Care for More O With that H2O?

May 21, 2001 -- Kickboxing champion Cung Le always drinks Oxy-Water. When he flies to compete on the other side of the world, he takes it with him.

 

"I drink lots of water, and this tastes really clean," Le tells WebMD. "It gives me a boost, so I've been using it for two years, and I don't drink any other water."

 

Le heads the Cung Le Martial Arts Training Center in San Jose, Calif. -- and he's not alone in his enthusiasm for oxygenated water. A quick Internet search turns up a host of companies selling the product under names such as Oxy Up, Aqua Rush, Oxygen8 and Athletic Super Water. Kenn Visser, president of LifeO2 International, based in Sarasota, Fla., says his company now sells its water in 16 countries and every time zone.

 

Proponents of oxygenated water claim it supplements oxygen taken in through the lungs and boosts energy levels, endurance, and concentration. Water usually has 4 to 8 parts per million of oxygen, while oxygenated water may have more than 50 parts per million.

 

Even so, how can such a tiny amount of dissolved oxygen possibly have any effect?

 

"This is just an advertising gimmick," says John Itamura, MD. "You get oxygen through your lungs. Your stomach may possibly absorb some of this dissolved oxygen, but the key to good athletics is developing good lungs. The way to boost your ability to take in oxygen is to do strenuous aerobic exercise like running or cycling. This water isn't going to hurt you, but I don't think it's going to help you substantially."

 

Itamura is an orthopaedic surgeon with a special interest in sports medicine at the University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine in Los Angeles.

 

Craig Horswill, PhD, is principal scientist at the Gatorade Sports Science Institute in Barrington, Ill. -- and like Itamura he doubts oxygenated water products have any positive effects.

 

"They don't taste very good because as you push oxygen into water, peroxide forms," he says. "And having peroxides in water isn't such a good thing, because it supports oxidative reactions."

 

And even if the blood did absorb a tiny amount of oxygen through the stomach, it's hard to see how this could benefit athletic performance, say some experts.

 

"If any oxygen introduced to the stomach and intestines were taken up by the blood, this blood travels to the right chambers of the heart and then to the lungs," Howard G. Knuttgen, PhD, tells WebMD via an email message. "[In the lungs] the blood picks up oxygen from the alveoli for delivery to all of the tissues of the body, including the exercising muscle. Oxygen already in the blood will reduce the oxygen transferred from the alveoli to the blood in the pulmonary capillaries. Picture a bus arriving at a station with four passengers and a capacity of 20; it can pick up 16 passengers. An identical bus arriving with 13 passengers can only pick up seven."