The On/Off History of Hydrogen in Medicine: Will the Interest Persist This Time Around?

Over 2000 publications including more than 100 human studies seem to indicate that humans have only recently benefited from or known about the medical effects of H₂ within the past 15 years. However, we have unknowingly benefited from H₂ since the dawn of time, from H₂-producing bacteria to the use of naturally occurring hydrogen-rich waters. Moreover, the first writings on the therapeutic effects of H₂ date to around 1793. Since then, papers appeared sporadically in the literature every few decades but never exploded until Ohsawa et al. again demonstrated hydrogen’s therapeutic effects in 2007. This landmark paper appears to have been the spark that ignited the medical interest in hydrogen. Although H₂ was used in the 1880s to locate intestinal perforations, in the 1940s in deep sea diving, and in the 1960s to measure blood flow, H₂ was largely viewed as biologically inert. This review highlights the history of hydrogen in the genesis/evolution of life and its medicinal and non-medicinal use in humans. Although hydrogen medicine has a long and erratic history, perhaps future history will show that, this time around, these 15 years of ignited interest resulted in a self-sustaining explosion of its unique medical effects.