What the Evidence Shows About Hydrogen-Rich Water

I'm going to answer this question that was submitted last time by Michelle on hydrogen water. Michelle says, "What does the current research show about the health benefits of hydrogen-rich water? Oxidative stress, inflammation, muscle fatigue, and metabolic health. Is it genuinely effective or mostly hype?" Okay, so at its core, hydrogen water is essentially regular water that has been enriched with molecular hydrogen gas.

I would say over the past five years or so, we've seen a small spike in studies looking at the health effects of hydrogen-rich water, including performance and health biomarkers. Most of the studies are animal studies. There are also some cell-culture studies. A few randomized controlled trials and other intervention trials have studied hydrogen water in humans.

The effects are very modest and inconsistent, and the studies are very small and often funded by people making hydrogen water. With that in mind, a few human trials show that drinking hydrogen-rich water could reduce markers of oxidative stress and inflammation in both healthy individuals and people with chronic conditions. Hydrogen appears to bind to some of the most reactive oxidants and turn down inflammatory pathways such as NF-kappa B, although no clinical endpoints improved.

There was a reduction in NF-kappa B, but no clinical endpoints improved. This was at a dose of about 1.5 liters of hydrogen-enriched water per day for four weeks in healthy adults. That pales in comparison with omega-3, which dampens the NF-kappa B pathway, helps resolve inflammation, and affects multiple inflammatory biomarkers. Omega-3 also has evidence for improved clinical endpoints, including a 25 percent reduction in cardiovascular disease risk. If you're concerned about inflammation, I would turn to better-supported interventions before hydrogen water. With that said, you can find a small study showing that it does have a slight benefit in reducing inflammation. There are also some studies that have found modest improvements with things like total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, triglycerides, and uric acid levels when people drink the hydrogen-rich water regularly.

Again, when I say that, I mean modest. If that is something that you want to pay money for and do, by all means, I don't think it's going to be harmful. Do I think it's worth it? Absolutely not.

I think there are many more effective interventions for improving total cholesterol, LDL cholesterol, inflammation, and oxidative stress. Hydrogen water is certainly not near the top of the list. Omega-3 also improves cholesterol, and lowering saturated-fat intake is one of the biggest levers. There are many other interventions to consider for improving glucose responses.

Exercise is another option. Even doing three minutes of bodyweight squats eight times throughout the day is orders of magnitude more beneficial than spending money on hydrogen water.

And guess what? It's free. So, something to keep in mind as well. With that said, you can find some very small studies showing some benefits with hydrogen-rich water, particularly if you cherrypick those studies and ignore the ones that showed no effects.

Again, if you want to spend money on hydrogen-rich water, perhaps it might do something. But if you're already taking omega-3, vitamin D, and a multivitamin, exercising, and eating a healthy diet, I think it's like trying to fill a pool with a water dropper. You're already getting substantial anti-inflammatory effects, so I don't know that hydrogen water will add anything. Those are my thoughts.

So I think at the end of the day, you'll find some studies showing that hydrogen-rich water may lower exercise-induced fatigue and reduce muscle soreness. I think creatine, urolithin A, and nicotinamide riboside are likely to work better than hydrogen water. With that in mind, you can still find a study showing some improvement. So you cannot refute it, and you cannot ignore it.

With that said, systematic reviews look at all the randomized trials and the full body of evidence. Their conclusion is that the certainty of evidence is very low because these studies have very small sample sizes. The dosing and outcomes are variable. In other words, you'll find a lot of inconsistent data. You'll find many studies with no effects at all.

And then you'll find some data where there are effects. We still have to identify the right dose and population. At the end of the day, are there more effective levers we can pull to improve insulin sensitivity and glucose control? Yes.

Are there more effective levers we can pull to reduce inflammation and oxidative stress, such as sulforaphane and omega-3? Yes. At the end of the day, can you take hydrogen-rich water? Can you pay for it and might it do something?

Maybe. Or if you're doing all those other things, it probably won't make much of a difference. And so, you're just going to be basically buying expensive hydrogen-rich water. It's up to you.

At the end of the day, I don't think that's necessarily going to harm you. So, why not? The bottom line is to keep this in perspective. I know there's some influencers talking about hydrogen-rich water being some big-time cure and all kinds of mechanisms have been proposed that I would not say are evidence-based.

We need to realize that the evidence showing a benefit from hydrogen-rich water is extremely preliminary and not very robust compared with other interventions. Those alternatives have stronger effects on inflammation and oxidative stress, along with higher-quality data. So, it's one of those, okay, well, let's choose the biggest levers that we can pull to improve our health.