#215 Hormesis Molecule for Inflammation and Stress - Alex Tarnava, CEO of DrinkHRW

Alex Tarnava (0:00)

And that is terrifying to know that only one in four ingredients, right, so not supplemental brands, ingredients on the market in the US since 1994, has submitted evidence that they're safe.

Siim Land (0:15)

Welcome to the Siim Land Podcast. My name is Siim Land, and today we talk with Alex Tarnava. Alex is the founder and CEO of DrinkHRW, which is a company that sells molecular hydrogen tablets. Molecular hydrogen is one of the most potent antioxidants in nature, and it has a lot of health benefits. As Alex and I will discuss in this episode, molecular hydrogen is like a hormesis molecule that will either lower inflammation or stimulate the nervous system, depending on what is needed. I like to drink it in the morning, and it feels great for relieving inflammation or tiredness. If you want to try out DrinkHRW, then use the code SIIM at drinkhrw.com for a 10% discount.

Alex, welcome to the show.

Yeah, we kind of met online when I started to research about molecular hydrogen, and your company was one of the few ones that I came across in terms of providing a supplement for molecular hydrogen. I recently also had Tyler LeBaron on my podcast where he talked a lot about the benefits of molecular hydrogen. But I'm also fascinated to talk with you. You also have a pretty interesting backstory about founding the company and just getting into biohacking. How did you get into biohacking? What is your backstory?

Alex Tarnava (1:37)

Necessity is the reason. About six years ago, I was at my peak physical condition that I had ever been in my life.

I was training four to six, even eight hours a day, six days a week, even seventh was active recoveries. I was spending hours a day on CrossFit, on martial arts, on hiking, training at my house. I was running another business and it gave me a lot of free time. I'd be on the road about a week out of the month and I'd work 100, 100 plus hours that week that I was traveling. Then the other three weeks, I'd work about one, two hours a day. So it just was all spent on optimizing my fitness. I got really sick and they don't know what it was. At first, there were thoughts, could it be rhabdo? Then there were thoughts, could it be central nervous system, fatigue? But my best friend and roommate at the time got really sick also. He was a competitive athlete and it hit us in completely different ways. He had pneumonia for a few weeks, missed work. Whereas I had developed sudden onset narcolepsy. I'd fall asleep if I sat down for any more than a minute or so. I was sleeping 16 hours a day or something crazy like that.

My body had 70 to 100 times more C-reactive proteins than would be expected. It was at 34 milligrams per deciliter for weeks on end. So not per liter per deciliter. It was just crazy, crazy high inflammation.

They thought it might be central nervous system fatigue because I had no loss in strength for things like deadlift, squat, bench press. But I had no explosive capabilities. I went from like a 54 inch plyometric box jump to I couldn't jump an inch off the ground. From being able to string together 20 bar muscle ups to not being able to do a chest to bar. There was just no explosive ability in my body.

When the dust kind of settled, my inflammation just dropped basically in a three day period. The doctor I had at the time thought I had a virus that they couldn't figure out.

When that dust settled, I had osteoarthritis in 11 spots. Including I had progressed to moderate to advanced osteoarthritis in my left shoulder. It's continued to be screwed up. I have no cartilage left in my glenohumeral joints in my left shoulder. But at that time, I wasn't ready to come to terms that I basically had a crippled body at 29 years old.

I was put on 1,000 mg of naprox in a day by my doctor at the time. I had a few cortisone injections and a hyaluronic acid injection, and I continued trying to train as much as I could and just ignore the fact that my body was largely broken in a lot of ways. I wasn't modifying, wasn't adapting, just trying to get back into it. But I knew that wasn't a long-term solution, so I was just scouring PubMed, looking for anything that could regulate the inflammatory response. I knew that I couldn't just keep taking a thousand milligrams of naproxen a day and getting cortisone injections every few months. It just wasn't a feasible forever solution, especially the fact that was 29, not in my 60s, right? 29 trying to train.