Hydrogen Water vs Alkaline Water: What the Science Says About Antioxidants and pH | Andy Galpin | Be Well Moments

0:00Welcome to Live Well, Be Well, a show to help high performers improve their health and well-being.

0:10There's a really big hype going on right now on hydrogen water. What is your take on this?

0:16Andy Galpin:Okay, I can speak pretty well on this, actually. Now, I have to disclose conflict of interest here. So we are actually doing a study right now in my lab with a company called Echo Water. and so I can't speak anything about that. That's an ongoing project. Echo has a flask that it makes that actually generates hydrogen water that they sell. So I know this research very well in preparing for that study. We've looked at this. The easiest way to explain hydrogen water is it's not alkaline water. Okay, so hydrogen water is a, like if you talk to a chemist and you know this very well, it's a very funny term.

0:55Andy Galpin:Some people will call it molecular water and the same thing. You're like, that doesn't even like, that's a nonsensical word. Like, of course, it's molecular. Like what? Anyways, um, hydrogen. Okay. So confusion number one is just like giving it a truly awful name. Okay. So many years ago, alkaline water became a rage. And for the most part, scientists pushed back hard and they'd rightfully so, um, because it turned out to be mostly nonsense and most of these things do, right? So that's a good stance to have is nonsense until proven otherwise. We actually ran an alkaline study, like a six-week study in my lab many years ago, and we found the same thing, like did nothing for performance at all of any kind.

1:38Andy Galpin:All right, so hydrogen water and molecular water are not alkaline water, number one. Alkaline water is literally giving you water that's at a different pH, and the assumption is, oh, you'll drink it, you become more alkaline, i.e. less acidic, and that should have more positive health benefits because being acidic is bad. two major problems with that. One, ingesting a little bit of alkaline water becomes immediately changed to the acidity level in your body, particularly in your stomach, so it does nothing. Two, being acidic is not bad. Your body has a natural pH that it runs in different areas.

2:12Andy Galpin:Your stomach has a different pH than your, in fact, if you look at the pH in your arteries versus your veins, they differ slightly. That's a good thing, right? That's the way that you clear bicarbonate. Even in your mouth. 100%. like the pH in all the orifices in your body, in your ears, in your nose, in your mouth, vaginal pH is different, right? So it's everywhere and it should be different, right? Things work better at a certain temperature and a certain acidity level. And so if you're actually too alkaline, you'll see breakdowns as well. Not good, okay? Now, let's set that aside. What hydrogen water or molecular water is attempting to do is very, very easy chemistry.

2:52Andy Galpin:It's saying if we can add more hydrogen protons, so quick chemistry for folks, hydrogen is H +, right? That's also the same way saying like proton. Now pH, the term pH stands for two things. We won't get into this debate, but one of the ways you can interpret pH, the acronym, is potential hydrogen. And so the way that chemistry work in the pH scale, what makes something alkaline versus acidic, is the exchange between H plus and OH negative. Why that matters? If you take an H plus, again, it's got a positive charge, and you take an OH that has a negative charge and you put them in the same room, what's going to happen?

3:36They equalize.

3:38Andy Galpin:There you go, right? Because they're going to come together. The negative and the positive will balance each other out because they have strong affinity for each other and they're going to make water. H two O. right? So two hydrogens and one oxygen. Pulling them apart gives you those separate things. Okay, great. So if I were to give you a big bolus of hydrogen plus, which is again, pure acid, and that's in an environment with a bunch of OH negative, you'll take that acid, you'll take that alkaline, and it will all become neutralized because you'll just make a neutral, inert water. this is the rationale if we gave you hydrogen water another water with a bunch of extra h plus into it it will run around your body picking up a bunch of oh negatives converting it into water now why that is a potentially good thing is oxidative stress breaks down tissue breaks down dna breaks down anything again this is a good thing this is what scavenges your body of broken down tissue.

4:40Andy Galpin:It fights off infections. It's important for clotting. It does a ton of things. But excess amounts of oxidative stress are detrimental to mitochondria and, again, every tissue in your body. So the working assumption thought process theory here is if there is too much oxidative stress going on and we can bring in extra hydrogen, we can neutralize that potential effect and also produce water, which is great. So it should be quite hydrating, but the real thing is cellular stress. So the available human research, and there actually is some human research. There's not a lot of high quality human research.

5:18Andy Galpin:There's not a lot of placebo and randomized trials on it. But again, we're doing one right now. It was more impressive than I anticipated, to be quite candid. I was like, okay, there's something here. Now, most of the research is preclinical, meaning non-human and molecular-based and all that stuff. Interesting part of the story. You don't throw it out, but we don't put as much stock in that as we do human research. And so the human research is emerging. What it looks like it does, again, thinking through the chemistry a little bit here, nothing to pH. You don't drink hydrogen water to change your pH, as we already explained in the alkaline story.

5:55Andy Galpin:It's not what it's doing. but it does seem at this point to potentially have some sort of anti-inflammatory potentially but more importantly directly an antioxidant benefit so here are the outstanding questions does it do anything to performance how much do you have how how long from when it was activated between then and ingestion does the preparation matter for it does it actually make you better are in the long term? Is it an acute effect or a chronic effect? If so, how? And we actually have some things that we think that are happening there that I won't even share yet, but it's not the stuff that most people are talking about if it's potentially working.

6:39Andy Galpin:Does it work in young people? Does it work in old people? Does it only work in people who are unhealthy, right? And it is generally true to complete the story. Oxidative stress itself, when excessive, is associated with poor health effects. Okay. When you smoke, when you don't sleep, when you are exposed to environmental pollutants, oxidative stress gets really, really high. So are the potential benefits exclusive to people who are just kind of in a really highly oxidative stress state? So somebody who is exercising a lot, drinking clean water, eating clean food, and they're not overly exposed, are they still going to see the same benefit?

7:15Andy Galpin:We don't know the answer to really any of these questions. So at this point, I would say, do I recommend it? No, not per se. We'll see what our study comes up with. And again, that's funded by that company, Echo. Very important. This is conflicts of interest. So we'll see. We'll see where the data shake out in our study. We'll see if other folks are funding studies and getting those things done. I don't know. It's plausible. is it better than any regular antioxidant? Does it outperform vitamin C? I don't know. Like, does it outperform just eating more antioxidant-rich foods? I don't know. So the question in science and performance is always, okay, compared to what?

8:04Andy Galpin:I could give you a thousand products that can show some efficacy or effectiveness in a control trial, especially at the molecular level. Like if you know anything about molecular or biochemistry, you can make a trial work, right? Like it's pretty easy, but it's better than this. It's really easy to make that happen. So we'll see. Um, it's been a pleasure that where I can say working with that company has been phenomenal. They are super transparent and like they, I really think that they're, they're in it, um, for the openness and just like make sure the product works. so good on the people at Echo for being like that but we'll see thanks so much for listening to hear the full episode there's a link in the description