Hydrogen Water for Athletes: Muscle Damage & Power Trial

Quick answer

In a 2025 double-blind, placebo-controlled trial (Ogannisyan et al., Journal of Lifestyle Medicine), 22 elite female handball and skeleton athletes took hydrogen-rich water tablets or a matching placebo. The hydrogen group came out ahead on several hard measures — lower body fat, more muscle mass, higher torque, and less muscle damage. It's a positive signal, but a small one: 22 women, and it didn't move everything.

What the study did

Twenty-two elite female athletes were randomly split into two groups. One got tablets that generate hydrogen-rich water; the other got a placebo that looked and tasted the same. Over the intake period the team ran body-composition scans, blood work, biomechanical (torque) testing, and a standardized stress-and-recovery questionnaire (RESTQ-Sport).

What it found

• Muscle mass rose and fat mass fell in the hydrogen group (p < 0.05).
• Maximal torque increased, especially right after an intensive exercise test (p < 0.05).
• Total creatine kinase dropped (p < 0.05) — CK is a standard marker of muscle damage, so lower is better.
• Vitamin E and the anti-inflammatory signal IL-10 went up; vitamin C and beta-carotene went down (p < 0.05).
• No significant effect on self-reported stress or recovery on the RESTQ-Sport questionnaire.

What this means for you

For athletes, hydrogen-rich water may help blunt exercise-induced muscle damage and support strength and body composition — the study called the effects "ergogenic" and found the tablets safe and well tolerated.

Keep the caveats in view. This was a small trial (n = 22), all elite female athletes, so it doesn't automatically transfer to recreational lifters or to men. The athletes' subjective recovery didn't improve, and the authors noted the mechanism is still unclear. Treat it as a promising, low-risk addition to good training and nutrition — not a shortcut around them.