Hydrogen gas was long been considered to be inert with no physiological effect on the body. For example, it was used in deep diving as early as 1945 – by the Swedish engineer in the Hydrox Project. In late 1960’s, the United States Navy and the Compagnie Maritime d’Expertises of France started testing the use of high-concentration hydrogen gas (up to 49%) in dives as deep as 700 m. The health safety of hydrogen gas is common knowledge among deep divers (Abraini et al., 1994).
Contrary to the long-standing belief, a group of American researchers reported in 1975 that hydrogen gas could scavenge free radicals and lead to the regression of skin tumours in mice (Dole et al., 1975). In their study, mice were exposed to a mixture of 2.5 % oxygen and 97.5 % hydrogen at a total pressure of 8 atmospheres for periods of up to 2 weeks.
Nearly half the century since the discovery, more than 1,000 articles on the potential therapeutic benefit of molecular hydrogen have been published in medical journals around the world. The editors of the international journal, Medical Gas Research, expressed their wonderment in the following sentence (Dixon & Zhang, 2016).
“Have you ever wondered how the simplest and smallest element in the known universe could lead to “a brighter, more intellectual, and healthier way of living?”
Literatures
1. Abraini, J.H. et al., 1994. Psychophysiological reactions in humans during an open sea dive to 500 m with a hydrogen-helium-oxygen mixture. Journal of Applied Physiology, American Physiological Society, 76: 1113-1118.
2. Dixon, B.J. & Zhang, J.H., 2016. An innovative collection in hydrogen molecular biology and medicine research. Medical Gas Research, 6: 55-56.
Dole, M. et al., 1975. Hyperbaric hydrogen therapy: a possible treatment for cancer. Science, 190: 152-154.