The Original Dr. Hayashi Hydrogen Rich Water Stick Review

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(More customer reviews)I revised this review to make it more readable. The scientific citations have been moved to the end and new headings have been created. Those readers who want details and rigor can refer to the NOTES AND REFERENCES section at the end of the review. If this is not enough, the interested reader can Google the original articles and read them for him- or herself.
DISCLAIMERS
There is no way that buying a $875 - $4000 machine was in the cards for me, so I performed no investigation on alkaline water. Maybe alkaline water works; maybe it doesn't. I was interested in Hayashi's claim that it was the hydrogen dissolved in the water that has a therapeutic effect rather than in the water's alkalinity or Oxidation/Reduction Potential.
I do not sell Hydrogen Sticks, nor do I have any financial interest in the sale of Hydrogen Sticks.
What follows is not to be construed as medical advice.
While I have attempted to perform a sanity check for myself, this sanity check was to informal personal standards which may not satisfy the standards of a given reader.
REASONS NOT TO BUY THE HYDROGEN STICK
Alkaline Tap Water. The hydrogen stick relies on a chemical reaction between water and metallic magnesium: Mg + 2H2O -> Mg (OH)2 + H2. This reaction proceeds faster in an acidic environment and slower in an alkaline environment. Therefore, if your tap water is exceptionally alkaline, the hydrogen stick is probably not for you, unless you are willing to use bottled water instead of tap water. Or instead of using bottled water, maybe you could acidify the tap water with vinegar, bringing it to a more neutral pH - it's worth a try. On the other hand, if your water is really acidic, my guess is that the hydrogen stick will produce bubbles like crazy but probably won't last very long. Any water with a fairly neutral pH - say 7.0 or 8.0 - should be fine. 636cathleen (creator of the "Don't Buy the Hydrogen Stick" YouTube videos) has tap water that is extremely alkaline - pH 10.1, so her poor results with the Hydrogen Stick are understandable and predictable.
Drinking Habits - You Like to Drink Water Constantly Throughout the Day. The instructions for the stick emphasize that once you get it wet, you need to keep it wet. If you are the kind of person who sucks water all day long from a bottle, keeping the stick wet can be a problem - especially if you plan to use multiple sticks in a single bottle. Sergey Manukyan's review mentions the difficulty of maintaining the stick, and he makes an excellent point. I am not a big water drinker, so this problem didn't affect me, but if you are someone who wants to drink hydrogen-rich water all day long, keeping your bottle topped off will be a pain. Personally, I chug a bunch of hydrogen-rich water in the morning, top off, and then chug a bunch more at night and top off again. If you sip water all day long, it would be a hassle to keep the bottle topped off - you'd need a source of water and a way to top off the hydrogen water bottle without spilling the water and making a mess. If you happen to be near a drinking fountain or a Sparkletts water dispenser this is probably not a big deal, but if you don't have ready access to a water supply it's something to seriously consider before buying the stick.
HOW I HEARD ABOUT THE HYDROGEN STICK
I first stumbled across Hydrogen Sticks on eBay, when I searched for "alkaline water ionizer" and strange entries about plastic sticks and other entries about assorted rocks encased in stainless steel sticks popped up. I read an Ebay description for the Hydrogen-Rich Water Stick (Water Ionizer Outperforms Machines alkaline ORP pH) with a great deal of skepticism, but decided to do a little research before discounting it - primarily due to the huge difference between the cost of the Hydrogen-Rich Water Stick and that of a typical water-ionizer machine ($75 vs. $875-4000).
WHY I DECIDED TO BUY A HYDROGEN STICK
It Really Does Put Hydrogen Gas Into Water. The presence of molecular hydrogen gas in water treated with a Hydrogen Stick was confirmed by a scientific study: "The hydrogen concentration in a water bottle was maintained between 0.55 and 0.65 mM over an 8 week period." (H2 exists as a gas at Standard Temperature and Pressure.) However, the study used 2 sticks per 500ml - four times the concentration of the 1 stick per 1L that I use.
Antioxidant Activity. Molecular hydrogen, H2, specifically targets the hydroxyl radical - a Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) that is one of the most plentiful and virulent species, and which evidently does not play a part in cell regulation ("Hydrogen acts as a therapeutic antioxidant by selectively reducing cytotoxic oxygen radicals").
Health Benefits. According to a scientific study, drinking hydrogen rich water for 8 weeks resulted in a 39% increase in the antioxidant enzyme superoxide dismutase (SOD) and a 43% decrease in thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS) in urine (TBARS are a measure of the oxidized and damaged fats in your body). Additionally, an 8% increase in high density lipoprotein (HDL)-cholesterol and a 13% decrease in total cholesterol/HDL-cholesterol was observed from baseline to week 4. If you want to boost your SOD levels by 40%, $75 for a 6-month supply is a bargain compared to the cost of supplements that would accomplish the same thing over the same time period. And improving your HDL/LDL ratio by 13% by merely drinking water every day seems like an easy way to improve that statistic (though I am no fan of the cholesterol scam, and once spent $350 of my own money just to get my doctor off of my back about my cholesterol levels).
Safety. "The portable magnesium stick was a safe, easy and effective method of delivering hydrogen rich water for daily consumption by participants in the study."
I Got to Perform a Personal Experiment Where a Placebo Effect Was Unlikely to Occur. I found a Hayashi article where he describes what he means by "hydrogen rich water" ("Japanese Cardiologist Dr. Hayashi's Two types of Water"). Oddly enough, this article was featured on a "Kangen Water" site, yet in it Hayashi claims that it is hydrogen-rich water that really matters, rather than pH or ORP. In his article, Hayashi says, "A week or two after people begin to use Hydrogen Rich Water, they notice that their feces have literally changed in comparison to when they were using tap water (hydrogen poor water). That is, the "blackish brown, bad-smelling, hard, heavy feces" of the tap water days changed to "light brown, soft, light feces without a strong bad odor" similar to the bowel movements that appear in the diapers of a breastfed baby...We adults tend to think that it is natural for adults feces to have a bad smell, but this is actually a great misconception...Every breastfeeding mother knows from her experience that when her baby has light- colored soft stool with very little bad odor, she can be sure that the baby is healthy, drinking plenty of breast milk, and growing well. On the other hand, when the baby has "blackish, bad-smelling, hard stool," the baby is cranky and feverish, and sometimes vomits up milk. The condition of producing offensive feces is generally called abnormal fermentation of gastrointestinal tract, which indicates the opposite of normal fermentation, but simply put, it is "decay." In other words, if the food we take in by mouth has a rotten smell (bad smell) when it is excreted from the anus, this means abnormal fermentation has taken place." Softer, less smelly stools can be easily verified, and it would be difficult to trick the body into making them.
PERSONAL SUPERSTITIONS THAT I OBSERVE WITH THE HYDROGEN STICK
Don't clean it any more than you have to. If you put it in an acid such as vinegar, the magnesium will be consumed at an accelerated rate, and your stick will not last as long. Obviously, if your stick is dead and doesn't produce bubbles any more, it's time to stick it into some vinegar that's been diluted 4:1 and hope that it comes back to life. Or if it starts looking green and moldy, by all means clean it - use common sense.
I use an old Schweppes Tonic Water bottle, because the closure seems secure. It seems to work fine, and the price was right.
Once or twice a week, I dump out all of the water, rinse off the stick, and vigorously rinse out the bottle. Just in case something has started to putrefy or I have some old germs in the water.
I originally used tap water, but I like the taste of Arrowhead bottled water better. This is all personal taste, and I doubt that it makes any difference on any therapeutic effects that the water might have.
I try not to have too big or too tiny of an air bubble inside of the bottle. If the bubble is too small, there doesn't seem to be as much hydrogen gas in the water (but this could be a hallucination - please reread the title of this section!). If the bubble is too large, I'm afraid that I'm producing a bunch of hydrogen gas that will be instantly blown off as soon as I open the bottle. I generally leave a bubble that includes the neck of the bottle and maybe 1/3" - 1/2" of the top of the shoulder.
I top off the bottle as soon as I take a drink. I try to pour the water into my open mouth rather than sucking on the bottle, to avoid backwashing and potentially contaminating the bottle with food particulates. I attempt to pour the refill water down the side of the bottle rather than splashing it into the center, because I have a superstition that the more the water is agitated, the more hydrogen gas will be dislodged and escape out of the open mouth of the bottle. Pouring water down the side of the bottle will ideally cause no bubbles or cavitation, leading to a...Read more›

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