TikTok’s “Hydrogen Water” Trend Is One of the Dumbest Stupid Things I’ve Seen in a Lately Time
The latest trend on TikTok is exaggerating the benefits of hydrogen water and trying to sell you a battery-powered water bottle that makes it. Does hydrogen water really hydrate the body better and treat intestinal problems? Do these bottles even make hydrogen water?
What is hydrogen water?
Leaving TikTok aside for now, let’s talk about what it means to have hydrogen in your water. A water molecule consists of one oxygen atom bonded to two hydrogen atoms, hence its chemical formula: H2O .
But we are not talking about hydrogen. Hydrogen can also be a gas in which two hydrogen molecules are bonded to each other. The chemical formula of this substance is H2 . Hydrogen is light; it is also flammable, as well demonstrated by the Hindenburg disaster .
Hydrogen water, also called hydrogenated water, is water that has bubbles of hydrogen gas in it. The gas will tend to rise into the air, so it is difficult to keep the hydrogen in the water; if you leave it uncovered, the gas will escape, similar to how carbon dioxide bubbles will escape if you leave a soda open and it will evaporate.
All this means: hydrogen water is a real thing that can be produced. What’s harder to say is whether it’s produced properly in these TikToks and whether it provides any health benefits.
What TikTok says about hydrogen water
Watching the video tagged #hydrogenwater feels like watching the classic “sell me that pencil” improv exercise. Each creator features a bottle that glows blue when you press a button, and each one admires it for different reasons. One tells us how good the water tastes. Some call it “sacred water.” One says she hopes it will cure her gut health problems. It is said to be the most “hydrating” type of water.
Some of these videos feature celebrity salesman Gary Brecka, who claims there are 1,400 human studies on the benefits of hydrogen water. If there are any, they are hidden really well! But more on that in a minute.
These videos have little evidence to back up their claims and focus heavily on advertising: where to get a bottle with a blue light, how much it costs, why this model is better than that, and so on.
What Science Says About Hydrogen Water
The few human studies are limited in scope and not very convincing in their results. For example, here is an article about whether hydrogenated water improves the well-being of cancer patients after radiation. Patients who drank hydrogenated water reported better quality of life, but there were no changes in health indicators such as tumor size. Here’s another study showing a small possible effect on blood lipids like LDL, but it’s a small study and the authors acknowledge several limitations.
These studies are a great starting point for further research, but they are not proof that hydrogen water is good for you. Note that they do not measure any health outcomes (such as disease incidence, mortality rates, or anything similar objective).
These studies also say nothing about the effects of battery-powered water bottles on any of the health outcomes they are advertised to have, such as hydration or gut health. This fact is more than enough to dismiss these claims out of hand, but before I finish, I’d like to take a closer look at that bottle they’re all trying to sell me.
Does the bottle even do what it says?
Almost all popular videos sell something similar to the same bottle. It appears to be the same design as this one , which is currently available on Amazon for around $30, with TikTok’s “store” page selling it for between $9 and $50.
This contrasts with the way hydrogen water is produced in the studies I linked above. During the experiments, participants were given magnesium sticks that could be placed in bottles of water for about 12 hours. Water reacts with magnesium to form hydrogen gas and magnesium oxide; it’s a fairly simple chemical reaction. But the TikTok version uses a water bottle with a button. You press a button, a blue light comes on and tiny bubbles(?) appear in the water.
I am very skeptical about the claim that this produces any significant amount of hydrogen gas. Supposedly, at the bottom of the bottle is an electrolysis device that uses electricity to separate water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen components. Hydrogen atoms combine with each other to form hydrogen gas, and oxygen molecules combine to form oxygen gas.
Creating such a device is a classic science experiment for children. But does that really happen in this water bottle? Firstly, if this were so, it would not be hydrogen water, but hydrogen-oxygen water. Since hydrogen water is (sometimes) touted for its antioxidant properties, it would be strange to combine it with oxygen, a literal oxidizing agent. And secondly, turning water into gas will lead to a decrease in the amount of water , since water turns into gas, and gas – if it is not tightly sealed – floats away.
Some TikTokers try to measure the hydrogen content of water, but do so with pH meters, which measure hydrogen ions (rather than molecular hydrogen in gas form). ORP devices face a similar problem: they don’t actually tell you how much hydrogen is in the water, only its redox potential . My skepticism is heightened by the fact that the description of the bottle states that it can be used with distilled water. You can’t do electrolysis with distilled water because you need salt or another source of ions to encourage the water molecules to break down.
So while I can’t prove that these bottles are bullshit, they certainly don’t sound very plausible. And while I also can’t prove that hydrogen water has no health benefits, I’m sure no one has presented conclusive evidence that it does. Save your money and try a TikTok trend that will truly improve your life, like evil cleaning .