Hydrogen Medicine Shows Promise for Multiple Diseases
- Authors
- W.B. Dong, G.L. Zheng
- Journal
- Chinese Journal of Pharmacology and Toxicology
- Year
- 2012
- DOI
- 10.3867/j.issn.1000-3002.2012.05.013
- Study Type
- clinical
- Peer Reviewed
- Yes
- Country
- China
- Health Condition
- Ischemia/Reperfusion Injury
- Body System
- Cardiovascular
TL;DR
Scientists found that hydrogen might be a natural medicine that can help prevent and treat lots of diseases like heart problems and brain diseases by reducing harmful stuff in your body. The cool part is that hydrogen works better than other treatments because it's safe, gets into your body easily, and doesn't mess with how your body normally works.
Key Finding
Hydrogen shows promise as a selective antioxidant with potential preventive and therapeutic effects across multiple diseases, while offering advantages over traditional antioxidants including mild action, rapid tissue penetration, and minimal side effects.
Summary
This review article examines research on hydrogen as a potential treatment for diseases caused by oxidative stress (damage from unstable molecules in the body). Hydrogen can be consumed in several ways—by breathing hydrogen gas, drinking hydrogen water, or through injections. The review suggests hydrogen may help with conditions like heart damage from lack of blood flow, organ transplant injury, brain diseases, and metabolic problems, and that it has advantages over traditional antioxidants because it works gently without disrupting normal body chemistry.
Practical Takeaway
This is a review article summarizing existing research rather than a new study with specific results, and it does not report data from human trials. While the review suggests hydrogen warrants further investigation, much of the supporting evidence comes from laboratory and animal studies. Anyone considering hydrogen water should recognize that clinical evidence in humans remains limited, and this review does not provide definitive proof of health benefits.
Abstract
Oxidative stress is one of the major causes of many common diseases. Recent studies show that hydrogen is potentially a selective antioxidant that has preventive and therapeutic effects on many diseases, such as ischemia/reperfusion injury, transplantation injury, neurodegenerative diseases, atherosclerosis, metabolic syndrome. Methods to ingest or consume hydrogen include inhaling hydrogen gas, injecting hydrogen saline, dropping hydrogen saline into the eye, drinking hydrogen water and increasing the production of intestinal hydrogen by bacteria. Also, hydrogen has a number of advantages over traditional antioxidants. For example, hydrogen is mild enough neither to disturb metabolic redox reactions nor to affect reactive oxygen species, it rapidly diffuses into tissues and cells, and hydrogen consumption has few adverse effects. Furthermore, hydrogen has not only anti-oxidative stress effects, but various anti-inflammatory and anti-allergic effects. This paper reviews the recent progress in hydrogen medicine and thus provides reference for researchers in this field.