How Hydrogen Gas Enters and Leaves the Human Body

Scientists found that hydrogen gas moves in and out of your body in predictable ways—whether you breathe it in, drink it in special water, or get it injected—and it leaves your body pretty quickly through your skin, which could help treat certain health problems.

Hydrogen gas behaves as a physiologically inert substance in the human body and follows the same predictable saturation and desaturation patterns as other inert gases like nitrogen, regardless of whether it enters through inhalation, oral consumption, or injection.

This review explains how hydrogen gas behaves in the human body. Although hydrogen is chemically very reactive, it acts as a physiologically inert gas (meaning it doesn't react with other substances in the body) similar to nitrogen and helium. The study describes how hydrogen enters the body through different routes—breathing it in, drinking hydrogen water, or receiving hydrogen saline injections—and how it gets absorbed and eliminated following predictable patterns. Because hydrogen diffuses (spreads) rapidly through tissues, it can also escape through the skin when concentrations become too high.

This is a theoretical review rather than an experimental study with human participants, so it does not provide direct evidence about hydrogen water's effects on health. It describes the basic mechanisms of how hydrogen moves through the body, which may help explain how hydrogen water could theoretically reach tissues, but more research is needed to determine whether this translates to actual health benefits.

The definition of inert gases is different in the fields of chemistry and physiology. Physiologically, inert gases mainly include hydrogen, helium, and nitrogen and refer to those that cannot react with other substances in human body although hydrogen is a highly active gas in chemistry. Under…

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