[00:00:00] Luke: All right. Mark. Here we are, man.

[00:00:01] Mark: I know, right?

[00:00:02] Luke: Let's do this.

[00:00:04] Mark: Long way from home, but I'm glad to be here with you, Luke.

[00:00:06] Luke: I appreciate you coming to do it in person. And it's funny. I got a text from my team before we started, like, you have to be done by this time because he's going over to Josh Trent's to record a podcast.

[00:00:16] Mark: Yeah, I didn't know the logistics of the distance between you guys. So worked out well, though.

[00:00:20] Luke: He's close by. Yeah. It's just funny. And you were on a Freddie Kimmel's podcast. I think you guys did that remote. He's another friend of mine in Austin, but it's funny. There's a podcast guest tours. Everyone comes in and does a number of shows. Only thing that pisses me off is when people come in and do Joe Rogan because then more people are going to hear that one.

[00:00:39] Mark: It's all right. Maybe one day.

[00:00:41] Luke: Yeah.

[00:00:42] Mark: I got your niche. It's good.

[00:00:43] Luke: We're getting there. We're getting there. I want to let people know that we are going to put the show notes atlukestorey.com/hydro. And there you will also find a couple past episodes that we've done about molecular hydrogen. So I'm going to link to those.

[00:00:59] And then our guest, Mark, of course, I'm going to put links to all of your stuff, your clinic in Tulsa, and everything that you're up to. So we'll put all that in the show notes, and you guys will find that link in the show description. So tell us a little bit about-- actually, you know what? Before I go into this, I'm so curious about your history in law enforcement.

[00:01:20] Mark: Oh my gosh. Yeah, that was--

[00:01:21] Luke: And that you were doing SWAT. I'm imagining what that was like for your nervous system.

[00:01:26] Mark: It was a challenge because prior to that, I was a professional baseball player and then to go from that to law enforcement and do that for so many years. I was on the SWAT team after about three years on. So it was pretty early in my career. And you mentioned the nervous system.

[00:01:45] It's a different place. It's a different game. Because police officers in general are taught that every encounter can be their last. That's how you live. Even after I retired, it took me probably five years to where I could go sit in a restaurant with my back to the door. It's a weird deal.

[00:02:03] And that's why a lot of police officers are sick. And that got me into where I am today. But during that time, though, Luke, you go into that zone, man, and so, fear is fear, but fear can't control you. So you figure out a way to hone it in, where there's something you've got to do. And even though you know you could die, you walk past that. And if you can manage that right, it can make you stronger. And if you don't manage it right, it can break you down.

[00:02:32] And so there's a fine line in there for law enforcement officers, and I have deep compassion for them. Most of them right now are on blood pressure meds, sleep meds, antidepressants, blood sugar meds. And so it does a number on your system. And thankfully, I'm here today to talk about it, and it didn't affect me in a way that it does many.

[00:02:56] Luke: That's wild. I'm just imagining the chronic stress. I, on the other hand, spent the early portion of my life as a criminal, running from guys like you.

[00:03:07] Mark: There you go.

[00:03:08] Luke: And that's also stressful because you're always looking over your back. You're never sitting in a restaurant with your back to the door because you might get caught doing whatever naughty stuff you're up to. So yeah, it's funny. I've often wondered, man, what's that like from the other side?

[00:03:24] Mark: It's interesting because I had a change in my perspective after about 10 years on. I was still on the SWAT team, but I realized that only for a few choices in life-- nobody picks their parents. You don't pick where you're raised. You don't pick your environment in which you're raised.

[00:03:41] And so I realized at about 10 years on, Luke, that, man, only a couple of decisions could have put me over there. And I realized everybody's the same. And so it wasn't anymore us against them or me against somebody else. It became different at that point in time. And it is a big shift, and it was probably in the late '90s. And I just realized at that point, I'm going to treat people right.

[00:04:05] I'm just doing my job, and that's it. It's nothing personal. And it grieved my heart to have to put people in jail, even though it's part of the job. Because they're just people that made wrong turns and wrong decisions in life. And I could have been the same way. So it was a big shift for me in that time, and I think it probably happens, hopefully, earlier in their career for many law enforcement officers.

[00:04:28] Luke: Yeah, I think a lot of people out there committing crimes are people that have experienced trauma and have just never had the opportunity to deal with it, especially when you're talking about people that are using and dealing drugs. That whole industry is based on a foundation of trauma. And I know that from my own life. I never would have become a drug addict, I don't think, if I hadn't had a traumatic childhood.

[00:04:54] Mark: It is. And a lot of people don't understand what you just said, and I hope people that are listening right now will take a re-listen to that because that's powerful. Because your childhood traumatic events, there's been all kinds of studies on that, how it can affect you later in life. And it's almost like we take our childhood trauma and carry those into adulthood.

[00:05:12] And we either decide to put down those childhood toys. That's what it boils down to, or we don't. And if we don't, we become more and more childish and make more goofy, childish decisions. And if we do, that could be maturity, and it can be a great learning experience and a great journey in life, like you've had.

[00:05:29] Luke: Yeah. 100%. So you've had a great life, man. So you're a pro baseball player, working law enforcement for many years, and then I'm assuming go back to school and study medicine. What did your cohorts in law enforcement think when you thought, you know what, I'm going to retire from this and go move into healthcare?

[00:05:48] Mark: Eight years before I finally went off the books as far as retired goes. I was transferred to the police academy, and part of my job was to train the younger officers in health, the whole bit. I was in charge of recruiting and a lot of different programs, and it was interesting because I was put in charge of a wellness program that didn't exist.

[00:06:09] So I went on this mission to travel around to different departments around the country to determine best practices. And I didn't really know what I was looking at, didn't know what I was looking for, but I thought that I would know it when I found it. I didn't find it because no program really dealt with this idea of health and officer safety as one and the same.

[00:06:33] I thought it really was because I saw men and women dying. And the average age of death for police officers right now, for the most part, is about 66 years of age, which hasn't changed in 50 years. And so that tells you a lot right there, just in that one statement. But I want to figure out why.

[00:06:51] And so I didn't really find out, so I went back and started our own wellness program. And that got me into asking the question, why? Why is that? That question's driven me all these years. And so I got into it. I started taking every course I could find, whether it was police-related or not, just health-related, and I learned a lot about, you mentioned, the autonomic nervous system. I learned a lot about stress. I learned what it does to the physical body. I learned about what shift work does-- just a lot of stuff right there.

[00:07:20] And I started taking some courses. I started taking some classes because it was going to help me in my career. The more I get into it, I just knew that the next chapter of my life needed to be a little bit different. And it didn't really change much. It just changed perspectives, maybe context a little bit.

[00:07:40] And so I decided to go back to school within that last eight years, and I was working through the day and school at night. It was hard. Really challenging. Talk about not getting much sleep and a lot of stress. But probably about three years before I finally made the decision that I'm going to go in that direction full-time, I told some colleagues. I kept to myself, but I told some colleagues, and they pretty much shot me down because who does that?

[00:08:07] Who is in school in their 40? Who does that? But I'm a guy. Even with baseball, I wasn't the best player, but nobody was going to work harder. That was the point. And so I stood out to prove them wrong in one hand. On the other hand, I set out to fulfill what I thought I was called to do.

[00:08:27] So it was no looking back. I wasn't going to let anybody talk me out of something I needed to do. It seemed like a lonely road for a while, Luke, because it wasn't much support, and I'm older than everybody else, and I try to stay young as best I can, man, but--

[00:08:43]

[00:08:43] Luke: And you were in Oklahoma, which, I've only been there twice, but I wouldn't consider Oklahoma to be one of the more forward thinking progressive states. You know what I mean?

[00:08:53] Mark: No, we're terrible in health. We're horrible in health, and it's one of the worst in that state. There's plenty of clients, I'll tell you right now, in the world really. With our trends of sickness it is, but in that time and place, I think people thought I'd lost my mind a little bit.

[00:09:10] But I'd always been into this idea of health. I started lifting weights when I was in Australia playing baseball, believe it or not. I had nothing to do during the day so I just started getting into training and learning about the physical body and have results. And then people wanted to ask questions, and so it's just one thing leading on top of the other and brings me here today.

[00:09:30] Luke: You mentioned shift work, and it brought to mind, and I never thought about this, but out of the different professions that one could choose, I think working in the medical industry is probably the worst in terms of blue light exposure, circadian disruption, EMF exposure, crappy food that they have in the hospitals. Then when you mentioned law enforcement, I'm thinking, man, these people are driving around all night under artificial light.

[00:10:00] You got all your communications apparatus in the vehicles, all this EMF, all these walkie talkies, and radios, and stuff all around you. You're up all night, and you're out there drinking Dunkin Donuts' coffee.

[00:10:14] Mark: I didn't. But yes--

[00:10:15] Luke: Floridated water, drinks, and fast food because you're out there. I can't imagine many law enforcement are packing a lunch of organic grass-fed liver or whatever. You know what I'm saying?

[00:10:30] Mark: No, no.

[00:10:30] Luke: And add to that the stress and the PTSD of dealing with a potential-- not potential, but I'm sure very often violent situations, life threatening situations, the damage to your ears from firearms training and spontaneous eruptions of firearms use on the job and stuff. It's a brutal job, so congratulations on making it through that.

[00:10:52] Mark: I appreciate it. A lot of people don't think about those things in law enforcement, but I'm glad you brought them up. But with that said, most unhealthy groups that I deal with today are going to be law enforcement, first responders, physicians, teachers, and probably pastors, believe it or not. That group is so unhealthy, but yet you think about the need for that group in our world. We need them, but yet they have the most challenges with their health today.

[00:11:21] And law enforcement, a lot of people don't think about this, when they're dealing with lead all the time with those bullets, they're putting those bullets in the gun, the lead effect it has on their methylation, which is profound, making them not produce-- I know you know a little bit of biochemistry-- the serotonin and dopamine, so they're depressed. And so it's kind of one thing leads to the other. And we don't tend to put that together in mainstream, and hopefully one day they will, but we're still working at it.

[00:11:51] Luke: That's crazy. I never thought about the lead, but one thing that just came to mind when I thought about EMF is police officers that are sitting there with a radar gun in their car. EMF coming off those things must be insane.

[00:12:03] Mark: It's got to be. And I don't know who even thinks about measuring that. And then you think about the vest they have on and the gun belt pulling to the side. It's imbalanced. It's about a 20-pound extra gear that's imbalanced. So you have the back issues, the pain issues, the chronic inflammatory issues. It's a pretty rough life. And I think there's a reason they don't live very long.

[00:12:26] Luke: Yeah, 66, man. What am I? I'm 52 right now. I'm like, that's a few years from now, but thank God I'm not in that profession. Why do you think pastors are having such a hard time with--

[00:12:41] Mark: Ooh. I'll just give a straight up answer. In the idea of the Americanized church, which even where you live, they're on every corner, they don't know about health. I know it sounds contrary and quite contradicting, but they don't know about health because, and I can prove an example, how many people out here know a church group that promotes driving youth to the building by giving them pizza, and cookies, and donuts, and sodas to bait them to come there, knowing full well we've got type 2 diabetes that's ravishing our society?

[00:13:18] So we're actually creating unhealthiness, using it as a tool to get people into a place in a group, which seems so antithetical compared to what they're supposed to be doing. Because I believe we walk around this amazing creation called the human body. It's incredible.

[00:13:34] So why would we encourage destroying it? That's one angle. And I think the other angle is, with the idea of pastors, there's such a struggle today with the idea of the 501(c)(3). They are bent on and living on the donations. And so if you say something contrary or change the culture, if you were to come in one day and say, pretend I'm the pastor near the congregation.

[00:14:00] Hey, Luke and everybody else, we're going to do something different. There's no such thing as a donut ministry anymore because that's destroying health. We're going to not teach our kids to eat garbage. We're going to not promote sickness anymore. We're going to value this body, even as God's word says, as the temple. We're going to do that. How many people is that going to make mad? They're going to take their toys/offerings and go to another place.

[00:14:26] And so they're under a lot of pressure. And I think they're called on to be the leader, the guide, the mentor, the counselor, the everything. So there's those three prongs that really attack them. In all these areas we talked about, it takes a unique sort to really step up truly walk into the idea of leadership. Leadership is not doing what everybody else does. It's doing what everybody else won't.

[00:14:56] Leadership is not following the group. No, it's going out there by yourself sometimes. Picture that as the Titanic scenario. You're out in the front of that boat, and you're getting all the winds and the waves, and it's painful, but you got to do it because somebody has to carve that trail. I believe right now, in the space that we're in, I think we're carving a trail out of here, and I think a lot of people are going to be blessed by it all in the years to come.

[00:15:24] Luke: Yeah, yeah. I never thought about that with the food and churches. A, it's cheap and it's also enticing to bring people in, and it reminded me of the couple of decades I spent in 12-step group. You walk in those meetings, and you have people that are really ill in most cases when they first go in, and they always have a table full of donuts, and cookies, and really bad instant coffee.

[00:15:52] I was like, you got people that are already dysregulated, and you give them a bunch of sugar, and crappy caffeine, and fluoridated water, and all this stuff. It's really antithetical to bringing people back to balance and health, and regulating their mood, and hormones, and neurotransmitters, and all the things that are really important for someone to stay sober.

[00:16:10] Mark: They trade one addiction for the other. You can look at all kinds of studies. I think the one that probably sticks with me the most that will never be repeated with-- never be done with humans, was studies that have been repeated with rats. Put rats in a cage. Scientists have done this many, many times.

[00:16:26] And you have two different bins in which they can grab their food. And then the scientists change the bins amount. They put sugar in one and cocaine in the other. Which bin do the rats always gravitate to in a few minutes? It's not the cocaine. It's the sugar. Because sugar drives the dopaminergic pathways as strong as cocaine does.

[00:16:51] But because of our inherent desire to eat, we have to eat to live, we don't have to take drugs to live. We're drawn that way. So some of those groups, and I've spoken with them many times, as much as I am supportive of getting people off drugs and alcohol, pornography, anything that can take away their life, we cannot trade one addiction for the other. And we've got to really deal with the balancing process of all of it.

[00:17:18] Luke: 100%. Yeah. That's funny. I think I never heard that about the rats, but when you said that, I thought, it makes sense because cocaine doesn't taste very good.

[00:17:26] Mark: No, sugar does.

[00:17:28] Luke: Quite bitter.

[00:17:29] Mark: Yeah.

[00:17:30] Luke: Numbs your mouth and tastes like crap. All right. I appreciate you going down those off topic rabbit holes with me. For those listening, if you saw the title of this show, I promised to talk about hydrogen. I'm obsessed with hydrogen. I've done many podcasts about it. It is a fascinating and really almost endless topic. It's the most prevalent molecule in the known universe and has such a wide variety of healing benefits, yet it's still, for some reason, is relatively obscure outside of the alternative medicine space.

[00:18:04] And so that's why I like to keep talking about it and talking about it and talking about it, because it's been so beneficial to me and so many people, I think out of-- if I had to pick a top 10 health intervention list and you stop the other 200 things that I do every day to feel good, hydrogen would make the cut.

[00:18:24] Mark: Absolutely. My world--

[00:18:25] Luke: And we're sitting here now. We've got our hydrogen water brewing. For those watching the video, you'll be able to see that. So I guess I want to start with-- I think it's interesting for you because you're a practitioner. And so I'm not. I don't work with other people and help them heal themselves. You do. So you have, I'm sure, some anecdotal evidence that I wouldn't have on what this looks like in practical application, but maybe take us back to how you first discovered using hydrogen in a supplemental way.

[00:18:55] Mark: So my wife and I are heavily trained in the idea of genetics, first and foremost. So we understand all the biochemical pathways. We're deep involved in the instruction of genetics for physicians here in this country and abroad. Just recently returned from Los Angeles teaching a group of physicians there about genetics.

[00:19:15] And so with the idea of genetics, we're all 99 point something odd percent just alike which is crazy. We have genetic similarities of 96 percentile with chimpanzees. We have genetic similarities with the trees, and the shrubs, and the ground because we're all from that same DNA, which is really cool.

[00:19:36] But within that dissimilarity portion, which is less than 1%, there's so many different variables with the way those genes combine to form their alphabet. So the genetic alphabet has four letters-- A, T, C, G. Adenine, thiamine, cytosine, guanine. And those are known as nucleotides. So when mom and dad Luke come together, boom. They're like potatoes, and they smash together to create Luke Storey. Then you have a new mashed potato, which is you. But when those 23 chromosomes from mom and dad come together and wind it together in the nucleus, those genes, they actually create different letters combinations, just slight changes.

[00:20:23] Those single letter changes are called single nucleotide polymorphisms, and that's where we get the term SNPs. So you start looking at these things within different systems of the body. In the system of our oxidative stress, the redox balancing where we get free radicals, then they get neutralized. Free radicals, then they get neutralized. Pretty amazing.

[00:20:46] But within that process, we all neutralize free radicals differently. And so I saw that in the genetics, and I would teach that. And as I got into those SNPs, single nucleotide polymorphisms, that broke down those free radicals, because everybody listening would understand that excessively free radicals could increase the aging process speed, then I thought of a new term called the free radical theory of aging way back when.

[00:21:16] So the idea behind this is that we need to make sure that excessively free radicals that have no purpose don't get built up in the system. And so when I looked at the biochemistry of it all, I realized that there's only one molecule that will mop up the most damaging free radical, which is called hydroxyl radical.

[00:21:40] And that molecule is hydrogen. It's the only thing that does that. Now we generally produce it in the gut, but as we age, and with people's gut dysfunction today with the microbiome variances, we don't get that done. And so people are aging so rapidly. And there's a difference between chronological aging and biological aging. I get it. Man, you said you're 52. I'll be 59 in a couple of days. I can't believe that. It freaks me out.

[00:22:07] But the thing sis, that's just a calendar thing. That's just a watch. That means nothing. It doesn't matter. What matters is, how are you biologically aging? And that's a whole different process that there is some measurables out there with that we do. But within that oxidative stress pathway, the hydroxyl radical, when it builds up, there is no good purpose for that.

[00:22:32] It will create lipid damage, cardiovascular disease, neuro damage, neurological inflammation, and it speeds up the aging process. It damages your cells. And the process behind that is fascinating because now we can take a machine like this, infuse hydrogen gas into the water without changing the molecular structure of that water. And we can drink it. And that comes into and through our bodies. It comes into our gut. It hits our liver, and it gets into our lungs before we know it.

[00:23:03] In about 15 minutes you just took a drink, you'll be expiring that excess hydrogen. It's so fast. It gets through the system because no other molecule is that small. People on the chemical element table can look up. It's the far left corner. It's number one. And there's a reason for that. It makes up everything. It makes up matter. It takes up space. It is what it is.

[00:23:25] Beginning of the formation of the universe, it's what it is. And to think that we have that technology right now is pretty mind blowing. And I too, like you, would put this probably my top five of things that people can do that are easy that anybody can do. Everybody needs to do-- mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, and children. Parents do not need to neglect their children. As far as I'm concerned, that machine should be in every household in America.

[00:23:58] Luke: 100%. One thing I was curious about that just came to mind is, do you happen to know-- so for those watching, you'll see this water contraption sitting between us because I just had the idea. I was like, we're going to talk about it. We might as well be using it. Do you know how long the PPM, the parts per million, or the concentration of the hydrogen in this machine, which is called the Hydrafix, it stays in?

[00:24:23] And when we pour this into a glass, how fast does it dissipate where now you don't have hydrogen in the water? And I asked that because as I was prepping for this interview, I thought, why am I not feeding this to our dog and cat? But it sometimes takes two days for the dog to drink her little bowl of water. So I'm like, the hydrogen be gone.

[00:24:43] Mark: It varies because that little membrane on top of that picture there, it holds the gas in. People can realize it like a carbonated beverage, like a carbonated water or something like that, one of those bubbly waters or something, the minute you pop that tab or unscrew that bottle, that carbon dioxide gas will begin to dissipate.

[00:25:04] And if you keep it uncovered, before you know it, you've got no fizz left. If you were to really tighten that down and crank that water up and pull that membrane off, you would hear it go, puff. Because there's a pressurization there. Now, that's got a little bit of error on it where it doesn't create intense pressure.

[00:25:22] But that water will begin to see a dissipation of that hydrogen immediately, but it won't go away immediately. You probably got, for the most part, anywhere between an hour and about two hours to drink that down. And there's a lot of factors that would contribute to that, but it's not like we have to drink it immediately.

[00:25:42] So I look at it like this. Even if it took an hour to drink that glass of water, that is some hydrogen I get in my body that's extra on top of what I might or might not make that I know is going to provide benefit for me. And so there is a lot of people out there that might say, well, that hydrogen dissipating out of that quickly is hard to do.

[00:26:06] That's what we know right now. There probably will come a point in time we're able to contain that better. Now, I know that it is possible to store that in glass or to store it in aluminum with a covering on it. And you can keep that for a while, several hour. It's a little bit cumbersome.

[00:26:25] Luke: Ooh, I didn't know that.

[00:26:26] Mark: Yeah, you can, but again, it's hard to find a container that will do that. And who wants to carry around a glass bottle with a lid on it? So there's variables out there, but the way I do it is like this. I'll keep one of those in my office, and I'll keep it at home, and I'll turn on that 30-minute cycle. I'll get a pot brewing, as I call it, and I'll just leave it running, and I'll drink the thing down, and it'll keep about 12 hours in that pot right there, which is amazing, as it is. And so you pretty much got it at your disposal, man. I encourage people to turn their coffee habit into a hydrogen habit because you can drink that all day.

[00:27:02] Luke: Yeah, when I first got this thing, I had it for the first few months, maybe a year, sitting right on my desk, which is great because then I would-- I forget to drink water like a lot of people, so I knew that I'd be very hydrated, and I'd be getting the hydrogen. So before a podcast or doing some deep work, I'd chug a huge cup of it, and it's really easy to habituate. And then I realized I was being selfish because no one else in the house is drinking it except me. So I moved it in the kitchen.

[00:27:28] Mark: Hydrogen hog.

[00:27:29] Luke: Yeah, exactly. So I'm getting better at going into the kitchen remembering to use that water. But yeah, I was thinking about with the pets, maybe I can get the dog to drink it when we go for a walk and she gets really hot and comes in thirsty. I could pour her some of that. Because I'm always--

[00:27:45] Mark: I think that's a good idea. Just when they come in immediately, they're going to get a couple of laps of water, so might as well do it. Just pour a little bit in there. I think that's a great idea.

[00:27:55] Luke: Yeah. So when I first found out about molecular hydrogen, I did a show a few years ago with Tyler LeBaron. You might've heard of him. He's a--

[00:28:04] Mark: Oh, yeah. Know him. Good guy.

[00:28:05] Luke: Yeah, great guy and super geek for hydrogen.

[00:28:08] Mark: Yeah. Molecular Hydrogen Institute. He's great.

[00:28:11] Luke: Yeah, yeah. And he doesn't have any horse in the race. He doesn't sell a product or anything, so he's got a good objective.

[00:28:19] Mark: And I appreciate that. He's just unbiased guy as best he can be.

[00:28:23] Luke: He's a hardcore researcher. But when I interviewed him and I found out about it, I started using the hydrogen tablets. Quicksilver makes them. A bunch of people make them. I think basically they're all the same, just white-labeled for 50 different brands.

[00:28:35] Mark: There's two or three sources of that. We started using the tablets way back when from Quicksilver. Chris Shade, the whole group. He's a smart guy and a great biochemical mind. And so, yeah, same deal with us. I like the idea of the convenience of that, but it does turn the water a little bit gray because that's that magnesium metal is what it is. You'll get a little bit of a taste change with that. You don't with this. This is pretty pure.

[00:29:00] Luke: Yeah. The water here tastes exactly the same. With the tablets, I noticed immediately, because that one thing I would use them for a lot is air travel, which I still do. They're in my backpack in my closet right now. I don't go anywhere-- and road trips. And when I'm just here living my life, I wouldn't really notice if I drink this hydrogen water with the tabs, I don't know, you feel pretty good, but it's not like, whoa I feel different.

[00:29:28] But I noticed when I was really fatigued, sleep deprived on an airplane, on a road trip, and I felt the inflammation and just that brain fog coming on, and all that, I would put four of those tabs in a glass of water, make it super concentrated, drink that. Five minutes later, I'm a new man. And I was like, okay, there's definitely something to this. But the thing is with the tabs, which, as I said, I still use and I enjoy, they're amazing for travel. I can't take this thing with me on the airplane, but it gets quite expensive.

[00:30:00] Mark: Yeah, they're going to be about a dollar and a half, $2 a piece. And I do the same thing. In my bag right now, I have the tabs. I used them this morning. I got up. I had a big old glass with two tabs of hydrogen water because traveling airlines is not a fun process sometimes. You can't travel with this.

[00:30:21] And then I went up, and I exercised. And I came back and did it again. So I've had a couple of glasses of that. And then I went through four tabs already. So just like you it, it is convenient. It is more portable for the tabs, but it does change the taste a little bit. I was so grateful to get a glass of that when you like, hey, because I've had the gray one.

[00:30:44] Luke: Yeah, yeah. 100%. So after seeing the benefits and doing the research that you've done on hydrogen in general, and I want to dig more into the many benefits it has, when you started researching devices, I'm curious if you had the same experience as I, that there is so much competition between the different menu.

[00:31:09] It's like a war zone out there with the companies that make these hydrogen machines. There was one that came out. It ended up being a scam. I forget what they were called right now, but they came to me and wanted me to promote it, and I was like, ah. Their setup was just weird.

[00:31:27] So I didn't do it. Trucy. I think it was called Trucy. And they ended up just defrauding all these customers, and influencers, and stuff of all this money. So I dodged a bullet on that one. But when that happened, I just thought, man, the claims that the companies are making, our machine's the best, if your machines from China or Korea, it sucks.

[00:31:46] It has to be from Japan or Russia or wherever. It just got so confusing. And on every website, there was so much shit talking about the competitors. I just stepped away from it, and I just stayed using the tabs, which as I said, is not very cost effective if you're using them as much as I was.

[00:32:05] So I went, I don't know, maybe two or three years and just left the machines alone. And I thought, I'm just going to wait until someone figures it out and can prove to me unequivocally that their machine is cost effective, durable, and produces an adequate PPM of hydrogen.

[00:32:21] And then I found the guys at Holy Hydrogen, and I don't know who reached out to whom, but I researched and researched, and I finally figured out, at least to my understanding, I think I found the holy grail of the legitimate hydrogen machine for your house. Did you go through a similar process of wanting to get a generator and just being so confused by all of the hype and marketing and--

[00:32:44] Mark: Yeah. Y-E-S, etc. It was terrible because when the idea of-- and you're in this space, especially from a clinician standpoint. You're really an outcast. You're an oddball. So we started using the tabs and talking about them, and everybody thought we were-- what is that?

[00:33:03] They didn't understand the biochemistry behind that. So then we started looking for machines and started going through the same process you did. And it seemed to me that the vendors out there were spending more time slamming somebody else than they were talking about the excellence of the science.

[00:33:20] And that was something I didn't frankly appreciate. I was like, that's a turnoff. I don't want to deal with that. Trying to tell me why theirs is the best and everybody else's was not. And all I wanted to do, all I cared about was I wanted a machine that would produce an adequate amount, the parts per million and milligrams per milliliter, or milligrams per liter.

[00:33:40] And I wanted to find something that was durable, that was reasonable, because I knew that spending the money on those tabs, I could do it, but it wasn't really cost effective. I wanted to find something that I could trust him. And for me, I wanted to find people that I could do business with that I liked. I didn't want to be in around our scammer. When you're in our space, man, I get approached by everything, as you can imagine.

[00:34:05] Luke: Same, same here. I got an email last week from some Chinese company that emailed me in really broken English about, we know you like hydrogen. Promote our machine. There's no information on it. It looks big and bulky. There was no real data on it that was impressive to me.

[00:34:25] Mark: No, everybody wants to sell something. And the guys here, and I know them, they're nice people. I spent time talking to them. I spent time picking their brain. And when I go through a process like this, I'm sure you did the same thing, you almost have to interview the person as a human being.

[00:34:45] Do I want to have any relationship with them? Do I want to have even a transactional relationship? Do I really want to deal with this? Because even the idea of transactional relationships like that, if it's a toxic relationship, I don't want any part of it. And there was a lot of toxicity out there. Pardon the play on words. A lot of toxicity out there in that world.

[00:35:08] And so it was probably not until, I don't know, probably a year and a half ago, honestly, where I ran into them at an event. And somebody was asking him about it, and I'm like, no, I'm good because I'd been-- I want to talk to you, but then I ran into him, and they asked me if I'd heard of hydrogen. And I said, of course I have.

[00:35:29] And I think they thought that I was going to immediately shut them down, but I didn't. I'm not a rude guy like that. And so I listened to him. So, yeah, I'm a big supporter of that machine myself.

[00:35:42] Luke: Cool. Cool. Yeah. It's the Wild West out there.

[00:35:45] Mark: Totally.

[00:35:46] Luke: There's a few categories that are like that. Infrared saunas are like that. Very, very cutthroat competitive-- and these hydrogen machines and probably a couple of things I'm not-- oh, the red light industry. It's just like, I--

[00:36:01] Mark: Stem cells. That's another--

[00:36:02] Luke: Yeah, I guess it's a thing where it's a phenomenon where there's a market opportunity, there's a demand. That's like blood and water to the sharks of people that have that scarcity mentality, that there's not enough humans on the planet to sell stuff to, which I've never understood.

[00:36:21] I mean, it's like if you look at the population or the planet versus how many people have this hydrogen machine, it's 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, barely anyone. So that means you have billions of people out there to buy your products. It's unnecessary to get territorial, and competitive, and weird.

[00:36:40] Mark: Yeah, 0.001% of that. You're going to be a billionaire. It's pretty obvious.

[00:36:46] Luke: Yeah, exactly. So anyway, I just wanted to riff on that to see if your experience was the same. And I felt relieved after I found Holy Hydrogen and this machine because then I could just stop. I don't have to like grill people's websites and get on the phone with the CEOs and grill them because a lot of issues I found too is not only the weird and deceptive marketing, but a lot of these machines use electrolysis to produce the hydrogen gas. And maybe you could explain better to us why that's not ideal.

[00:37:17] Mark: When I think about electrolysis versus the protein exchange membrane concept or even the tablets, when you think about that as a sense and even the metals that are used, there's no plated metals here. That's interesting to know. It's good solid processing. When I look at electrolysis, from a testing standpoint, we don't get the natural saturation point or even a close to it produced continually.

[00:37:43] And that pains me. And even though people might wonder what the saturation point is, it's 1.6 parts per million, translated 1.6 milligrams per liter, same difference. But with electrolysis, you're not going to get what you're getting with that machine. This machine, the way it's constructed, you're going to get a consistency. You're not going to get impurities in there. You're going to get what you get. And that's what I want. I don't want all the bells and whistles. I'm even thinking right now, the alkaline water push.

[00:38:17] Luke: Oh God.

[00:38:17] Mark: That was a crazy one because even from the standpoint of pH, comes in alkaline. It's going to leave alkaline regardless because your pH is going to go acidic to non-acidic as you go south, I call it, you know. So when I looked at that, really the benefits behind that have been shown to be the hydrogen in the water.

[00:38:36] Fascinating. But when I look at that machine, the way that generates the hydrogen, and I think you've got your blue light on them, but I can't see it. Pretty cool. That's the one for me with the purity of the quality and the specificity of that. And it's been independently tested too.

[00:38:52] Luke: Yeah, you've reminded me of another industry that's really weird and crazy, and that's the alkaline water industry.

[00:39:01] Mark: Oh, no.

[00:39:02] Luke: About 15 years ago, I was pitched from an MLM rep for Kangen water. And I took it hook, line, and sinker. They had all the different sodas and drinks and did the pH testing strips on them. And I was like, oh my God, I'm killing myself drinking Pellegrino or whatever. So I bought one of the machines for five grand and became a rep for a very short time. I don't think I made any sales because then I figured out that I'm living in LA.

[00:39:32] I got the machine hooked up to municipal tap water, and then it's going through two tiny little filters about this big that aren't taking out any of the toxins in the water and giving me maybe a great negative ORP like oxidative reduction potential, which could be beneficial, an antioxidant water.

[00:39:53] And it may have had some benefits, but I realized the water was so toxic. And then someone told me, they said, Luke, why are you so excited about the alkaline water? I said, well, I want my body to be more alkaline and not be acidic because an acidic body leads to cancer and all these other things.

[00:40:09] And my buddy goes, you know what the pH of your digestive track is and whatever it was for some-- it's super acidic because the second you drink that water, it's getting acidified by your stomach. And if you want to be more alkaline, just take some deep breaths.

[00:40:26] Mark: Take some deep breath, eat some vegetables.

[00:40:28] Luke: Yeah. This is before the breathwork craze, but now there's all this research about breathwork because it's come become ubiquitous and popular, and it's shown that you can elevate your pH by just doing breathwork. You don't need the water. So I still get questions from people all the time.

[00:40:45] What do you think of Kangen water, Kangen machines? And I just thought, God, didn't everyone figure out these things are a scam by now. I guess there's the marketing push is still alive and well.

[00:40:54] Mark: Yeah, I think probably with that, and it goes back to the money. When something becomes about money first, you get compromised with it, and it becomes profits over people. And we have a rule in our clinic. We put this in our bylaws probably 10 years ago when we just got going because we get approached all the time. No MLMs. Period. Don't care if it's valid, don't care if it's not, because we didn't want to cloud our judgment and treatment patterns looking at an individual. I did not want to look at the Lukes of the world and see an opportunity versus Luke. I try to be a honest guy. I try to work those principles, but I'm a human being, and I'm just as fallible as anybody else.

[00:41:44] I can do something dumb and something good at the same breath, and I know that, and I don't want to have that temptation there. So we made that rule for that reason. With that said, a lot of the MLMs, and again, I'm not knocking anybody if they're doing that. That's fine. But I've seen them damage relationships. I've seen them damage friendships, and I've seen them damage people's lives.

[00:42:07] Because they'll go from one to the other to the other because it can be a nice influx of cash. And in reality, people, the top are getting rich. The people that are working out there for them are getting pushed. Talked at the beginning of the show about stress. I don't need that stress.

[00:42:25] If you do the right things for the right reasons, with the right heart, money and provision always follow truth. They always do. And I can't figure all that out, but I know that that principle is concrete.

[00:42:39] Luke: 100%. Do you find any utility in drinking alkaline water? Aside from the marketing and all of that, do you think it's drinking Kangen water's beneficial?

[00:42:52] Mark: It would be beneficial because it's got hydrogen in it. So yes to that, but it all goes back to what kind of water you're putting through that machine. If you're not putting pure water in there, what's it doing? It's staying impure. I think additionally, like you said, the pH of the gut, four point something, anytime you get it out the backside, you're looking at seven.

[00:43:13] So it's going to change it. So for people to say, it's going to change the pH of your system, it's not true. Doesn't work like that. It's a good sales point because of what you just said. It is true that the body preferentially wants to be in an alkalinity environment as opposed to an acidic environment.

[00:43:33] We all know that the cancer phenomena is going to proliferate in a high sugar, high acidic environment. We all know that. So if it does anything out there, it could help with perhaps the hydrogen content of it, if they get pure water, and if it gets them thinking about eating more vegetables and breathing better, I'd be good with that.

[00:43:53] Luke: Right. Okay. That's great. Okay. So back to the hydrogen water. I feel like I should understand how hydrogen works better at this point because I've interviewed so many smart people like you. When people ask me why I'm so obsessed about it, I think of hydrogen water as a really potent antioxidant and something that helps to mitigate the levels of free radicals in your body, which are naturally produced by us making energy.

[00:44:21] And then I've listened to some of your interviews, and you have a much more in-depth analysis and explanation for it. So could you explain to us the selective nature of its antioxidant and other beneficial properties?

[00:44:38] Mark: Yeah. When you look at free radicals, which people are familiar with, those would be like a molecular compound that is basically missing an electron, roaming around and trying to steal something from another cell. And that makes it radical, and it's free. And so when those things get generated in the system on a normal process, breathing, talking, doing an interview, walking, exercise, part of process of life, there are free radicals that do really good jobs for us.

[00:45:11] In a temporary window of basis like superoxide, like hydrogen peroxide, people have heard of that, those are good, but they're not supposed to be raging out of control. And so the body has these little enzymes in it that actually see those free radicals, allows them to do what they do, and then cuts them in half and turns them into water and oxygen respectively.

[00:45:35] So it turns them from a partially useful molecule into a now recycled molecule. Pretty cool how the body does that. And again, like I was talking earlier, there's different ways we all do that. For example, some people can have a glass of wine, and it might create a little neurotoxicity. Some people can have a glass of wine and it wouldn't. There's protein enzymes that break down that fast or slow. Same is true with caffeine.

[00:46:02] So we're all different in the way we break those free radicals down. When you look at the science behind this, and you look at the idea of antioxidants, people have heard many times, I'm going to take my antioxidants because I want them to fix those free radicals. So I take my vitamin C, my vitamin E, etc., but it doesn't work like that. The body's antioxidant system is so much more powerful than what we can bring in through pills or supplements. I'm not saying those are bad.

[00:46:34] Luke: Like blueberries.

[00:46:35] Mark: Exactly. So we need to understand how our systems work. And then when we look at just a general antioxidant, it'll just reduce anything. So for example, your body's own natural antioxidant system can break down free radicals at about a 1,000 per second, which is really cool compared to vitamin C. It's like a one to one. So you'd have to take loads of vitamin C to get it to affect perhaps your antioxidant system and potential.

[00:47:07] With that said, when you look at hydrogen, it's not just an overall general antioxidant. It doesn't work like that because it's produced in the body anyway, which is cool. And it has a selective function as a normal course of business. Its selective function, Luke, is to diminish, dismiss, cut in half, like I say, one free radical, which is called hydroxyl radical.

[00:47:35] And that's not hydrogen peroxide. That's not superoxide. But those things, when they don't get broken down properly through not having a good cellular nutritional base, not having a good antioxidant absorption and assimilation in your cells, they allow hydroxyl radical to get built up. That's what happens when we have poor nutrition.

[00:47:59] It's what happens when we're exposed to toxins in the air and the water and chemicals all around us. When hydroxyl radical gets built up, our body has that chance to redo that with production of hydrogen, as we talked earlier. Most people don't have good gut function. So there you go. We have a problem.

[00:48:17] Some people can't help it. They live in an environment that's just toxic. So we walk in stuff, we live in stuff that hurts us. But when you think about hydrogen, you bring it in there, it looks at one free radical, and selectively, not just broadly, but selectively, will dismantle free radical hydroxyl radical.

[00:48:38] There's nothing else that does that. Because you're bringing in something the body produces anyway and making it more available in a system where it's not available. And that's what I find is unique about it. Because it's so selective, it just doesn't blanketly pull them all out.

[00:48:52] I look at this, and I think people would get this example. An antibiotic looks at all your probiotics as enemies, and it will kill it all. Is that necessary sometime? I guess maybe, perhaps, in different conditions, but it's not selective. We all know that. That's why we get antibiotic resistance. And that's why we have gut dysbiosis or microbiome dysfunction because of that, chronic antibiotic use.

[00:49:20] And they're used to chronically today, by the way. This doesn't kill all the free radicals-- just the one that causes no good purpose to occur in our body. And again, it'd be like looking at your microbiome and saying, I'm going to take an antibiotic. I'm drawing a synonymous with this, that just takes care of that one bacteria that's causing me problems.

[00:49:48] We don't have that yet. Maybe we will one day, but from the pre radical system, we do right now. This is not a recent discovery. The body produces it anyway, which is so cool to me. We just are discovering what the body does. And thankfully we have scientists who have figured out something so simple that has such a complex function and such a selectively beneficial function that we have this that we can use. There's so much potential here that I think is unrealized.

[00:50:23] Luke: I had an idea. Actually, I was mentioning my friend, Ian Mitchell, who also lives in Tulsa, who I'd love to introduce you to. He's a great guy and brilliant scientist. We were talking about hydrogen one day in the context of hyperbaric chambers because he built this crazy-- it looks like a submarine, this steel-- he just built his own.

[00:50:45] I'm like, why didn't you buy one? Yeah. I said, why don't you just buy one? You could afford it. He said, well, I want mine to be higher pressure, this, that. So he's had his welder out there building it. And I had the ideas. We were talking about hydrogen. And I said, man, couldn't we make a hydrogen chamber where you can push all that hydrogen gas into your plasma like a hyperbaric oxygen chamber does. And I think he mentioned something about the flammability

[00:51:13] Mark: Yeah, yeah, it's explosive, man. Now, this won't blow up but molecular hydrogen is an explosive.

[00:51:20] Luke: Yeah. I have another device in my office and inhaler from this company, Vital Reaction. And I got the maximum PPM you could get, and I said, can't you make it higher? And they said, if you want to blow yourself up, yeah. But it reminded me of when-- I used to have a hyperbaric chamber for many years, and I found it bothered my tinnitus.

[00:51:41] So unfortunately, I had to sell it eventually. But one day, I hooked up my hydrogen inhaler to the hyperbaric machine because I had the oxygen concentrator going in there, and I have a cannula. I thought, I'm going to try it. I didn't realize that the oxygen concentrator produces enough pressure to fight against the pressure of the chamber.

[00:52:01] So I have my tiny little hydrogen gas machine hooked up to the cannula hose, get in there, zip myself up. And then the pressure, it starts to pressurize, and I hear, boom. I blew the damn hydrogen machine across the room because the back pressure from the chamber hit that. It was a disaster. So I learned my lesson.

[00:52:23] But anyway, that brings me to the point. Do you think we could ever see a hyperbaric application of hydrogen gas with the cannula? So you're not with the proper concentration so that you're not creating a potentially explosive environment.

[00:52:39] Mark: I think it's possible. I do. I think that's an interesting idea. I know another way people don't really think about this is you can bathe in that, which is fascinating to me. I was teaching a class this weekend, and the NFL people, players do that right now. They don't talk about it, but they'll use molecular hydrogen and bathe in it. So I think there's all kinds of applications out here to be determined. And I'm grateful for people that try new things, but be careful.

[00:53:13] Luke: Yeah.

[00:53:14] Mark: I'm grateful for that. That's good. But the idea behind it is, I think the potential for this is, I don't want to use the word unlimited because I think everything's got a limit, so I don't know. Is it a bad thing to breathe or drink too much of that? We don't know. There's nothing that shows it yet, science-wise. Do we know that so far you can't overdose this? So far, I'm sure there might be a potential time where something could say, you don't want to have it in this condition at this level. Don't know.

[00:53:50] But I think there's so many potential, I hear, that are undiscovered, and that excites me, to get people thinking like you just did. Maybe there's somebody listening right now that says, hey, that might be something I can begin to look at, and explore, and see why it can't work. Why not? And I think that's amazing.

[00:54:13] Luke: I'm glad you brought up the transdermal application of the baths. Again, any developers, entrepreneurs out there, we need a generator that you can put in a bathtub that just saturates the water with hydrogen.

[00:54:27] Mark: People have those jets. Just simply make the jets into a protein exchange membrane. And that wouldn't be a bad thing to sit there and bathe in. And it would be cool. We could put a blue light in there like this and make it neat. You can see the bubbles, right?

[00:54:41] Luke: Totally. Yeah. I experimented with that. Actually, from time to time, I'll get this, I think it's bursitis in my right foot, and I've seen people buy it, and no one can figure it out. We've just deduced that it must be that. And so it'll just be this really painful feeling in the ball of my foot right behind my little toes.

[00:55:00] And so I thought, I don't know. Let me try doing it with hydrogen. If it ever acts up, I go two or three days. I'll put this hydrogen water in a little pan and soak my foot in there for half an hour, and it's gone, and then it'll be months and months, and it'll come back occasionally, but I find each time I do that little round, there's a longer period of time before it comes back to where now I haven't had it. I don't know. It's been many months since it's come back.

[00:55:25] Mark: Yeah. It's interesting.

[00:55:26] Luke: A few of those treatments got rid of it.

[00:55:28] Mark: Yeah. Like -itis. Any time we hear or see that suffix, -itis, I-T-I-S, that simply means inflammation, and there's a connection there between inflammation and oxidative stress. Excess free radicals create inflammation. Excess inflammation creates free radicals. They're hand in hand. And because of that phenomena that you just experienced yourself, it would make perfect sense that if you were to submerge that now, how it works at this point I think is undetermined.

[00:55:57] But it would make sense that if somehow that molecule, which is so small, could get into your system, which it did, and somehow or another it mitigated the free radicals that were tied to the inflammation, therefore relieving the -itis, reversing the -itis. I think that's what you probably experienced.

[00:56:19] Luke: That makes sense. Yeah, it's just one of those hacks I try. I like to try crazy stuff, see if it works so I can share it with potentially tens of thousands of people that just heard this conversation are going to go, oh shit, I have inflammation in my foot or plantar fasciitis or whatever. Let me give it a try.

[00:56:36] Mark: I thought carpal tunnel. That's an interesting cause that's a repetitive motion. What would be wrong if somebody's got those symptoms to soak their hands in some hydrogen water? Don't know. Will it work? Maybe. And if it does, repeat often. Just like you're doing. You learned it worked, so you repeated it often.

[00:56:54] Luke: Yeah. And a friend of mine has a company called Hydroshot, H2Bev, and they make the only, that I'm aware of, hydrogen can drink, and they went through all this R&D to figure out how to keep the gas contained in the can because the molecule is so freaking small. It'll escape in any plastic bottle or anything. They just came out with this other, I don't know if it's come to market yet, and I forget the name offhand, so forgive me, but he came up with a little hydrogen mister.

[00:57:26] Mark: Huh. Interesting.

[00:57:28] Luke: Yeah. There's a solution you put in there, and it has to be refrigerated. And then you put the solution in the little mister, and man, they have all these before and after pictures of people with burns, cuts, aging, eczema, psoriasis, all this stuff. And in four weeks, people are clearing their skin just from spraying this highly concentrated hydrogen mist on their skin. So I think there's a lot of, hopefully, emerging applications like that. They're going to come out. People put their head together and get some science and some engineering going to come up with products that allow us to use this in different ways because drinking, it's great, and soaking your foot in it, but it'd be hard to take this water and keep the concentration necessarily to spray your skin cancer or something that's more serious.

[00:58:16] Mark: That's what it is. The thing about it is it's hard to contain it. It's like trying to keep a spider out of a palace. Can't do it. It'll get in there, get out of there somehow or another because it is quite small. It's the smallest thing we know of. And so I think because it's the smallest thing we know of, we don't know how to contain that because frankly, it's never been contained. Has it? Look around. We are literally breathing hydrogen all the time. It's everywhere. It's part of who we are.

[00:58:49] Luke: Thinking about the way that it selectively scavenges free radicals, I'm thinking about EMF. I talk about EMF a lot on this show because I'm an advocate for EMF protection. And I think one of the things that really bothers us about travel, whether in one of these modern cars that has a Wi-Fi router blasting you and Bluetooth, and you're driving through cities with all these cell towers, being on an airplane, that's got Wi-Fi, solar radiation, all this, does it make sense to you that the reason drinking hydrogen water in those high EMF environments is so helpful? Are you aware of any research or anecdotal evidence that drinking hydrogen water can help make you more resilient to EMF exposure?

[00:59:34] Mark: Yeah, from an adult standpoint. It's going to be hard to find the ability to create a study, a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled study on EMF or not, because who's going to be your subjects?

[00:59:46] Luke: Yeah.

[00:59:47] Mark: No, I'm not. So it's the same as eating healthy over eating poorly. You're not going to find a study where you give 20 humans McDonald's for two months and then 20 humans random-- you can't do it. So I think the potential out there for usage is great as I stated, but from an antidote standpoint, the idea behind that, when you get this EMF exposure, you're going to get this cellular disruption.

[01:00:14] And anytime you get cellular dysmetabolism-- the body works like this. So you got your cells that have the nucleus, which contains your DNA. Then you have all these organelles in the cytoplam, and you have your cell membrane. One of the organelles is called the mitochondria. The mitochondria is responsible for creating the energy for the cell to operate. The mitochondria is the main generator of that, but it's also the main generator of free radicals.

[01:00:46] Luke: Double-edged sword.

[01:00:47] Mark: It's crazy. And interestingly enough, inside the mitochondria, there's only 37 DNA, and most DNA is wrapped in this covering called histones. But not in the mitochondria, so they're really exposed. So when you get their pre radical buildup in the mitochondria that doesn't get dealt with, it creates mitochondrial disruption. And if you think about this, they have associated this idea of long haul COVID with mitochondrial damage, mitochondrial dysfunction. There's a lot of associated studies on that.

[01:01:19] Now, with that said, whatever that is, EMF would do the same thing. It would disrupt the mitochondria's ability to produce energy for the cell. The cell is supposed to produce a protein that makes the tissues, that makes the organs, that makes the organ systems that creates the organism. So we're talking about cellular disruption can create organism dysfunction.

[01:01:42] EMF is the epitome of an example of that because we live in it. We're always being challenged by this. It's always disrupting that cell. And again, I think from a reasonable standpoint, when people realize that, that you're not going to build a void at all, you can try. Good luck. You might have to find an island somewhere in the middle of the Pacific.

[01:02:04] Luke: And you'll still get Starlink blasted on you.

[01:02:06] Mark: When you look around, it’s in the air. And so the thing is it makes sense to me that even in those scenarios like that, Luke, we would absolutely see benefit from using hydrogen water, hydrogen gas, hydrogen bath, anything like that.

[01:02:23] Luke: Awesome. And I almost forgot to let listeners know, if you guys want to check out this hydro fix that I've been raving about here today, you can find it at lukestorey.com/holyhydrogen. And if you use the code LUKE100, you save a 100 bucks. That's lukestorey.com/holyhydrogen. And we'll put all of the stuff we've talked about and we'll continue to talk about at lukestorey.com/hydro.

[01:02:48] One of the things I wanted to ask you about was Brown's gas machines. Have you had any experience with these or know anything about them? Every time I talk about hydrogen, I get people coming into my comments saying, oh no, Brown's gas, Brown's gas. And again, it's one of those things like I was talking about before, I just can't get my head around it to research who's making the right one. Is it effective? Is it better than hydrogen? Is it the same? Do you know anything about this Brown's gas thing?

[01:03:13] Mark: It's not the same. And people would look at the molecular composition of Brown's gas, and you're going to get a variety of answers, which I think that's the hole in that research right there. Could it provide benefit? Maybe, but exactly what is it? What parts of this, that, and the other is Brown's gas?

[01:03:34] And I think there's going to be a bunch of different answers with that. But one thing we do know that hydrogen works, because that makes sense, smallest molecule. I've had people approach our clinic about Brown's gas and say things like, well, you should be using Brown's gas because of this. And I asked for the papers. I asked for the science. I don't find anything on that.

[01:03:56] And that troubles me because anybody can make a hypothesis, or anybody can make a statement, but I want to know, has it ever been backed up, has it ever been tested? Our friend Tyler LeBaron would say this. If he were on the show is, in everything you look at it, in everything somebody says, wisdom is trying to poke a hole in that why it's not true.

[01:04:20] But when you start asking questions about Brown's gas, and some of this, you get people that push back. Instead of accepting the feedback, you don't get the answers. And I find that to be troubling. And to me, that's a big old red flag, quite honestly. And I won't go there. I suppose there's some benefit to Brown's gas out there. But I haven't seen the papers and studies that have benefited that under the scrutiny of my wife and myself.

[01:04:47] Luke: Okay. Noted. Yeah. Some people that I have rapport with, no one that I'm really close to, but some respectable people have talked about the Brown's gas, and recommended it, and said, Luke, why aren't you on board? You got to do a show on it. And I guess maybe if I can track down the top dog in the Brown's world, I'm--

[01:05:03] Mark: Put them my way because I want to know too.

[01:05:05] Luke: Yeah. I'm really curious about it just because so many people-- not so many people, but there is a micro subculture of people that are just fanatics for the Brown's gas. And I don't really understand what it is, what it does, research to support it. So I'm going to put that in my to-do list of finding someone that can really explain it.

[01:05:24] I think one thing about hydrogen that is unlike that is, as you've indicated, there are, I don't know, maybe thousands, but certainly hundreds of valid third party scientific studies about hydrogen that aren't coming from anyone that sell anything having to do with hydrogen. These are academic studies.

[01:05:43] A guy like Tyler LeBaron, his website, you have to be a real brainiac to even go into the studies on there, but they're just endless. It does this. It does that. It does this. It does that. So I'm not always a stickler for studies because sometimes, like you said, something can't be studied, but how do you really study mitigating EMF using hydrogen if you can't really create that study or if no one has funding to do that study?

[01:06:09] So I'm not hung up on it. But it is helpful. It speeds up my process of vetting something when I can look on a website and go, oh, okay, shit. There's 45 studies right there that sayitdoeswhat it promises to do.

[01:06:22] Mark: Yeah, even with this, you're going to get some of that because there's well over a thousand papers and stuff on this type of technology. Most of it's to do with drinking, which is cool. People get out there and search it on your own. It's neat, but it's hard to really tie this specifically to condition specific. How do you really quantify when somebody says I had this-- for example, I have a eczema, and I sprayed it with the mist.

[01:06:51] Okay. That's good. I'm glad. But what else could have dealt with the remediation of that? And so that doesn't mean you don't use it. It just means there's holes in those things, and they're reasonable holes. And that's okay. That's what makes us better. I think we eliminate bias when we allow room for holes to be recognized, like you just said. It's okay. We just got to do what we know to do and if something works, use it. If something makes sense, go with it until it doesn't make sense.

[01:07:28] Luke: Totally. Yeah, and also to have the humility to admit when you had it wrong. It's like those years ago when I was all gung ho on the Kangen machine. It was like sliced bread to me. And then it took me a few months to realize, oh man, I just wasted $5. Sold that shit on eBay and made a little of the money back for someone who did believe in it.

[01:07:50] But I think it's healthy for the psyche. And as a person, it just makes life smoother when you can not be too tightly attached to an idea or belief. Hold things loosely and be willing to take your licks when you got something wrong. And in the case of me or a guy like you, sometimes publicly, I'm like, hey, I know I was really into this thing.

[01:08:14] I learned some more. I learned that there was something better, and I've pivoted. And I think there's a negative habit in the health space where if you promote an idea or you get behind something and then you learn more later and you change your mind, people take that to be being ingenuous or fraudulent. It's like, no, I really believed this at the time, and I was very sure about it, and then I was further educated and changed. I think that's a healthy mind.

[01:08:44] Mark: It is. And a lot of people, it's how you present things. I'm always very aware of how I say things. I'll just use an example even with hydrogen. You need to drink hydrogen so you won't get cancer. You can say that, but I can't guarantee that because there's so many things out there that contribute to anything. All things can make anything happen.

[01:09:13] Anything can make all things happen. We're all connected. I'm connected with the tree, and we're all this. We're all connected. So we don't really know what causes everything, but we're knowing more every day about what we can do better to prevent the destruction of our human bodies other than the normal biological aging process and speed. We're learning more stuff about what we can do. Some would call it the biohacking space, whatever. But I think that the people that do that and always are trying new things and on the edge out there, I think that's the heroes of true healthcare.

[01:09:53] What we have today in our world, in our country specifically, is not healthcare. It's sick care. This is leaning more towards the healthcare. We care enough about people, about their health, to give them information, to try new things, to employ new strategies that we know work.

[01:10:13] Now, will we know better five years from now? Hope so. hope so. I don't see hydrogen as far as being one of those things that won't become beneficial because of what I know to be biochemically true because the genes, I use this as a foundation, the genes have only changed 2% in 10,000 years. That's as close to a concrete statement that we can make.

[01:10:37] That is amazing. No matter what we do, that's still going to be a good statement. So I can take everything from that foundation, and I can go upwards from that, Luke, and I can know that if I anchor to that concrete, I have a better chance of getting it right. And if people begin to think like that, people begin to make more sense out of this because it can't be like trying different things randomly because somebody says so. It needs to make sense. It needs to make common sensical. And there's a lot of things out here that are being promoted that are not common sensical to me.

[01:11:16] Luke: Yeah, I can think of so many now. Just watching the health trends over the years, it's like, oh, here it comes again.

[01:11:22] Mark: They are waves of that stuff.

[01:11:24] Luke: They come in waves. Some of the trends that you found early on prove to be less effective or a waste of time or money. The last thing I want to ask you is about the difference between inhalation and drinking hydrogen infused water. Now the Hydrofix machine here, you can do both. You can hook a cannula up to it, and you can breathe hydrogen, or you can drink it.

[01:11:47] I'm such a fan. As I said, I also have a separate inhaler cause I need it by my desk because I use it constantly. People ask me all the time, what are the different benefits of inhaling the gas versus drinking it? And I honestly don't know. I just do both because I figure it's good, and it feels good.

[01:12:04] Mark: Thank you.

[01:12:04] Luke: Can you cite any research or experience clinically what would be the purpose of doing either or both?

[01:12:12] Mark: So think about the difference of delivery methods. One's delivered through the air. One's delivered through the water. One's coming in here and going down the first location it's going to hit is the gut, and it's going to hit the liver. That's what water is going to do. Breathing doesn't do that. It's going to cross the blood-brain barrier immediately.

[01:12:29] So if I have someone that has traumatic brain injury, something like that, or had a stroke, I'm going to lean more towards the inhalation of that. That would make sense because I want to be able to create the diminishment of those free radicals leading to brain flammation.

[01:12:49] I'm thinking that there's a hypothesis. I would think the NFL players because they're hitting their heads all the time, it would make perfect sense for them to, post game, do a little bit of inhaled hydrogen. That would make a lot of sense to me because you're going to prevent, damage, and promote healing.

[01:13:10] Now, if someone has a leaky gut, which many do, the leaky gut phenomena, the hyperpermeability of the membranes, of the small intestine, etc., I'm probably going to lean with the water. Because it's going to come down through there, and it's going to help with my dysbiosis. It's going to help with the oxidative stress and inflammation in my gut.

[01:13:31] The idea behind this is to have both delivery methods. The third one you mentioned is, what about bathing or submersion? You put your foot in the water. That's a whole different delivery method because it's coming in transdermally. So I think there's application for all of it.

[01:13:48] Luke: So it's common sense. It's like, what area of the body are you trying to focus on?

[01:13:53] Mark: That's it.

[01:13:54] Luke: If you have eczema, then spraying some of the mist or applying the water to it is going to be your first go to if you're having something from the neck up the inhalation. So yeah, it makes sense. You think about where do you want it to go? Where do you want that energy to be applied?

[01:14:09] Mark: Yeah, yeah. And with that said, I want to just make sure-- people today, I think the greatest fear we have is not losing our life. It's losing our mind. So I want to make sure that I'm doing the right things to ensure that I have a good memory, good capacity to stay plastic. Keep the brain inflammation down so that I can actually do what I want to do and do what I need to do and continue to learn.

[01:14:36] Luke: Awesome. All right. And closing, tell us a little bit about what you do in your clinic out there in Tulsa.

[01:14:41] Mark: A lot. We actually do a lot of things. There's seven areas that we deal with as a primary function. Four areas, we have control over. Need some help? Nutrition, sleep, stress management, movement. Those four areas we all have a hand in. We've got to own them. They might need some help.

[01:15:01] But then there's areas we don't know anything about. Genetics. We do a lot of genetic work with people. Everybody comes in and gets a genetic panel done. Genes aren't born bad, by the way. We just look at them as roadmaps on how to direct us to the right pathway of genetic expression. We deal with hormones a lot.

[01:15:17] Hormones are not bad if done correctly. There's a whole field out there of hormones that is looked at as a bad thing, but we use bioidentical hormones, human identical hormones to make sure that we're actually meeting the needs of the body from a communicative standpoint. And then we deal with glycans.

[01:15:35] The glycobiology science is interesting because those are little sugars on the outside of our proteins. And who knew that? That's a whole other science that you have to be discovered. So we make sure we have a good, stable glycan structure on our immune system molecules like our IgG.

[01:15:51] And we make sure that we're able to test that and augment that as well. So those are the seven things we deal with. And we have a whole bunch of comprehensive tests that we do. We can, of course, typical style blood work and stool test, urine test, all that stuff. But we can also test to see how your biological aging processes and speeds are coming along. So I can test your actual biological age or actual immune age compared to your chronological age. People find that pretty cool.

[01:16:21] Luke: That's really cool.

[01:16:22] Mark: They like that.

[01:16:23] Luke: Yeah, I'd like to do that. That's encouraging when you get metrics like that because it helps you with compliance and staying on.

[01:16:30] Mark: Totally, it's like a game. It's like people want to win the game.

[01:16:32] Luke: Exactly.

[01:16:33] Mark: If you can gamify this whole process of the biohacking-- I don't even like the functional medicine term, functional healing term. You get people to comply, and they really have a good time with that. And they're drawn to you.

[01:16:47] Luke: Do you guys work with peptides at all?

[01:16:48] Mark: Oh, peptides. We do a ton of those.

[01:16:50] Luke: Oh, cool.

[01:16:51] Mark: Yeah, we are well into the peptides. We were doing that before it was cool. So we'll use the brain ones like cerebral lysin, dihexa, Selank, Semax. We use some of the BPC 157s, tesamorelin, sermorelin, GHK copper, epitalon.

[01:17:09] Luke: All the greatest hits.

[01:17:11] Mark: Yeah. NAD. I'll inject NAD sub Q pretty much three or four days a week. We also will do a slow push IV with it.

[01:17:18] Luke: Nice. Yeah. I love the peptides. Yeah. I've talked about it on a lot of shows, and I think it's-- thankfully, it's gaining some traction and people are becoming more aware of it. There's been one barrier to entry in that you need to work with a clinician or a practitioner, and then many people are adverse to injecting something. And I always tell, I'm like, it's an insulin needle. You don't even feel it. It's really not a big deal. I don't like needles, and I do it many days a week.

[01:17:46] Mark: Oh yeah. I probably inject myself three or four times every day. We actually show them how to do it. And so we're actually going to handhold them as they did the first time. And then I've had people that are just deathly afraid of needles, even to the point of passing out that are now doing it. I never thought I could do that because you don't feel it. It's just a little sub Q injection, subcutaneous, into the fat tissue, and it's like butter. You don't really feel any pain.

[01:18:11] Luke: Yeah, that's like butter. I got a lot of butter on my belly. Goes right in, no pain.

[01:18:16] Mark: No pain.

[01:18:17] Luke: You mentioned Semax, and I remembered, as you mentioned, that my friend, Dr. John Lieurance sent me a little nasal sprayer of Semax. And before our interview, I did a couple hits of that. Do you find that to be effective that kind of issues?

[01:18:32] Mark: I do.

[01:18:33] Luke: As one that doesn't have to be injected.

[01:18:35] Mark: Yeah, I like Semax and Selank. I like the intranasal delivery on those because just like the hydrogen through the cannula, it's going to cross that blood brain-barrier. Those things do produce that brain-derived neurotropic factor, BDNF, which we want to have. Think about that as a brain fertilizer. And so really happy with those.

[01:18:54] I'll keep Semax and Selank pretty much around me all the time. Just as a preferential thing, I'll use Semax during the day, and I'll use Selank before bed. Not for any other thing other than preference. I've seen that Selank causes more chill -out effect, and Semax causes more focus.

[01:19:14] Luke: Oh, cool. Do you ever use the DSIP?

[01:19:18] Mark: Yeah, really have the delta-sleep-inducing peptide. People that need to get off Ambien, amazing. People have had chronic insomnia because of childhood trauma, abuse. I got a lady case pointed that was abused and all kinds of trauma was averaging about two hours of sleep a night.

[01:19:41] It was terrible. And so even after being postmenopausal, we brought in some micronized bioidentical progesterone, and we cranked it up to 400 milligrams, which is pretty good dose. Sometimes we go six on some people. It still wasn't creating the deep sleep that I wanted and the elongation of sleep.

[01:20:03] And she's been doing DSIP now for four or five months, and I've been tracking her sleep, and she gets up there around six hours now. So it's pretty much a miracle. And another guy reached out to us recently, and I'm working with him as he's weaning off of his highly addictive Ambien. And we use DSIP to bridge that gap.

[01:20:25] Luke: Cool. Love it. I love the cutting-edge stuff. And do you guys work with people remotely?

[01:20:29] Mark: Oh yeah. We have people really all around. That's the beauty of the last couple of years and the beauty of peptides and things. We have some really great sources now. And I think the opportunity I've had to get to know people around the country and around the world has been extraordinary. So that's been a big old blessing to get to do that.

[01:20:48] Luke: Awesome. All right. We're going to put all your info for contact in the show notes and show description. Last question real quick for you to let you get out of here. Who have been three teachers or teachings that have influenced your life or your work that you'd like to share with us?

[01:21:01] Mark: Just three. I'm going to go, first of all, the teachings of the Bible, number one, because no matter what people believe about that, whether they believe that's God's word or not, I do, but the principles their work. And I really tried to study what I believe to be the Word of God every day. And I find that that gives me great peace. It gives me great guidance. And I think from a number one standpoint, that's really good.

[01:21:31] I think, number two, behind that would be a combination of the men I've had in my life, good, bad, and indifferent. Starting with my father he a mean old guy. He's still alive. But I did learn the value of hard work. I did learn the value that when you're tired, you don't feel good, you go to work anyway.

[01:21:53] And that stuck with me. It's a good thing. Today we live in a world where people don't go to work. They don't want to. So I learned the value of hard work that way. And then probably third would be my first college baseball coach. I thought I was something getting to start when I was in college. I was a catcher.

[01:22:18] And one lesson he taught me was-- and he taught it to me real time. In the middle of the game, I got very frustrated and threw my catcher's mask down, and I'm sure that the fans saw that. He made me take the catcher's gear off, made me leave the stadium and run around that stadium four times before I could ever come back-- hard lesson.

[01:22:42] I was embarrassed. But I learned with that one, everybody's watching. Everything you do, you're always being watched. So what kindof person are you reflecting? What kind of person are you reflecting with the challenges we've faced from the day? And I always forgot that it was a painful lesson. But man, I realized that I'm capable of acting like a fool, and I don't need to be broadcasting that.

[01:23:08] Luke: Awesome, man. Thank you. Thank you for taking the time to join us today. I love talking hydrogen. Love learning about you and your practice and all the good things you're doing in the world. Thanks for fighting the good fight and helping people live their best lives.

[01:23:20] Mark: You're welcome. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

‍