Tackle Stroke with a Fizzy Drink

Now it appears that some fizz in a glass of plain water is what you need to cure stroke after-effects.

But if it is your favourite carbonated, sugared-water drink that comes to your mind, forget it. It is a squirt of hydrogen that you need in a glass of water to keep strokes away.

Hydrogenated water

Discover magazine reports the experimental work by drug researchers at Kyushu University in Japan that might point to a cure for stroke-related brain cell damage. A stroke occurs when a clot blocks blood flow to a part of the brain. Neurons or nerve cells are destroyed as a result.

Experiments on mice conducted by Mami Noda in Japan and neurologist Bruce Ransom (University of Washington) found that a simple drink of water charged with hydrogen gas appeared to act as an anti-oxidant, protecting brain cells from the toxic after-effects of oxygen starvation that strokes can cause. A stroke kills a lot of brain cells, but the worst comes afterward, when these damaged cells release reactive oxygen species, molecules that can damage and kill  more neurons.

Normally only about 25% of nerve fibres survive when deprived of oxygen for say, 60 minutes. When the hydrogen water therapy was administered, the survival rate climbed to 50%, and apparently other signs of damage from reactive molecules were also reduced. The researchers surmise that hydrogen is reacting with and disabling the toxic oxygen species.

The findings are being evaluated, but it looks like this could lead to the formulation of a simple preventive medicine against strokes, one of neurology’s long-held goals.

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