This little known nutrient is, in fact, the smallest element known to exist at this time. In spite of its size, it is indispensable in virtually every chemical reaction in the body.
Nowhere is this more important than inside the cells of our body where tiny organisms, called mitochondria, translate the free electron negative charge associated with the H- molecule into the ATP which provides the energy necessary to produce growth, repair, and regeneration of the body.
In the latter half of the 20th century, it became apparent that the negative hydrogen ion was not as rare and short-lived in nature on our planet's surface as once thought. Indeed, by the 1990s it became apparent the H-minus ion is ubiquitous in the biochemistry of life forms on earth, and essential to certain key biochemical reactions related to the citric acid cycle (Krebs cycle) in living organisms.
By the late 1990's, it became obvious that several common antioxidants found in plants and animals (Vitamin E among them) function as an antioxidant by acting as a transport vessel for the H- ion, donating it at the right time within living systems to neutralize any of several species of oxygen free radicals (oxidizing radicals), also known as reactive oxygen species (ROS) occurring in tissues or fluids in or around the cells.
It also became generally recognized by the late 1990s that the likely mechanism by which certain key energy-transport molecules in living systems were formed and subsequently regenerated after "being burned" was via donation of H- to the molecule by a donor molecule, the origins of which ultimately traced back to the energy liberated from sunlight during photosynthesis.