The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. ✗plicit 02:54, 11 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hydrogen water (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log | edits since nomination)

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We at FTN recently analyzed the article, which is somewhat unfocused and used mainly pro-fringe sources for medical content, and concluded that the rest should be deleted. The remaining sources are all WP:MEDPRIMARY and possibly WP:PROFRINGE, and some of them are not about hydrogen administered in aqueous solution, but rather on purported therapeutic uses of hydrogen in general. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 01:38, 4 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Note: This discussion has been included in the deletion sorting lists for the following topics: Science and Medicine. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 01:38, 4 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

And, as it turned out, none of the sources were about the purported topic. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 02:22, 4 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Delete. I originally proposed the article be merged into hydrogen, but I had wrongly assumed that at least some of the sources were valid. IpseCustos (talk) 03:05, 4 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete I too was looking for a redirect/merge candidate to make this less likely to be recreated, but don’t find a suitable target. — rsjaffe 🗣️ 03:08, 4 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment: this article was gutted heavily immediately before this AfD, and all references subsequently deleted. Here is a previous version, lest people look only at the current state of the article. Remember that not all statement about a controversial treatment are biomedical information, per Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_sources_(medicine)#Biomedical_v._general_information and Wikipedia:Biomedical_information#What_is_not_biomedical_information?. To assist Googling, "hydrogen water" is also known as "hydrogen-rich water" or "H2-rich water". From Time magazine for framing: Some of these companies claim that adding more hydrogen to water increases energy, improves recovery after a workout and reduces inflammation, making regular water look like a downright underachiever. But the science behind those claims is weak, backed only by a few encouraging studies in rats and mice and even fewer—and smaller—trials in people... Even without that confirmation, hydrogen water is the next big thing in wellness in Japan. The Ministry of Health recently approved hydrogen-infused saline IVs to help people recovering from infections and other conditions, and bathing in hydrogen water is becoming a popular spa treatment for fighting wrinkles and skin damage.^[1] That passage contains biomedical claims and nonbiomedical statements about regulation and popularity.

There are multiple recent review articles that evaluate hydrogen therapy in a variety of settings, whether as an inhaled gas, a drink, or injection.^{[2][3][4][5][6][7][8]} A recent review on hydrogen-rich water in gut microbiome concludes: "HRW might be an up-and-coming compound that might tune endogenous H2 homeostasis and modulate gut microbiota but it should still be perceived as an experimental drink and not widely recommended to the general public."^[9] This article could perhaps be renamed to Hydrogen therapy or clinical hydrogen, but regardless of whether a stand-alone article on hydrogen-infused water is warranted, it seems that the emerging research on hydrogen (in cells, animals, or humans) might warrant mention in one or more articles, in the style of Oxygen therapy or Heavy water#Effect on animals. --Animalparty! (talk) 03:11, 4 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

In that case, a new article “Hydrogen therapy” sounds more appropriate. Given the thinness of the claims for hydrogen water, I see no need for a standalone. A combined article would make it easier to put all the claims in proper context. — rsjaffe 🗣️ 03:46, 4 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Also from the Time article quoted above^[1] (passim; redacted by DePiep for shortening): But the science behind those claims is weak, ... Perricone sells 'Dr. Perricone HW' @ $3/can, admits that it’s not yet known exactly how added hydrogen in water potentially works on the body; "I don’t see any downside" ... The studies to prove whether that’s the case haven’t been conducted ... it’s not clear how much hydrogen is needed to have therapeutic benefits and how much water you’d have to drink to reap the potential rewards ... "We don’t know anything about dosing or the frequency" .. no regulation to standardize formulas—mainly because there isn’t a solid scientific base to determine how much is needed to affect various conditions ... "It doesn’t seem like something that is risky". IMO this reflects the gist of the article better, as opposed the single positive and outstanding quote above. Presenting this article as an introducing source (here), is sort of self-defeating. I'm not qualified to assess Meds here, I'll leave that to RS and MED/FRINGE/&tc. researchers. DePiep (talk) 05:04, 4 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment. I'm not qualified to assess. I imagine 99.99% of editors here also are not qualified to assess. It seems like there should be a separate AfD process for what seems like borderline cutting-edge science or maybe fringe theories. This isn't easy when most of us are anonymous and the rare specialist cannot be identified. Good luck, who ever has to close this one. CT55555 (talk) 03:29, 4 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete The current state of the article is useless. Basically all water is hydrogen and oxygen. You want to keep this, it will need a better title and some sort of sourcing. The prior version looks like a copyvio from WebMD anyway. Oaktree b (talk) 03:45, 4 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Please note Article content does not determine notability. Lots of notable subjects have crappy Wikipedia articles. --Animalparty! (talk) 03:52, 4 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

it does if it's unsourced and has no links, this is little more than an essay. Oaktree b (talk) 20:31, 4 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

And I have serious concerns that reliable sources will be sufficient to have a hydrogen water page separate from hydrogen therapy. Couple of fundamental physics issues make some of the claims difficult to swallow. One is that hydrogen gas is very difficult to store in a container as it diffuses out of most materials. So unless these are stainless steel containers or something like that, the dose reaching the subject is likely to be much lower than stated. The second is that once ingested, hydrogen gas rapidly diffuses through the body (in a matter of minutes) so saying that the hydrogen water directly affected the gut microbiota is logically implausible, as no “hydrogen water” will reach the colon. There may be a different story with inhaled hydrogen, where you’re actually able to get a real dose into the subject, and it may be that hydrogen water, through bodily absorption of ingested hydrogen, does have some therapeutic use, but to separate a hydrogen water article from a hydrogen therapy article is may result in having to duplicate mechanism of action sections. Keeping the whole thing together avoids these potential pitfalls. — rsjaffe 🗣️ 21:03, 4 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Delete: No relevant sources Salimfadhley (talk) 13:27, 6 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Weak Keep: While the therapy is almost certainly bollocks, I think coverage in Time in particular makes it barely notable bollocks. Other than Time, the ref list above is a weird mix of reputable (Frontiers in Physiology), uncertain (Medical Gas Research), and bad (Oncotarget) sources. PianoDan (talk) 18:33, 6 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Note that most of those other references were not actually about the article subject - they were about hydrogen therapy carried out through means other than hydrogen water. Agricolae (talk) 19:26, 6 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Weak keep and restore a good version, per PianoDan and Oaktree_b. I have heard of this fringe theory. Bearian (talk) 18:59, 6 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Which version was the good one? The one that violated how we are supposed to handle fringe, or the one that coatracked a bunch of references about other things rather than the subject of the article? Agricolae (talk) 19:26, 6 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I voted delete, so, neither. Oaktree b (talk) 20:01, 6 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Write a new version based solely on reputable secondary sources, such as the Time article. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 21:06, 6 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment The Timereferenced has been added to the article. We still need at least one secondary source for this article, preferably a WP:MEDRS to back up claims that the evidence for this product is limited. –LaundryPizza03 (dc̄) 23:46, 6 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment - The least bad redirect/merge target I found for this material is Solubility#Solubility of gases, which would not really be a good fit for the sole reliable source. — Charles Stewart (talk) 11:13, 8 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
• Delete - the so-far best effort to turn this material into something acceptable yields an article clearly falling short of GNG. Given the past MEDRS issues with the article, we should not be looking for excuses to keep this material. In the absence of a second reliable source or a quality redirect/merge target, the only ATD I would support with the sourcing we have is draftification. — Charles Stewart (talk) 11:13, 8 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.