By Victor Sagalovsky

Health and medical professionals are astounded when they first hear about a ubiquitous, yet barely acknowledged water molecule, that can be every bit as toxic as heavy metals. This remarkable story chronicles the 60 years of scientific investigation into the biology of deuterium that is finally coming to the forefront of health and medicine. 

Hidden in plain sight is a small percentage of water molecules containing deuterium—a rarely mentioned isotope of hydrogen. It is one of three hydrogen isotopes, the others being protium and tritium. But there’s nothing new about deuterium—it goes back to the beginning of the universe. Only now is its significance in the biology of all living things being recognized and understood worldwide.

The Cosmic Beginning

In the first fractions of a second following the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago, was the creation of protons and neutrons followed by their interaction with electrons. The result was the most overwhelmingly abundant element in the universe, hydrogen, as its three isotopes: protium, deuterium and tritium.

Over billions of years of the expansion of the Universe, the first elements were generated in the sustained fusion of stars and supernovas and distributed throughout vast space. Element attracted element…cosmic dust formed…then asteroids comets, planets and moons….

The elements hydrogen and oxygen chemically reacted, generating interstellar H2O—liquid water, water vapor, and ice (first, a protium or deuterium H-isotope joined to oxygen forming OH, then another H-isotope joined the OH, forming H2O). Eventually, about 4.5 billion years ago, a long-lasting event known as the Late Heavy Bombardment brought most of the water to Earth in the form of icy comets and asteroids (some water was generated by chemical reactions within the crust of the Earth).

Back on Earth

Deuterium is present in virtually all water on Earth. There are about six drops (150 ppm of deuterium-containing water molecules in each liter of water. There are noteworthy anomalies in Nature due to the meteorological redistribution of the protium and deuterium H-isotopes. The most significant example is the deuterium content of snow and ice in Antarctica—89 ppm, nearly half the deuterium level of the Earth’s water sources, including the oceans.

Fast forward more than 13 billion years to 1932 when Harold C. Urey and his colleagues Ferdinand G. Brickwedde, and George R. Murphy at Columbia University proved the existence of deuterium as a stable H-isotope with a mass of 2 (the protium H-isotope has a mass of 1). Deuterium had gone undetected by physicists perhaps because it only made up 0.0149% of all hydrogen in the universe. Some suspected the existence of this twice-as-heavy H-isotope as early as 1913. Urey was hot on its trail.

Ushering in the Atomic Age

In 1934 Dr. Urey won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for this monumental discovery of deuterium that would usher in the atomic age. Concentrated deuterium (in the form of heavy water) was the missing piece needed for nuclear reactors and the making of atomic bombs. Because of deuterium, our world would never be the same.

While the 1930s brought a paradigm shift in physics, much was the same with biology. In 1929, ATP (adenosine triphosphate), the fuel of all life, was discovered. This came 39 years after the discovery of mitochondria, the powerhouse of the cell in which ATP is generated. In 1937, some of the mysteries of mitochondria were unraveled, especially the mechanisms of ATP production. But science would have to wait another 60 years before the detrimental effects of deuterium on ATP production and the biology of all living things would be understood.

Shortly after Dr. Urey proved its existence in 1933, his mentor, Gilbert N. Lewis, a professor of chemistry at Berkeley University, was the first to create pure heavy water using the electrolysis of water. Professor Lewis was also the first to observe that when concentrated heavy water was frozen, it sank instead of floated like normal water. He also observed how it strongly delayed the reproduction of microbes and retarded the growth of germinating seeds.

As World War II approached, heavy water became increasingly difficult to obtain for further study as countries were hoarding production in preparation for making nuclear reactors and atomic bombs. Biological research on deuterium was thus stifled and gradually faded away until the 1950s.

The Modern Chapter on Deuterium Begins

About the same time that Francis H.C. Crick and James D. Watson announced the double-helix structure of DNA in 1953, a gerontology and genetics graduate student named Gennady D. Berdyshev at the University of Tomsk in Siberia (Soviet Union) was urged to investigate a very peculiar anomaly concerning lifespans of the Soviet population. While the average percentage of centenarians in all of the Soviet Union was about 8 per one million, in certain mountainous areas of Siberia there were an astounding 324 centenarians per one million. Furthermore, most of this population of Altai and Yakutia enjoyed great health and vitality well into their old age. Knowing that these regions were supplied with glacial melt water from high altitudes, he was motivated to investigate this factor as a possible common denominator of health and longevity of their inhabitants. Scientists focused on the possibility that some unique and unrecognized water characteristic might be involved—a mystery hidden perhaps in ancient glacial ice.

The first experiments consisted of mining permafrost at a depth of 20 meters and melting water that had existed as ice for 300 million years. In the lab, they observed how this water stimulated cell division and slowed down cellular aging. When the institute could no longer pay for the extraction of ancient ice, they evaluated Siberian snow from their own vicinity and to their surprise it had the same effects. The theory of deuterium-depleted water was beginning to take shape.

The experiments done by V.M. Muhachev at the Tomsk University in 1959 to 1960 convinced his colleagues that even a small dose of deuterium distorted the chemistry of hydrogen bonding and inhibited sub-molecular processes. By 1960 Berdyshev had enough information to conclusively link the health and longevity of the Yakuts and the Altaians with the consumption of glacial melt water. The researchers from Tomsk further discovered that ancient ice, high latitude mountain snow, and glacial runoff were 15-20% depleted in deuterium compared to what became known as the Vienna Standard Mean Ocean Water (VSMOW), which is 155.76 ppm of deuterium-containing water at the equator. In 1966 Rodimov and his biophysics department chair, I.V. Toroptsev, were allowed to publish their work in English for the benefit of researchers and scientists everywhere. With their groundbreaking findings in Biological Role of Heavy Water in Living Organisms¹ they put Tomsk University on the map, becoming the very first scientists to show how water depleted in deuterium had a positive biological effect. Considering that deuterium had only been discovered 30 years before, this was a monumental breakthrough. Possibly, one of the great secrets of health and longevity had just been revealed! 

Coincidentally around the same time, one of the greatest discoveries in biology was taking shape by Paul D. Boyer, a molecular biologist at UCLA. He discovered that tiny protein nano-motors within the mitochondria, sitting at the end of the Electron Transport Chain (ETC) provided a key step in producing ATP. These protein assemblies, spinning at a rate estimated to be 9000 RPM, have the structure and function of an electro-mechanical motor, complete with rotor, stator and magnetic field. Boyer christened these nanomotors “ATP Synthase.” But, it would be another 40 years, and the turn of the millennium, before deuterium’s damaging effect on ATP Synthase would be discovered.

Biological Effects of Deuterium

By the 1960s it was clear that deuterium, having twice-the-mass of its lighter isotope protium, could be responsible for profound biological and biochemical effects. After all, no other element on the periodic table has isotopes differing in mass to this extreme degree. An understanding of how deuterium functions at the cellular level was now on the horizon.

While Russian scientists were doing their research and making quiet breakthroughs, Americans were also hot to blaze a deuterium trail. It was 1963 when John F. Thomson of the medical research division of Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago wrote the definitive 152-page treatise entitled “Biological Effects of Deuterium.”² In 1966, the work of his colleagues Joseph J. Katz and Henry L. Crespi reinforced the biological implications of deuterium, noting in “Deuterated Organisms Cultivation and Uses,”³ that deuterium affects the shape of proteins and the replication of DNA. Laboratory mice experiments were conducted in which their normal body water was altered in the percentage of heavy water, yielded the following observations:

• Experiment #1: Laboratory mice body water was increased in concentration of heavy water to 30%. It proved to be fatal to the mice in a matter of days.
• Experiment #2: Laboratory mice body water was depleted in deuterium by 30% (105 ppm) and resulted in significantly increased lifespan.