Paul Barattiero has lectured across the world for the last 22 years, educating the world on the top benefits of molecular hydrogen.

He’s developed the Echo hydrogen water system, along with other products like Synergy Sauna and Waveguard EMF Protection, to modulate immune and cognitive function. In this talk, he explores what hydrogen is and why it’s important in the body, discusses the importance of gut balance to hydrogen, details how hydrogen can have an impact on oxidative stress markers and neurodegenerative diseases, and talks about how his devices can help.

What is hydrogen and why is it important in our bodies?

Molecular hydrogen is a gas and it’s plentiful. Barattiero says that in talking about the body from a clinical perspective, we look at the building blocks of the body, which are carbon hydrogen chains. The core of the body is molecular hydrogen, or carbon hydrogen chains. And hydrogen is everywhere, from hydrochloric acid in the stomach to every other aspect of the body.

Molecular hydrogen is something that the body needs to function properly. From a clinical perspective, Barattiero says, in treating patients for diabetes or other conditions, he wanted to understand the cause of the problem. “I don’t like band-aiding, I like fixing things. I don’t want something that you constantly have to work out.” He says he likes to figure out the source of the problem, because he believes the body was not created by accident.

Barattiero also believes that bodies can heal themselves, given the right tools. If core elements in the body are taken away, the body cannot function properly, he says. This leads to a cascade of effects, with the body trying to “patch stuff together and make it still work.”

When working with patients, Barattiero says he wants to see cause and effect. “If you’re only seeing the result of a problem (the symptoms), you haven’t found a solution yet,” he says. Those symptoms are only the body’s reaction to a problem, and that reaction doesn’t tell you anything about what is really going on in the body.

Barattiero compares it to looking at people on the surface. Someone may be a loving, peaceful person, but you may catch them in a moment of anger. If you only used that snippet of their life to determine who they were, you may think they were a very aggressive person. But someone who knows them well could say they’ve never seen that behavior before. The person may have simply been trying to protect something like their dog, or a child. The aggression was a reaction to a specific situation. Barattiero says the body is the same. It can react in ways it wouldn’t normally function, because it’s trying to fix itself.

The gut is an important piece of the puzzle, Barattiero says. The gastrointestinal tract is where the many important body functions occur. Gut dysfunction is talked about frequently, but he says many people have no idea what that means. “Leaky gut” can be a confusing term. Barattiero simplifies the concept by saying if there’s a gut issue, there’s improper bacteria in the gut. A well balanced gut contains both aerobic and anaerobic microflora. But only one to four percent of the bacteria in the gut should be aerobic; the majority of the gut bacteria should be anaerobic. When this ratio is off, gut problems occur.

The balance of bacteria is governed by the terrain and biome of the gut. And that terrain and biome are dependent upon the electrical potential of the tissue lining of the gut. When that electrical potential is changed, the balance of bacteria is thrown off. There are several things that impact the electrical potential of the gut. Antibiotic overuse, for example. Barattiero says antibiotics are wonderful for life-threatening bacterial infections, but when given for a flu or virus don’t do anything except destroy the gut. When the electrical potential of someone’s gastrointestinal tract is changed, the critical anaerobic microflora no longer want to live there, Barattiero says.

To rehab the gut, he says, you need to change the electrical potential to at least a negative 300 millivolts of electrical potential in the tissue itself. And when that happens, results can be quick. For example, within a few days to a couple of weeks, someone who had gluten or dairy intolerances can be eating those things with no inflammation. The body should be able to process these things, he says. All pathology or disease stems from gut issues, according to Barattiero. “If the gut is not functioning properly, everything else is damaged at that point.” When you aren’t fermenting food properly, anxiety, stress, and depression can result from that inappropriate bacteria. Food cravings, your personality – everything can change. “It’s not you, it’s your gut bacteria. That’s the message that I want people to understand, because if we had someone with a proper gut, then they’re going to have proper immune function,” says Barattiero.

Gut health, the proper balance of bacteria, impacts immune function significantly. When you put the electrical potential back in the gut, you selectively stimulate anaerobic microflora and the biome and terrain are as they should be, he says. One of the tiny bacteria in the anaerobic microflora family are called hydrogen trophs, Barattiero says. “These are the amazing bacteria that can convert fiber rich foods and fatty acids in foods into hydrogen gas. Your body was designed with the ability to produce or make 10 to 12 liters of hydrogen gas per day. And this is how your body would naturally regulate oxidation.”

This is part of the natural therapeutic antioxidant system in the body. Hydrogen modulates many signals that your body needs to regulate things like ghrelin secretion, for example. Due to gut damage, people aren’t producing ghrelin, which can lead to neurodegenerative diseases. Hydrogen is the director that gives your body systems instructions in order for them to function. Gases come out of the gut when you ferment food, which is typically how you get hydrogen molecules into your body. And this hydrogen, Barattiero says, is absolutely critical to life. This is what he’s spent many years teaching and educating people about, since most people do not understand the critical aspect of hydrogen, he says.

Impact Of Hydrogen On Neurodegenerative Conditions

Oxidative stress and inflammation are the leading causes of any disease. There are hundreds of diseases, often named according to the part of the body that is impacted. But when you look at the source of the disease, Barattiero says, it’s oxidative stress and inflammation.

Oxidation and reduction are normal forces that create homeostasis in the body. If the gut is not functioning properly, and oxidation is not regulated, it rises and becomes oxidative stress. When oxidative stress is present, the body is not functioning properly. Cytokine storms and inflammatory responses, which many people have heard about due to COVID, are related to body system failures.

Neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s, dementia, Parkinson’s, bipolar, mild cognitive impairment, even autism all come from oxidative stress and inflammation in the body. Hydrogen naturally reduces oxidation. When you have gut dysfunction gut you’re no longer regulating oxidation, so it rises to the level of oxidative stress. When it comes to Alzheimer’s, Barattiero says most people don’t understand that it is a result of oxidative stress and inflammation.

Medicine is more simple than many people make it, he says. Common sense says that if you know what something is caused by – such as oxidative stress – and you reduce that source, you’ll have a disease modifying effect. There may be other things like more sleep, more water and proper food that will help, but if you change the body first by introducing hydrogen, you reduce the oxidative stress and inflammation. And drinking hydrogen water is a great place to start.

The inflammatory response is a complicated chemistry puzzle, including amyloid proteins, a toxic protein that causes mitochondrial dysfunction and oxidative stress. Amyloid proteins are a precursor to Alzheimer’s. Hydrogen has had a positive effect on these proteins. Barattiero quotes a study that found “Hydrogen water significantly improved cognitive behavior in female transgenic mice without affecting the amylase beta, clearance and reversed brain oestrogen levels.” The study also stated,”Furthermore, hydrogen water ameliorated oxidative stress and inflammatory responses more profoundly in the brains of female mice than those of males. Our results demonstrated that a novel sex-specific beneficial effect on hydrogen via oestrogen and brain signaling in Alzheimer’s disease pathogenesis.” This is all part of the understanding that hormones can have an impact on outcomes, Barattiero says.

Another reason Alzheimer’s occurs is traumatic brain injury, because of the inflammation that occurs where the injury is, and the oxidative stress that results from this trauma. Because of that inflammatory response, the cytokines and other proteins come, and if they aren’t changed, neurodegenerative diseases can occur. Hydrogen acts to change this response. In one study, a seven day 7 trial, the inflammation in the spot where the brain injury happened was reduced by 50% the first day by introducing hydrogen gas into the body through water. And that inflammation continued to decline in the following days. “These were huge benefits that were coming for people,” Barattiero says. A passage from the study reads, “Treatment with a hydrogen water reversed the increase seen four hours after CCI and gene expression.” CCI is the spot where inflammation occurred. Introducing hydrogen rich water made a big difference.

Barattiero said it that it would be great to talk about the gut when conducting these studies on TBI. In some, he said, they do include mention of the bacteria in the gut, and noticed a significant difference in microflora in the gut during the study.

Hydrogen regulates so many bio-molecules in the body – more than 200 pathways have already been discovered to be regulated by hydrogen, including SIRT1, telomerase, kinases, proteins and more that can reverse mitochondrial dysfunction. Hydrogen also can benefit apoptosis, which means cells destroy themselves when they reproduce improperly. In cancer cells, apoptosis stops and these cells can grow and proliferate. Hydrogen can somehow turn apoptosis back on. There are many studies that can be found at hydrogenstudies.com for anyone interested in reading more.

How to get the benefits of hydrogen?

Barattiero wants to offer the most cost effective way to benefit from hydrogen therapy. There are companies selling devices that aren’t actually hydrogen devices, and unfortuntely these don’t produce hydrogen long term. Barattiero says he has developed the only device in the world that currently will produce hydrogen at a therapeutic level for a lifetime. He sells this device for just $149. It’s not a huge investment, which was intentional, Barattiero says. “I don’t want people to have to spend a lot of money to get healthy and to feel better.” He says that in the studies, people were not consistently drinking hydrogen rich water. You should be producing hydrogen three times per day as you eat meals, Barattiero says. ” If we want to mimic the human body, and we want to have it function like normal, you could drink the water at least three times a day, and therefore, introduce the hydrogen into your body three times a day and have the regulation occurring,” he says. It’s a simple process – just drink water from the sport bottle as you hydrate normally.

Of course, Barattiero says, you need to drink water more than three times per day to get proper hydration, and purified water is essential. But drinking hydrogen rich water allows you to have intermittent exposure throughout the day, through the water. This is better than breathing hydrogen gas, because with that method of delivery, the hydrogen doesn’t reach the gut, Barattiero says. When the hydrogen rich water comes from the Echo Brand that Barattiero developed, it’s not only the highest concentration of any device, but you can use purified or distilled water, which many other devices cannot.

Drinking this hydrogen rich water restores the electrical potential to repair the gut. Antibiotics, on the other hand, are not. In some small studies with people on a daily antibiotic for serious gut issues have shown that pain occurs within two hours of taking the antibiotic, because the bacteria is overtaking that antibiotic. Hydrogen rich water from the Echo Brand can stimulate anaerobic microflora, or build gut bacteria back, faster than antibiotics can kill it. The gut begins to change within a day or two of starting to drink hydrogen rich water. This leads to increased energy, better sleep, and better cognitive function. Brain mapping has shown that within two minutes of drinking water from one of these devices, ghrelin secretions have gone to the hippocampus, the hypothalamus and the brain stem to change plasticity. Another benefit of hydrogen rich water on neurodegenerative diseases is on tremors, which can be a problem for people with Parkinson’s disease. Within ten minutes, the hand can still. The benefits are widespread, and it’s all due to the hydrogen gas, Barattiero says.

He finishes his talk with a reading from a study titled Electrolyzed-Reduced Water Mitigates Amyloid Beta Toxicity via DAF-16 in C. Elegan. “These findings indicate that electrolyzed reduced water can prevent amyloid beta toxicity via DAF-16, and suggest that electrolyzed reduced water could be utilized for the development of therapeutic intervention to Alzheimer’s disease.”

Drinking hydrogen water is a simple solution that can ultimately inhibit disease progression. It was talked about years ago with diabetes, and now is used regularly because it normalizes blood gluose in around 80% of individuals with diabetes within a matter of days, he says. For neurodegenerative conditions, he says three to five days should yield some results. “It’s worth it. If you have this condition, or a loved one that you care about has it, imagine that drinking water can affect the pathology. I don’t know anything easier than that to tell you,” Barattiero says. He urged people to visit hydrogenstudies.com and learn more from the 1,086 fully indexed studies on the site.

Hydrogen Water

Explore our education library

Hydrogen Water for Reversing Alzheimer’s

The power of Hydrogen Water and EMF Radiation shielding technologies for better health