Why Deuterium Matters: A Secret Behind Energy, Chronic Disease and Cancer (Part 1 of 2)

The good news when it comes to improving health is that there are many ways to go about it. In my blog posts and membership, Live! with Dr. Stein I share many different strategies to give you choices. You can choose the strategies that you can afford (many are free) and those that your health history and intuition tell you might be a good fit.

One important health lever you may not have heard of is deuterium. Deuterium is a naturally occurring heavier form of hydrogen. For a tiny molecule, deuterium plays an outsized role in how well your cells make energy, the development of chronic diseases, and the development of cancer. In this blogpost, I describe what deuterium is, how it impacts our health and what the emerging cancer research shows.

What is Deuterium, and Why Does it Matter?

Hydrogen is the most abundant atom in the human body. It forms most of the chemical bonds that hold our proteins, enzymes, and DNA in the correct shape, and it plays a central role in how our cells generate energy. Ordinary hydrogen, called protium, is light and small. It consists of one proton and one electron. Deuterium is a naturally occurring, non-radioactive form of hydrogen that is about twice as heavy and twice as large as protium. It has one proton and one neutron in the nucleus and one electron circling around them. That extra size and weight change its chemistry and function substantially. Chemical bonds involving deuterium take far more energy to break than bonds involving ordinary hydrogen.

This matters most inside the mitochondria, the structures in our cells responsible for producing adenosine triphosphate (ATP), the body's main energy currency. Mitochondria generate ATP using a molecular machine (sometimes called a nanomotor) that channels hydrogen atoms through a membrane at extraordinary speed. If a deuterium atom gets into that channel instead of an ordinary hydrogen atom, it can jam the machine and, over time, damage it permanently. When this happens, cells produce less energy and become more prone to inflammation and premature cell death.

Remember that when we burn glucose (blood sugar) in the presence of oxygen we produce carbon dioxide and water? Most people ignore the water, but it turns out to be very important. Mitochondria produce a remarkable amount of what is called, roughly 7,200 liters a day across the body's trillions of cells. Remember the citric acid or Krebs cycle that gets metabolism off to a good start by preparing food for the mitochondria? It turns out that the whole purpose of this cycle might be to deplete deuterium from our food before it gets to the mitochondria to protect the nanomotors.

The water produced from burning food in the mitochondria is very pure and contains very little deuterium. It is recycled and used to build functional, deuterium depleted molecules like fatty acids, proteins, and DNA, all molecules that function best if deuterium is lower.

And there's more! When hydrogen and oxygen combine to form metabolic water using ordinary hydrogen, the reaction releases a large burst of energy, far more than the energy from making ATP itself. Deuterium interferes with this process, reducing one of the body's most important sources of usable energy.

Deuterium is not entirely harmful. It plays a useful role in strengthening structural proteins like collagen. Animals that fly and dive quickly, like seals and peregrine falcons, need very tough connective tissue. They naturally carry more deuterium in their collagen than humans do. But in general, our cells work to keep deuterium as low as possible, particularly in fast-metabolizing tissues like the brain and heart.

Why Ancestral Deuterium Levels Were Lower

Most people today carry a deuterium level in their body water of roughly 140 to 145 parts per million (ppm), without doing anything in particular to influence it. Researchers who study this field, including biochemist Dr. László Boros, believe the “ancestral” deuterium level was closer to 130 parts per million. Why the difference? The gradual increase over time is thought to reflect natural, gradual warming of the oceans over the past hundred thousand years rather than anything to do with modern pollution or industry. Warmer ocean water tends to carry slightly more deuterium in its vapor and the deuterated vapor makes its way into rain, rivers, and the food chain. As one gets farther from the equator, there is less deuterium in the water.

Does Lowering Deuterium Improve Health?

The theory linking deuterium to chronic disease is that as mitochondria accumulate damage with age, their capacity to keep deuterium low declines. Higher deuterium levels impair mitochondrial function and this leads to chronic disease. Which chronic disease shows up in a given person may depend on genetics and which tissues are most affected. Each of us is unique in this way. Tissues that rely heavily on mitochondria for energy, such as the brain and heart, may be particularly vulnerable to energy failure. So too much deuterium could contribute to fatigue of the brain and body.

Bringing the body's deuterium level back closer to that ancestral 130 parts per million range, largely through diet, sleep, activity, and light exposure, may be a way to impact inflammation and chronic disease. This approach, consisting of many of the strategies I teach (eating a keto-ish diet, avoiding highly processed foods, keeping a steady circadian rhythm, maintaining an active lifestyle and getting daily natural sunlight) is called the “deuterium depletion lifestyle.”

These lifestyle changes can be augmented by lowering the amount of deuterium in the water we drink. Deuterium-depleted water (DDW) is ordinary drinking water that has been processed to contain far less deuterium than tap water. There are preliminary data suggesting that DDW can improve many chronic diseases, including neurodegenerative diseases and metabolic disorders (Korchinsky, Davis, & Boros, 2024; Qu et al., 2024).

Deuterium and Cancer: What the Research Shows

An active area of deuterium research right now is in oncology (the study of cancer). Cancer cells have a distinctive relationship with deuterium. The mitochondria in cancer cells are dysfunctional. They have a decreased ability to clear deuterium. As a result, cancer cells tend to accumulate more deuterium than healthy cells, and some researchers believe this altered deuterium handling is part of what drives their unusual growth behavior.

Dr. Gábor Somlyai is a Hungarian researcher at the forefront of using deuterium depletion as an adjunct in cancer treatment. Cancer cells appear able to sense deuterium levels. Cells whose mitochondria are sufficiently damaged by deuterium may transform into tumor cells and when they do, metabolic changes perpetuate the elevated deuterium levels creating a vicious cycle.

Somlyai has asked whether the process can be reversed. It has been shown that lower deuterium levels directly suppress cancer growth, cause cancer cells to die (apoptosis) and change the expression of dozens of genes cancer cells need to grow (Qu et al., 2024). The exact way in which deuterium depleted water weakens and kills cancer cells is still being worked out. It is thought that improved mitochondrial function due to lower levels of deuterium leads to the production of more reactive oxygen species (free radicals) as a normal byproduct of oxidative metabolism and that reactive oxygen molecules damage cancer cells more than healthy cells (Lu & Chen, 2024).

In human trials deuterium depletion has delayed progression and prolonged median survival time in prostate cancer patients, with DDW intake amount correlating inversely with prostate-specific antigen levels, and significantly prolonging survival in patients with distant metastasis. Strengths of using DDW as an adjunct in cancer treatment is that it has very few side effects and can be used alongside conventional treatments like chemotherapy and/or radiotherapy.  Deuterium depletion appears to sensitize cancer cells to conventional treatments.

That's the view from the research literature so far. But what does deuterium depletion actually look like when applied to thousands of real cancer patients over decades? In Part 2, I'll share what one of the field's most experienced researchers has learned from his own patient data, the practical protocols he uses in the clinic, and how you can put this information to work in your own life, including what happened when I tried it myself.

References

Korchinsky, N., Davis, A. M., & Boros, L. G. (2024). Nutritional deuterium depletion and health: a scoping review. Metabolomics, 20(6). doi:10.1007/s11306-024-02173-4

Lu, Y., & Chen, H. (2024). Deuterium-Depleted Water in Cancer Therapy: A Systematic Review of Clinical and Experimental Trials. Nutrients, 16(9). doi:10.3390/nu16091397

Qu, J., Xu, et al. (2024). The biological impact of deuterium and therapeutic potential of deuterium-depleted water. Frontiers in Pharmacology, Volume 15 - 2024. doi:10.3389/fphar.2024.1431204

Click below for related blogs:

https://www.eleanorsteinmd.ca/blog/hydrogen

 STAY CONNECTED AND INFORMED Join Ellie’s Newsletter to learn more about accessible science-based natural methods to help manage chronic illnesses. There is hope! And we’re here to help. 

If you are exhausted from trying to figure out which strategies to try next, join me live via zoom every two weeks. Live! with Dr. Stein takes the guess work out of healing, saves you time and provides the ongoing support and motivation you need to move ahead.

Dr. Eleanor Stein is a physician and psychiatrist who now dedicates her career to empowering people with complex chronic conditions—such as myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), fibromyalgia, environmental sensitivities, long COVID and chronic pain—to reclaim their lives through accessible science-based self-management strategies.

She draws ideas from cutting edge research in circadian biology, neuroplasticity, hormesis and quantum biology among other.

With over 35 years of clinical practice in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, along with research and decades of lived experience navigating ME/CFS, fibromyalgia, and multiple chemical sensitivity (MCS), Dr. Stein uniquely blends rigorous medical insight with personal resilience. Her online resource platform offers, self-study programs, webinars, blogs and a podcast to support patients and health care professionals worldwide. If you are exhausted from trying to figure out which strategies to try next, join me live via zoom every two weeks. Live! with Dr. Stein takes the guess work out of healing, saves you time and provides the ongoing support and motivation you need to move ahead.