test, and then we realized when we scale up everything changes. It took like 2000 iterative adjustments, 15 failed scale-up attempts, and a year of R&D to get our first production-ready tablet. Since then, we have a couple thousand more in a few years in production constantly just refining how everything works and going through [crosstalk 00:11:44].
Kris Gethin: And here we are, we have a commercialized product.
Alex Tarnava: Yeah.
Kris Gethin: So, it’s called Drink HRW, which is hydrogen-rich water. That’s the name of the company, correct?
Alex Tarnava: Yeah. That’s our brand and we manufacture, basically, worldwide for all sorts of other brands too. It is our IP. That’s what we’ve done is we’ve invented how to get this hydrogen in the open vessel without getting external pressurization, and it’s all our clinical trials too. So, I believe products like this hydrogen brand new need hundreds of voices to tell the story. And hydrogen has so many benefits because of how it works. It works in the same way that exercise does.
Alex Tarnava: Exercise is recommended in a protocol for almost everything to improve your exercise. Hydrogen works on a lot of the same biological pathways and actually potentiates exercise while mitigating some of the damages. So that story can get a little bit complicated. We deal with so many people because we know how important hydrogen can be for so many communities. We like talking about how it works for each individual area, and partnering with the right people and great people that can get out an honest and accurate message.
Kris Gethin: Right. Okay. Got it. And it’s funny how we actually got in contact with each other because you obviously had a… not a negative effect, but your first introduction to hydrogen-rich water was with a machine, didn’t really work for you. Unfortunately, I’d invested in a machine, and unfortunately, that company turned out to be not very good either. I’d invested quite a lot there. So, when I reached out to you, you didn’t try to sell me on your product at all. You said, “Well, we do make it for all these other companies. I can put you in that direction.” And I appreciate that.
Kris Gethin: Now, when I started drinking the hydrogen-rich water first myself, I didn’t have any issues with arthritis. I didn’t have my shoulder surgery at that time, I started taking it way before then, but I found that the stress that, I’d say, that I usually feel in my joints, in my connective tissue from training… Because at the time I was participating in Ironman Triathlon, and bodybuilding, and getting ready for an ultra marathon, and all this stuff. There’s a lot of stress.
Alex Tarnava: That’s so crazy. It’s so impressive because most people don’t get how opposite those goals are.
Kris Gethin: Yeah.
Alex Tarnava: To do ultra-marathons and Ironman’s and be bodybuilding, it’s so polar opposite in your body that you’re actually performing so high. It’s the same thing when I try and explain CrossFit, people are like, “Oh, you’re almost up there with the leaders.” I’m like, “No.” Because it would take me a year of effort to get this one category up here and then it would take away from every other area because you lose out. So, when things seem close, it’s actually a world away.
Kris Gethin: Yeah. Yeah, it is. It certainly is. Not just physically but mentally as well because one, it’s very hard and intense for a short period of time, and then you have to lower your heart rate and get comfortable being uncomfortable for a long amount of time in another form, especially if you’ve just come from one sport for like 20 years and then you make this transition to do both.
Kris Gethin: One of the things that I had to do was to knock out a lot of the inflammation that I found through a lot of ice, and cold thermogenesis, and cryotherapy. But when I started drinking the hydrogen-rich water, I found that I was able to remove a lot of that inflammation. I felt that I had more mental clarity. Whether that was a placebo, I have no idea. Maybe that’s something that you can expand upon in regards to not only the physical aspects but the mental aspects, particularly for people… My listeners, my viewers are active individuals.
Alex Tarnava: For sure. I’ll touch on some research and I’ll touch on some of my own experience. First off, basically in my experience, hydrogen, it hasn’t regrown my joint. I just had my own shoulder surgery. I had advanced osteoarthritis. I had a full labral tear and a rotator cuff tear. So, [inaudible 00:16:22] my own shoulder surgery. But what hydrogen did for me is it allowed me to sleep at night, and I quit Neproxin and anti-inflammatories. So, I still feel arthritis in my various joints. I’ve got arthritis in like eight spots, but I can sleep at night, I can sleep through the night, and I can still work out a little.
Kris Gethin: Okay. With your sleep, you weren’t sleeping before because you just had a sleep issue, or was it because of the pain?
Alex Tarnava: The pain. Every time I turn on my shoulder, I wake up, or I’d end up on my shoulder, and my shoulder was frozen, and then I’d wake up, and then I couldn’t fall back asleep because it’s throbbing in pain. I’ve always had sleep issues also; Interestingly, we do have some sleep studies starting up at two major North American universities.
Alex Tarnava: I just went over the animal care protocol at the one in Canada last week, and I’m flying the first couple of days in October to deal with a major university in California that’s finalizing their protocol. So, there’s a lot of researchers that think hydrogen can help them sleep. Also, on top of the indirect benefits of, say, reducing discomfort, that helped me for pain-
Kris Gethin: So, how is that working? Sorry to interrupt you. How does that actually work? Because if it’s removing yourself over a lot of the discomfort, I can only imagine it’s somehow on a cellular level helping with recovery restoration.
Alex Tarnava: It is, and there’s a lot of athletic studies that show hydrogen not only doesn’t negatively impact exercise, but it potentiates the benefit. So, a lot of athletes, a lot of bodybuilders don’t take antioxidants because of the research showing that antioxidants block the benefits from exercise.
Kris Gethin: The whole medic response, yeah.
Alex Tarnava: Exactly. So, hydrogen is actually a hormetic agent. It works in the same way exercise does. It is not a direct antioxidant. One of the things that I have so strongly tried to shout from the rooftop, but a lot of the marketers just don’t listen because they don’t understand it is hydrogen is actually pro-oxidative stress that triggers a greater endogenous antioxidant response. So, exercise, that’s the same thing for lowering inflammatory cytokines.
Alex Tarnava: Hydrogen isn’t an antioxidant, and it’s not an anti-inflammatory. It regulates the redox status of our cells and regulates the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines, so we have a healthy inflammatory response.
Kris Gethin: Got it.
Alex Tarnava: Very, very different things. Because we need inflammation. Inflammation is good. That’s our body’s defense mechanism over a lot of things. You don’t want to suppress inflammation all the time, [crosstalk 00:19:13]-
Kris Gethin: Short-term inflammation is good, but long-term [crosstalk 00:19:17].
Alex Tarnava: Exactly. Actually, exercise works by increasing oxidative stress and increasing inflammation. So, when you work out, you’re increasing oxidative stress, which actually triggers your body to produce more of our endogenous antioxidants like glutathione, superoxide dismutase, catalysts, and it’s the same thing for inflammation. When you work out, our skeletal tissue releases interleukin 6, which is one of the most damaging pro-inflammatory cytokines, but when it’s created in small amounts from our skeletal tissue, it acts as a myokine role, and it triggers interleukin 10, which is an anti-inflammatory cytokine.
Alex Tarnava: So, we have a net anti-inflammatory response from exercise, even though it starts with the small pro-inflammatory trigger. So, hydrogen, say, with our redox status… There’s a really cool study out of Brazil that really painted this picture is they had hydrogen being administered to rats in a physical stress test. It showed that actually while they were working out, their oxidative stress increased. So, they had more oxidative stress than the control group that was just exercising to failure. But their redox balanced quicker than the control group. So, the endogenous antioxidant response happened faster, and they recovered faster.
Kris Gethin: Got it. That makes sense.
Alex Tarnava: With our trials, there’s been some really interesting stuff happening in our trials. Our first it was mid-Asia overweight women, and at the end of 28 days… And this was a double-blind placebo-controlled crossover. So, both groups did hydrogen and placebo and then they switched, and it was double-blinded everywhere. There was like an 8% improvement in VO2 max, like 50% improvement in time to exhaustion were completed. In talking to those researchers, they’re on the same page I am. It doesn’t immediately improve your VO2 max, but the women were working out longer and harder and recovering quicker.
Alex Tarnava: So, in the 28 days, they made leaps and bounds in improvement. Because it’s like you’re doing the same workout, but it’s increased your damage and then sped up your recovery. So, it’s potentiating your training because exercise is just acting like a booster on… Sorry, Hydrogen’s acting like a booster to the exercise you’re doing, and then it’s speeding up the recovery.
Alex Tarnava: And then, our second trial was just a single dose with young fit athletic participants. It was a VO2 max stress test. We didn’t expect to see any improvement in VO2 max after a single dose, but something that we saw was really cool for minutes one to nine in submaximal exercise, the average failure was about 13 minutes if I recall correctly. It lowered the heart rate by five to six beats per minute while keeping the oxygen they pulled in the same.
Alex Tarnava: This was, again, they did the baseline placebo and hydrogen, and then did a crossover with 20 participants in Utah. So, the hydrogen group pulled in the same oxygen, but their hearts were beating a lot slower, which is going to be very big for repeated bout athletes and endurance athletes.
Kris Gethin: Yeah, that’s a [inaudible 00:22:39] thing.
Alex Tarnava: Exactly. Then even getting into recovery. Topically, we’re doing some research right now. We have a pair of case studies that were done in pro soccer players in Europe in hydrogen bass as opposed to RICE rest, ice, compress, elevate, and for grade two ankle tears. Anecdotally, the results are phenomenal. From the case studies, the results are phenomenal. And we have a full randomized controlled trial starting this fall directly comparing hydrogen to RICE because researchers believe that it’s probably going to be that.
Alex Tarnava: Because ice actually blocks the inflammation, and we need to regulate the inflammation for healing, and hydrogen actually increases blood plasma flow too. So, it’s regulating the inflammatory response, maybe even better than ice does, but also speeding that feeling.
Kris Gethin: Yeah, for sure. Because of the increase in the blood flow, so we had to help assist carry nutrients to the area to assist with the recovery. For instance, if you’ve got scar tissue, you need to promote the blood flow to that area without causing swelling or anything like that. It’s funny, I was with Laird Hamilton last week at his home and he honestly-
Alex Tarnava: My sisters in love with him all, actually.
Kris Gethin: Oh, really?
Alex Tarnava: Yeah, actually, she-
Kris Gethin: I think a lot of people are.
Alex Tarnava: She had a photo actually a year ago. My sister’s a surfer. It was one of the first ones, I think, on her Instagram page, and she took a photo with him and his wife, Gabby Reese, I think her name is-
Kris Gethin: Yeah, Gabby.
Alex Tarnava: … with the Rejuvenation.
Kris Gethin: [crosstalk 00:24:18].
Alex Tarnava: Featured on the Rejuvenation tablets.
Kris Gethin: Great. Yeah, well, I was at their place last week and we did the hot and cold thermogenesis out there, and he honestly believes that heat has a better response to recovery than ice does because he feels that ice, of course, is needed in certain circumstances, but a lot of the time it isn’t as much, let’s say, after a triathlon or something like that. He actually prefers heat over the ice because we always seek ice thinking, “Okay. I just-“
Alex Tarnava: For comfort.
Kris Gethin: Yeah. “I just want to be numbed from this pain, from this uncomfortably.” But like you said, there’s a whole medic response behind the heat that can actually improve recovery with the heat shock proteins and stuff like that. And if you can actually promote that in a certain unrelated way through hydrogen-rich water, that’s got to be a good thing.
Alex Tarnava: To me, I see the various modes of hormesis as the best tool we have for our healthspan, for longevity.
Kris Gethin: Oh, I practice it every day. I love it.
Alex Tarnava: Exercise, cold therapy, heat therapy, fasting. I fast every week. And then, even ethanol, as long as you don’t overdo it. Like I drink a glass or two of red wine a day and it’s a bit not socially accepted, but I always say, drink your wine for lunch because then you’re getting the hormetic response, you’re activating your lymphatic system, but you’re not impairing your sleep. Most people drink alcohol right before bed, which impacts their REM sleep.
Kris Gethin: Exactly.
Alex Tarnava: They get lunch early afternoon, it’s cleared your system, you keep it in low doses. This is actually what excites me most about hydrogen is various forms of hormesis all operate on a [jayer verse Jaker 00:26:15]. So, it starts off saying no benefit or if you don’t do it, you’re actually impaired. And then as you increase it, you get benefits. But if you overdo it, it falls off a plateau. Even training, you work out an hour a day or even maybe six hours a day, depending on the person or, say, if you’re elderly, if you work on an hour a day, that could be too much. It depends on your body, your health at that moment. And exercise is a very long plateau where it’s still in the healthy range.
Alex Tarnava: But for people who say work out 12 hours a day, seven days a week, and never to take a break, they go into a chronic disease state. Because they’re never recovering. They’re never allowing that recovery. So, hydrogen actually we do not know when it’s toxic yet. In fact, from what we know about using hydrogen in mixed gas deep-sea diving, where it takes more hydrogen to create a narcotic effect than nitrogen, which is 78% of what we’re breathing, that’s impossible to do in a commercial product, especially in water, which shows to be the most effective route for hydrogen therapy.
Alex Tarnava: So, so far in the research, the more hydrogen we’re giving to people, the better the response, the higher the concentration, the higher the dosage, the more benefits studies have seen. Even in vitro, we see this all the way up to pass saturation of a hydrogen-rich media. Now, to get that in a human body, that means every cell in your body would have to be beyond saturation with hydrogen gas, which is impossible. You can’t do that.
Alex Tarnava: But in the Petri dishes, in vitro, they see a dose-dependent response as high as they can go in the media, and it’s the same thing in the human research; the higher we went, the better of the response is. So, hydrogen, we don’t have this cliff where it’s bad for you, but also with at least exercise, and there’s a lot of thoughts and a lot of groups that are using it during fasting, it not only seems to not deter against other forms of permeases, it seems to potentiate the benefits and it seems to mitigate their damages.
Alex Tarnava: So, if you’re over-training, hydrogen helps you recover. So, you can work out longer and harder without going into that chronic disease state because you’re not recovering enough. Even with alcohol, there’s a study that it improved liver detox enzymes.
Kris Gethin: Really?
Alex Tarnava: And anecdotally, most of our customers have experienced that when you take hydrogen while you’re maybe drinking a little bit too much and then in the morning, it dramatically cuts a hangover.
Kris Gethin: Really? Okay. Has it been any studies to show… Did I mention liver enzymes before… any liver inflammation or reduction? Are there any of those studies being conducted as yet?
Alex Tarnava: We didn’t measure inflammation in this model, but our third clinical trial was on nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, which one in three North Americans has, Western Europeans also, really, really rampant in Southeast Asia as well. It’s becoming an epidemic. In 28 days, it was a reduction of about 10% in AST, the one liver enzyme associated with damage in high amounts. It was a clinically significant reduction in liver fat. And then they did a secondary analysis on the group with HOMA2, which is a gold standard for insulin sensitivity. They found in the 28 days, it improved insulin sensitivity by 11%.
Kris Gethin: Wow. Unbelievable. Was this group fasting or anything like that, or were they just following the typical-
Alex Tarnava: No, they were an obese population.
Kris Gethin: Interesting.
Alex Tarnava: So, with no lifestyle changes, it improved all these markers. Now, I can talk a little bit about the data because now it actually is public, was presented at two conferences in August. It’s not published yet, so I know it’s going through peer review, I believe right now. But our fourth clinical trial was 60 participants, six months. Again, double-blind, placebo-controlled, and it’s on metabolic syndrome. Again, one in three North Americans has metabolic syndrome. It’s often called pre-diabetes.
Alex Tarnava: A lot of the research coming out is saying that NAFLD, fatty liver disease, and metabolic syndrome could be one and the same, they’re different expressions of the same issue. It’s these supposed lifestyle issues from poor diet, lack of exercise that causes all these issues. The good thing with metabolic syndrome and NAFLD is they’re reversible. And even by the FDA, metabolic syndrome is a reversible condition. It’s not a disease state. So, that’s good that they acknowledge that.
Alex Tarnava: We saw improvements across the board in this metabolic syndrome study. So, all they did was they had the hydrogen group and then the… In all of our studies, the placebo group is a magnesium tablet that makes CO2 effervescent with the same amount of magnesium. So, nobody knows the difference between the two tablets and you’re getting the same dose of magnesium to control for that variable.
Alex Tarnava: Well, the metabolic syndrome group lost weight significantly, whereas the placebo group gained weight. It improved their BMI, their waist to hip ratio. It raised their HDL cholesterol. It pretty dramatically lowered their VLDL, their very-low-density lipoproteins, which is really bad for our cholesterol. Lowered their triglycerides, their fasting blood glucose went from something like 126 to 102, and it raised in the Placebo group. It lowered CRP and the cytokines, interleukin 6, and TNF alpha. It benefited the lipid pre-oxidation like MDAT bars and conjugates.
Alex Tarnava: But it also raised serum levels of nitrites, and vitamin E, and vitamin C. So, their body weight was less depleted from a lot of these things. So, it was really, really startlingly good data. And it was, again, the highest dose that’s ever been given in a clinical trial in water. So, it was three tablets a day. Each tablet gives about five milligrams of H2. So, it was by a 50% margin, the highest dose that has ever been administered. That was above our previous clinical trials on NAFLD and VO2 max one, which was 10 milligrams a day, which was, again, the highest dose ever given in studies.
Kris Gethin: Got it.
Alex Tarnava: It’s just, again, further validating what we see in vitro that the higher the dose, the more the benefits.
Kris Gethin: Right. Okay. So, in regards to the dosing as well, because there’s a lot of companies out there and there’s a lot of brands out there, the dosage that you have within, for instance, with your drink, HRW, and obviously the other companies out there that you provide it to, can you give us an idea of what that looks like in comparison to other products out there that market themselves as having hydrogen-rich water? And touching on as well that yours is the only legal supplements that are available.
Alex Tarnava: For sure. There is one brand, a ready-to-drink, that has grass status for their process. They actually don’t have very much hydrogen in there. They’re well below the therapeutic dosage, but at least they filed with the FDA. So, we’re the only supplement in the United States and throughout the world, I believe, that has legally filed the ingredients needed to make the hydrogen-rich water. We have new dietary ingredient status, which is the gold standard of the US regulatory in supplements.
Alex Tarnava: Estimates are as low as 4% of supplements qualify as NDI status. Most would be considered adulterated because they haven’t filed their processes with the FDA. So, it took us a few years to put this together. Massive submission to show all the safety, all the research, every single protocol we have in manufacturing to show not just that our product’s safety, but how we’re making it is safe, no contamination throughout. But on top of that, a lot of companies just get on the bandwagon and start marketing hydrogen water even if they have no hydrogen in the water, or not therapeutic.
Alex Tarnava: The Japanese government, a couple of years ago, actually evaluated, I think it was 19 products and issued a public warning saying that 17 of 19 companies marketing, hydrogen water were below the therapeutic dosage, or had no hydrogen in the water itself. Like I said, with the machine that I bought for five grand, it was making less than 0.1 PPM. Now, I’ve tested other machines, depending on the source water, it can maybe get 0.5 PPM, maybe 0.1 in a lot of coastal cities throughout Vancouver, Seattle because it’s low TDS solids in the water.
Alex Tarnava: So, we get about 10 PPM in the tablets. So, to drink half a liter of that ionized water or the half-liter that our tablet goes in, our dose is 100 times higher, and it’s the same with a lot of the pouches you see. A lot of the ready-to-drink that maybe cost like three, four, or $5 a pouch, they’re often like 200 milliliters of water, and maybe like 0.5, 0.6 PPM of hydrogen. So, in a dosage manner, we’re giving 30 times higher doses.
Kris Gethin: And that’s in one tablet?
Alex Tarnava: One tablet, yeah. So, a tablet’s about a buck, and you get 30 times a dose of a lot of these companies selling it on store shelves in a pouch that costs like four bucks. So, it’s a pretty big differential in dosage and value. Plus you’re given the magnesium with the tablet because magnesium becomes very bioavailable. First, our active magnesium reacts with water and it makes hydrogen gas and magnesium hydroxide, which is about magnesium. But then because hydroxide is a function of PH, the buffering acids that we use to facilitate the reaction neutralize the hydroxide and it’s just left with magnesium ions and suspension of the water.
Alex Tarnava: So, we get something over 90% of the magnesium becomes free ions in the water, which is exactly what your body needs to take in. Magnesium supplements have very low bioavailability, typically, because they’re very strong compounds. And to absorb a mineral, our stump gas has to break it apart from whatever it’s attached to. Look, if you take a magnesium oxide supplement, your stomach acid has to break the oxide off the magnesium. The way we’re making hydrogen, to make the hydrogen, the work is done. It’s already detached. So you take it in in the free form that your body needs.
Kris Gethin: Right. Okay. Is this one of the reasons why you would suggest taking this maybe before sleep, before bed to help you relax, or actually putting it in the bath?
Alex Tarnava: Yeah, a lot of people do take it before bed. I’d say play around with it. I like taking it first thing in the morning because it really picks me up with energy. I find I get more energy from chugging down my hydrogen water than coffee. I don’t drink coffee much anymore. I just take straight caffeine pills to control my dosage because coffee varies reliably in how much caffeine. Days I work out, I actually drop my tablets right in with creatine.
Kris Gethin: Oh, you mix them together?
Alex Tarnava: Yeah. A couple of researchers think that there could actually be a synergistic effect with creatine and hydrogen. I had a couple of talks, one with a Professor [Osech 00:38:58] who’s done a couple of our trials, and his biggest area of research, hydrogen, is actually moving to number one, but it was creatine. He’s been a creatine researcher for years, and he thinks there’s a synergistic effect.
Alex Tarnava: I talked with Tyler LeBaron, the leading hydrogen researcher in North America, and he was thinking about it and he’s actually published a study on creatine as well. He thinks that there could be something there too in a synergistic effect.
Kris Gethin: Interesting.
Alex Tarnava: So, I do that just days when I train. I don’t know if there is synergy, but some of the researchers seem to think so. Other days I’ll chug it down, but once every few months I’ll change up my dosing in my protocol. If hydrogen is working like permeases just like exercise, you don’t want to do the exact same exercise every day. So, for a few months, maybe I’ll take it in the evening. The next few months I take it first thing in the morning. Then I’ll change it up. Say if I’m working out mid-afternoon, I’ll start taking it right before the workout and I’ll just change up my dosing protocol to keep my body guessing.
Kris Gethin: Right. Okay. Got it. Okay. Well, I pretty much take it probably about an hour before my workouts. I’ve never mixed it with any other supplements. I’ve just had it by itself. I’ll just take the two tablets. Would you say that’s enough of dosage for someone like me? Is it weight-dependent or anything like that? I’m 220 pounds, but that’s what I found has seemed to be the sweet spot, or would you suggest take it a couple of times a day?
Alex Tarnava: Yeah. It’s tough. We’re still establishing doses and we know that it is dose-dependent. The more you get, the better the response seems to be. For me, I’ve noticed a benefit of up to six to eight a day. In quick succession, I try and blast my body with it. I’ve noticed no benefit after that, just a heavy laxative effect from more magnesium.
Kris Gethin: Magnesium, yeah.
Alex Tarnava: So, you want to make sure that you’re not getting in too much magnesium in the day too. If you’re taking a lot of tablets, don’t take magnesium supplements, it’s going to be a laxative effect. Whereas my common-law girlfriend, spouse she runs, like I was saying, marathons, triathlons, she gets hip impingement, which is common in female runners and she finds one a day or even once every other day gets rid of her hip impingement. For me, if I only take one a day, my shoulder starts freezing again. I need two or three to unfreeze my shoulder.
Kris Gethin: Right. Okay. Got it. Anything over that is going to be more performance-based then?
Alex Tarnava: Yeah. For instance, I’m definitely a responder to hydrogen. Like when I’ll go and do cardio if I take like five tablets in quick succession right before I do cardio, I’m talking five, 10 minutes before, the same exercise that’ll usually get me to 155, 160 heart rate, I don’t break 130.
Kris Gethin: Right. Interesting. Okay. Got it.
Alex Tarnava: Which is a massive difference from what we saw. In the study, it was like five, six beats a minute lowering. But again, I’m taking five, six times a dose and I’m a responder. Just like creatine and caffeine, there seem to be responders and non-responders to hydrogen. We’re trying to figure out why. Most of the researchers agree about 80% of people are responders that they see very clear benefits through biomarkers. But about 20% of people, they’re calling super responders that very much benefit and yet noticeable immediate results.
Kris Gethin: Right. Okay. Got it. Okay. So, back to me, would you suggest that I continue to take them an hour before my workouts and maybe do a dose before that in the morning first thing?
Alex Tarnava: Yeah. Yeah, I’d give that a try. You’re a big guy. You have more… maybe not more cells, but you have more body that the hydrogen needs to diffuse through. To touch on what you were saying too, yeah, the magnesium was another bigger reason why you’d use it in a bath too is hydrogen transdermal, and so is magnesium. That’s how Epsom salts work to relax your muscles. So, when you drop tablets in a bathtub, you’re getting the hydrogen through your skin, right to your shore muscles and joints, plus you’re getting the magnesium [crosstalk 00:43:38].
Kris Gethin: Okay. Got it. I guess that’s going to be dependent on how much body of water is going to be in a bath is dependent on how many tablets you dump in there too.
Alex Tarnava: Exactly. There are bath tablets too, I sent you some. There’s [crosstalk 00:43:49].
Kris Gethin: Yeah. Yeah, I got those.
Alex Tarnava: There are some other bands we’ve made for the bath tablets, they’re going to be on our site really soon right now also. I’ll have a hydrogen bath once a week.
Kris Gethin: Got it.
Alex Tarnava: Again, on the days that I have a hydrogen bath, I usually skip water just to, again, switch up my dosing to take it transdermally instead of drinking it.
Kris Gethin: Okay, perfect. I’ll try that as well. I’ll try that. I have been measuring my sleep, which definitely has improved. I’ve been kind of cycling it. I’ve been doing like a one-on, one-off, one-on, one-off, and on those other days, I’ve been trying with CBD, for instance. I quantify my sleep. Usually, I’ve got my Oura Ring on, but I’ve actually got what’s called a Biostrap. Oh, you’ve got one.
Alex Tarnava: I’ve got my Oura Ring.
Kris Gethin: You’re in the Oura Ring gang. That’s awesome. So, I am actually trying this Biostrap at the moment. So, I just started trying it out this week. So, I’m quantifying my sleep and I have definitely noticed a big improvement would sleep quality because I was at a sleep clinic in 2015, sleeping three hours a night. So, I’ve doubled that since then. But not just the length of duration, but the quality of the sleep there as well.
Alex Tarnava: We’re in a very similar situation there. When I got my Oura Ring, I was averaging four hours of sleep a night and I still will wake up after three, four hours every night, and I’m wearing my Oura Ring to force myself to go back to sleep to try and get six to seven hours.
Kris Gethin: Yeah. I’m exactly the same. Yeah. I use it as my personal trainer, my quantification to ensure that I get to bed a certain time and do whatever I can with my hygiene to improve that quality.
Alex Tarnava: Exactly. My sleep quality, it’s always amazing, and when I sleep three, four hours, I have no light sleep. It’s like all deep and REM sleep, basically. But there’s just so much good research coming out on the importance of sleep. Even if you feel fine sleeping three, four hours a night, it’s probably doing damage to your health and doing all of this stuff.
Alex Tarnava: I’ve just noticed by forcing myself back to sleep, I’m still getting as much work done. I used to feel like… I wished that I had a pill to keep me up 24 hours a day, so I could be more productive, get more guns. I’d wake up after three, four hours, I’d just get up and start my day and start working. Since I’ve been forcing myself back to sleep, I have had no loss in actual output during performance and work, and I feel better.
Kris Gethin: Yeah, sure.
Alex Tarnava: My mind is clear.
Kris Gethin: Yeah, your productivity is definitely got to be up. I used to be probably the same as you, where you’d pat yourself on the back for having very little sleep and getting so much work done and hitting your personal best in the gym, and I’m training everybody, but you know that’s catching up with you. And now by incorporating, like you said, the hydrogen-rich water, intermittent fasting the forms of hormesis where they come from exercise, heat, cold, whatever, it’s going to have a much more beneficial effect on you physically, mentally, and from a productivity standpoint for sure.
Kris Gethin: I’ve noticed the absolute same, because the thing is, when you’re down there with little sleep, you don’t really recognize it. You think you’re still being a warrior and getting more done than everyone else, but you’re not. Internally, you’re dragging ass, but you just don’t want to admit it.
Alex Tarnava: Exactly. As you said, there’s that pride, that machismo about, “I only need three to four hours of sleep.” You wear it like a badge of honor.
Kris Gethin: Yeah, exactly.
Alex Tarnava: So many powerful people have bragged about how little sleep they’ve needed that we’ve created this culture where you should be proud of sleeping less where really, we should be teaching people to sleep better and sleep more so we’re more productive. Actually, the one trial starting in rodents in California is on the homeostatic sleep function. So, they’re going to sleep deprive the mice and give them hydrogen and measure sleep quality.
Kris Gethin: Interesting. Yeah. That will be interesting to see. So, when it comes to actually the… You were the first person that actually told me the right information in regards to taking the hydrogen-rich water… the tablets, sorry. So, when I actually put these tablets in the water, I wait for them to float and then consume them.
Alex Tarnava: I’ll demo a little bit.
Kris Gethin: So, everybody watching the YouTube, you’ll be able to go in and actually see Alex demo this.
Alex Tarnava: I’m dropping them in. Now, I dropped in the full-strength ones. We have the raspberry ones also.
Kris Gethin: That’s what I’ve got, the full-strength. Yeah.
Alex Tarnava: I usually drink the full-strength ones. I don’t mind the taste. It’s like mineral water with lemon. It’s how I’d do it. But a lot of people like flavor. So, these ones, the flavored ones have about half the hydrogen. But they’re sweet like a pre-workout soda or juice that a lot of people prefer. So, we have that option too. But they start bubbling up right away. What you want to do is as soon as they rise to the surface, you want to chug the water down. Now, there’s some research that shows that, say with gas inhalation, the same dose and a low dose continuous has no response, whereas a high dose intermittent blast shows all of these positive benefits.
Alex Tarnava: And if we consider the fact that we’re creating eight, 10 liters of hydrogen gas a day through carbohydrate breakdown by our bacteria through our digestive tract, it doesn’t make sense why one tablet’s making 70, 80 milliliters of gas. Why do 80 milliliters have such a profound benefit when we’re already producing 10 liters? It’s one of the big questions in biochemistry.
Alex Tarnava: It makes sense when you start thinking of it as the hormetic agent, it’s a blast of stress that triggers a response because the dose at that instant, it’s so much higher than our body’s accustomed to. Because that 10 liter is throughout every moment of the day constantly. So, we’re blasting at a higher rate in water. Now, in water too is shown to have a response. At 1/100, the volume is gas. So, really, this is like we’re doubling the gas. So, the tablets just rose to the surface, you want to chug it down.
Kris Gethin: Yeah, you can’t waste it.
Alex Tarnava: So, I like doing it one shot just getting it all in me. But yeah, that’s how you want to look at it that if you’re sipping it-
Kris Gethin: Even though the dosage says one tablet, you can put two tablets in there.
Alex Tarnava: Yeah, you can put two. We put one because our studies always use one in the water, and anecdotally notice the better response putting two, three, four, five. It might be better if you can drink more water to do one, and then have new glass and do one right after. Because the dissolution kinetics keeping gas in the water, it’s not linear.
Kris Gethin: So, that’s going to be much better than dumping five in there, possibly?
Alex Tarnava: Exactly, if you can drink more water. But a lot of people don’t want to drink two and a half liters chugging down right away. Most athletes can chug down half a liter [crosstalk 00:51:54].
Kris Gethin: But you could do it intermittently like on the hour.
Alex Tarnava: Yup. Yup. You can do that. Just make sure, don’t sip it. Because if you’re sipping it, you’re moving to that more continuous dose.
Kris Gethin: It’s not a maximum output?
Alex Tarnava: Exactly. Not to mention when the waters white, that’s when we’re getting the 10 PPM in 500 milliliters. If you wait five, six minutes, it’s down to 1.6 PPM. We found some cool laws in physics and chemistry that’s allowing us to get about seven times a dose that anyone else can get. Because the maximum hydrogen that can be retained, saturated in water under one atmosphere pressure is 1.6 PPM or 1.6 milligrams a liter at SCTP, which is normal temperature and pressure.
Alex Tarnava: So, by creating this constant stream of nanobubbles, nanobubbles obey different laws, and then they actually increase internal pressure and that’s how we’re getting about 10 PPM. But it’s stable enough to drink it down, but you can’t just let it sit on the counter and go drink it 10 minutes later. It’s going to be down to 1.6. And to get that 10 PPM in another method, you’d need a hundred PSI of pressure and time for it to hit an equilibrium, which is what makes our technology really cool is it’s really hard… Devices can’t be made that get to that PSI. Gaskets start blowing. A lot of things start happening.
Alex Tarnava: Actually, you see this with a lot of the machines that try and go above the boat three PPM is… Even with thermoses, double-walled vacuum bottles, in our testing we’ve found they start blowing at about 35, 40 PSI. They start developing leaks, start developing all of these issues. So, all the machine manufacturers that are trying to go higher PPM are running into these massive roadblocks in engineering because they might get a higher PPM for a few uses, and then it falls down.
Alex Tarnava: I know a lot about this because I actually have a pending patent on a device to use a tablet and we’ve got 11, 12 PPM of saturated water that’s stable that you could sip on. But we aren’t rolling it out because our units break after about 15 uses. And by a break, I mean they only make three, four PPM because everything above starts separating the gaskets [crosstalk 00:54:43].
Kris Gethin: Yeah, because of that pressure. Got it.
Alex Tarnava: So, we’re still trying to overcome the engineering on this to make sure that this unit lasts more than 15 uses at 120 PSI that it can last years or indefinitely.
Kris Gethin: Interesting. Fascinating. Because when I was using the device, I was using tablets at the same time. So, maybe I wasn’t able to show that difference there. But with a lot of these tests, exactly what you are saying, because it wasn’t only just me using this particular brand of machine, I knew of many others because there was a group of people that were showing their disgust, if you will, that they’d invested so much in-
Alex Tarnava: Actually, there’s a CNBC article that just came out this weekend.
Kris Gethin: Oh, really? Please send me a link to that.
Alex Tarnava: Yeah.
Kris Gethin: Yeah, that’d be great. Yeah, because I know this group, we’re trying to get this to the major press and I don’t blame them. A lot of people invested in this, however, that machine, like you said, what… Because people would look at the tablets as possibly being inferior. This machine that’s going to cost 5,000’s got to be better, right?
Alex Tarnava: I think they were trading 10,000 for the one. That wasn’t-
Kris Gethin: Yeah, that’s it for the higher-end machine. Yeah, because that would pump out… that would have a pipe as well so you could inhale the gas.
Alex Tarnava: And the thing with that inhaled gas, I think it was like a 30 milliliter a minute flow rate, which is about one-tenth of what you’d want to see. So, their inhalation dose was like one-tenth of what you’d want to see in that. So, it was just a big… inhaling that amount isn’t going to have that therapeutic benefit.
Kris Gethin: Right. Okay. Yeah. Interesting. So, with the tablets, I always take these when I’m traveling. I’ll be going to a military base this weekend for a seminar there, always take them when I’m traveling as well. So, I’m going to follow this protocol, as you said. Now I’m going to change it so it’s morning sometimes, it’s a bath once a week and I don’t take it in my water during that time. I kind of cycle this, shock the body, give it a higher dosage, and I’m going to report back that. I’ll actually probably do a podcast and just cover the benefits that I encountered for now, because I’ve been taking it for a while but not exactly as you just suggested.
Alex Tarnava: I’m pretty obsessive and I play around. There are over 1200 publications on hydrogen, there are 70 human trials. I’ve read every single human trial and I’ve read at least eight, 900 of the 1,200 studies. But on top of that, I talk to so many researchers in the field daily. Because we’re working with nine different public universities’ teams right now on various trials on hydrogen. I’m in daily communication with one of them, like weekly communication with almost all of them. So, I have dozens and dozens or hundreds of hours of talk time with the leading researchers in the area.
Alex Tarnava: So, I piece together all this information, and then I immediately try to put it to practice and recommend it to other people. So, with this up changing up your dosing, it makes sense. We don’t have the hard evidence for it, but it makes sense. The hypothesis is sound. And anecdotally, I found it works, and a few dozen people that I’ve recommended try it have said, “Oh, wow.” They’ve been taking hydrogen for a year or two and maybe their plateaus had benefited. And then as soon as they did a washout and changed their protocol, they’re like, “You know what, my knee loosened up a little bit more within a couple of days of changing the protocol.”
Alex Tarnava: So, I think there’s something to it. We’d like to see more hard evidence on it, but that’s going to come in time. The research is still green. It’s only 12 years since the seminal article. A lot of these studies identifying responders versus non-responder can cost millions of dollars, which some of the grants that governments are giving are getting bigger and bigger and bigger, but they’re not to the multicenter multimillion trial like genetic responder ones, which is, again, why we’re trying to support public research rather than just private research.
Alex Tarnava: Because when we support public research, we donate products and then we donate some extra funds to make a better study to task more markers, maybe enroll a few more participants, a few more mice, [inaudible 00:59:27]. We have no publication agreement with the researchers, so they’re pursuing what interests them. Well, this then lets them show a better study and apply for more grant funds to show, “Hey, look this is what’s happened. We want a bigger grant to research this further.”
Alex Tarnava: But if they’re all just these tiny little studies, it’s very hard to advance the science. So, that’s why we created our research outreach program and started trying to support public research. So, they get behind hydrogen, it gets published in higher impact factor journals, open about it more academic conferences and they can apply for bigger grant money to study more things so we can learn more and more and more about it, learn more about dosing, genetic responders, how much should be taken when, and anything else that might come up with the research.
Kris Gethin: Interesting. So, what’s going to be the next step here? As well as that, are you thinking about publishing a book on this? Because there’s a lot of information, there’s a lot of studies that are backing this up. You’re talking about how it can help with insulin sensitivity, obviously with possible arthritic conditions, with sleep, with performance benefits. There’s a lot to cover and a lot to take in that requires something that’s a little bit more detailed and manageable that people can actually apply dependent on that person and what they want to achieve from this.
Alex Tarnava: So, I do write a lot. I’ve got two or 300,000 words published on my blog. A lot of it is on hydrogen. I put out one or two articles every week between 2000 to 10,000 words a week comes out. I am actually working on a study… not a study, sorry, an article with a professor on a hypothesis I have on hydrogen. Another professor was invited to write a book for a major publisher and he wants a chapter on hydrogen. The hydrogen professors, researchers, experts were too busy to do it, so I offered to write it. So, I’m writing it right now. It still has to get approved through referees and might be changed a lot because of my conflict of interest in it.
Alex Tarnava: But yeah, no, I’m trying to do as much as I can to spread my knowledge on it, but also changing my preservations and knowledge as I’m talking to the researchers all the time. I just got back from China in a few weeks. I had the opportunity to speak to several other researchers that I’d never spoken to. So, I’m always looking to gain knowledge and input from other researchers in different areas because all these experts on hydrogen have different specialties. So, they’re looking at it from a different angle. That’s all driving us to more knowledge to understand how it’s working better.
Alex Tarnava: And that’s, again, why so much of the research in hydrogen is all over the map, and even our studies are all over the map because every research team wants to research hydrogen achieve their interest because they think it’s going to help their research topic. And that really speaks to the potentially wide application of hydrogen, just like the wide application of exercise. It’s in almost every protocol for pretty much every model is to improve your activity and you’re going to improve your health. That’s why we’re seeing hydrogen has been explored and shown benefit in 170 different models to date across every organ.
Kris Gethin: Right. Okay. Well, I’d absolutely love to see a book from you because I find it absolutely fascinating, not only for the demographic that listens to my podcast but other people out there. The first thing I’m going to do is send a couple of bottles over to my father because he should have had a hip replacement about 11 years ago. But being as stubborn as he is, I’d love to see if he’s a responder and what his feedback is.
Alex Tarnava: Yeah, it was one of the first things I did. I sent it to my grandma, sent it to my parents. My mom has arthritis. She’s found it’s helped her tremendously. My grandma’s waiting on a hip replacement. My grandma’s 80 and she still puts stepladders on top of the patio table to try and clean the gutters. She’s said it’s helped her mobility and energy. She’s called it an elixir.
Alex Tarnava: Honestly, we see the biggest response, the more damage someone has, the better the rescuing effect. In vitro, hydrogen working by this rescuing effect, if you take a perfectly healthy cell and you put it in a hydrogen-rich medium, typically you see nothing, there are no changes, no benefit whatsoever. Now, you artificially damage those cells and you see all the markers change because hydrogen is going to work rescuing all the damage.
Alex Tarnava: Same with athletes. Perhaps amateur athletes would actually see a statistically bigger benefit, but they’re less in tune with their bodies. They don’t notice that benefit. I found elite athletes have immediately noticed, for the most part, the benefits of hydrogen because they’re so in tune with what their bodies can do.
Kris Gethin: Of course, yeah.
Alex Tarnava: That even the slight improvement is huge to them. We talked about when you’re pushing in different directions, even if you’re within an inch in two directions, it might be impossible to go both inches at the same time in both ways because if you go here, you’re moving away from there. So, a lot of these guys performing to their bodies maximum or seeing a slight improvement and it’s just blowing their minds.
Kris Gethin: Yeah, for sure. And because we quantify everything as well. So, we’re measuring everything. If we see that slight improvement, we’ve measured it and we’re going to notice it.
Alex Tarnava: Exactly. To go into, again, what we saw in that VO2 max stress test study… WHEN I was still trying to compete in CrossFit and I was doing a high-intensity interval training program that wasn’t CrossFit, but I actually found it helped me with CrossFit better than just doing CrossFit. So, I was doing CrossFit beyond CrossFit, if that makes sense. Cross-training beyond CrossFit. It wouldn’t improve my counts in circuit one. Like, say, for instance, the training would be 12 stations of different movements, 40 seconds on, 40 seconds off of as high intensity you could go when you’re counting your rates, whether it’s a sledgehammer, or a burpee to bar muscle-ups, or various things like sled pushes.
Alex Tarnava: My numbers had no improvement round one, but they did round two, three, four. The more tired I would have been getting, the more my numbers were staying. I’ve heard that from a lot of distance athletes, even my common-law girlfriend, it won’t help her doing like a fast track time. Might not even… she doesn’t need to really notice a difference in, say, a 5K but she sure does in a marathon. She can keep her pace faster and a lot better.
Kris Gethin: Right. Okay, great. I know a couple of top triathletes here as well. I may give them some as well to try out and I’d love to know their responsibilities as well because they’re always trying to get that little bit of edge. They’re usually spending a couple of thousand dollars on a new wheel or something in order to do so.
Alex Tarnava: I wish I could tell you some of the world-class athletes that are taking the tablets right now, but I can’t really divulge customer information without a contract in specific-
Kris Gethin: Yeah. Makes sense, of course.
Alex Tarnava: … endorsement.
Kris Gethin: Yeah, [crosstalk 01:07:49].
Alex Tarnava: But there is a lot of household names that are taking it as their little secret.
Kris Gethin: That’s awesome. That’s great. Well, hopefully, it won’t become such a secret much longer. So, Alex, thank you so much for joining me. I really, really appreciate this. I feel that we’ve only just scratched the surface. People that follow me, keep an eye out on my socials, especially my Insta stories where I will actually start reporting what I find with this new protocol that I’m going to start trying with the hydrogen-rich water. So, where can people find you to interact or people want to find more content from you in regards to this? I will put all the links in the show notes.
Alex Tarnava: Yeah, we’ll put the links to the blog and the show notes and link to… We’ll do a special offer for your listeners too.
Kris Gethin: Great. Thank you very much.
Alex Tarnava: No problem.
Kris Gethin: Okay, so we’ll put the link in there and obviously you have a blog. If people want to keep up to date on all the research and findings and the content that you’re putting out there, we’ll put a link to that as well.
Alex Tarnava: Exactly. We have everything. It’s been called by some of the researchers even are comparing H2 technologies article, it’s about 5,000 words and some of the researchers have called it the most comprehensive comparison. I often get complimented by researchers on how neutral I am. Even with claims in the research, my marketing team often gets pretty upset with me because I’ll downplay studies, even studies on our own tablet, and say, “Now we need to know this or this.” But that’s the only way we can really expand knowledge. If I go and start screaming that this is a miracle and it’s going to cure every one of everyone, researchers aren’t going to take it seriously and that’s going to really hurt the industry, but the population also.
Alex Tarnava: If the trend continues and all these benefits continue to be documented in the research and through the population, we need to be working with public scientists. They don’t want to be affiliated with something that seems like quackery or a scam. They want to deal with legitimate companies that care about science and category knowledge. So, I almost will not sell, push away from the benefits to be conservative because that’s the only way to build the foundation to get real positive intention from the research community so we can know more and more about hydrogen and how it helps.
Kris Gethin: Right. Okay. Interesting. All right. Well, thank you very much once again, Alex. As Alex mentioned, there’s a special, so do check the link in the show notes for that. I’ll be putting up a lot of my latest findings on my Insta stories there, so keep an eye out. Thank you very much. I really appreciate your time today.
Alex Tarnava: No problem. Likewise was a pleasure. You have a great day, and I look forward to seeing the stores.
Kris Gethin: All right. Thank you.
2 Comments
“Thanks! Unfortunately there is a complete absence of cartilage remaining in my glenohumeral joint, so there is no stopping it now (and my other joints aren’t really deteriorating anymore/have stayed fairly consistent, so that’s good news).
Options are really just waiting until experimental bridge building peptides, or advanced methods for activating stem cells causing cartilage growth, advance to the point of being reliable in humans and not just in vitro or single rodent studies. “
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