Can we talk BICARBONATE supplement?

BrainCelll wrote:

enough. wrote:

Can everyone just chill the fudge out on Maurten's product. Athletes were taking bicarbonate before this product and will take it in other forms other than this product.

There is nothing illegal or anywhere near considered doping about eating something alkaline and causing your blood ph to be slightly higher to combat hydrogen ions.

All the Maurten product does is slightly delay or prevent sh1tting your pants by covering it in gelatin to buy your gut 30-60 minutes to pass it beyond your stomach acid and into the small intestine.

Thats it. Fewer 800m/1500m guys running through the mix zone to go crap their guts out in the locker room.

I've genuinely never heard a single explanation from anyone of how taking bicarb to measurably impact performances, isn't tantamount to doping and shouldn't be banned (the substance in X quantity, not everyone who has taken it to date), without said person getting irate, sarcastic and condescending in their explanation.

You are intentionally taking a substance to directly impact your race performance in a dramatic and demonstrable way (ie. not like caffeine, protein, gels, etc) that you would not have otherwise come across in your diet/daily life.

Because it has some big branding and marketing behind it, and has been readily accessible to western athletes it's seen as fine, but if no one was doing it other than some Russians/Chinese in the 80's or Kenyans in the 90's/00's, people would be pulling their hair out over this. Where is the line, if we discover the next EPO but just give it better marketing and let Maurten etc sell it?

BrainCelll wrote:

enough. wrote:

Can everyone just chill the fudge out on Maurten's product. Athletes were taking bicarbonate before this product and will take it in other forms other than this product.

There is nothing illegal or anywhere near considered doping about eating something alkaline and causing your blood ph to be slightly higher to combat hydrogen ions.

All the Maurten product does is slightly delay or prevent sh1tting your pants by covering it in gelatin to buy your gut 30-60 minutes to pass it beyond your stomach acid and into the small intestine.

Thats it. Fewer 800m/1500m guys running through the mix zone to go crap their guts out in the locker room.

I've genuinely never heard a single explanation from anyone of how taking bicarb to measurably impact performances, isn't tantamount to doping and shouldn't be banned (the substance in X quantity, not everyone who has taken it to date), without said person getting irate, sarcastic and condescending in their explanation.

You are intentionally taking a substance to directly impact your race performance in a dramatic and demonstrable way (ie. not like caffeine, protein, gels, etc) that you would not have otherwise come across in your diet/daily life.

Because it has some big branding and marketing behind it, and has been readily accessible to western athletes it's seen as fine, but if no one was doing it other than some Russians/Chinese in the 80's or Kenyans in the 90's/00's, people would be pulling their hair out over this. Where is the line, if we discover the next EPO but just give it better marketing and let Maurten etc sell it?

No balls at all wrote:

. . wrote:

Every pro 800 is basically a dash through 200

Rudisha running 24.8, 25.2, 25.0, 25.5 could have been feasible in my opinion

You might want to modify your thinking - things have changed!

I don't know how to link a post from a different thread, so I just copied and pasted this post from JRinaldi "Peter Bol's coach" in the current "11 out of 20 top 800 times..." thread:

The biggest difference I've noticed with the recent sub 1:42s is in the first lap of the race, even the first 200m.
Looking at the data of all the 27 sub 1:42's, the average first 200m of the recent races is 0.4 slower (24.44 vs 24.04) and the first laps is similarly slower (50.0 vs 49.3). This is producing less deviation between each 200m split with Hopple's 1:41.67 only having an average
deviation of 0.25 (8 of the 10 smallest AVEDEV have come from 2024). Rudisha's 1:40.91 WR has an AVEDEV of 0.975
Examples:
Hopple 24.9, 25.6, 25.4, 25.7 for 1:41.67 (0.25)
Rudisha 23.5, 25.8, 25.0, 26.6 for 1:40.91 (0.975)
Wanyonyi 24.5, 25.5, 25.4, 25.7 for 1:41.11 (0.3875)
So it can't just be the shoes as they wouldn't be 'slowing' the athletes down in the first 200, nor could it be the track. Bicarb helps in the last 200 and that may explain them holding the pace better than they have in the past, or maybe it is just as simple as 'even paced' running produces the best results over 800m rather than the old theory of +2 sec between first and last laps. Or..... maybe I just spend too much time looking at data :)

bill nye the sport science guy wrote:

I am Sam wrote:

That is not the prime reason why it is coated in gelatin. If you take sodium bicarbonate directly , which by the way people have tried for years, it doesn't do anything except get neutralised by the stomach acid

HCl + NaHCO3 → NaCl + H2CO3, -->

the carbonic acid, CO3+ neutralises to CO3+-->CO2 +H20 , the CO2 will be expelled as burps, farts and a runny stomach, plus digestive problems. Further CO2 and CO3+ entering the blood will be exhaled and neutralised respectively.

So short answer this is why taking spoonfulls of bicarb of soda does not work.

Putting it in gels will bypass the stomach acid and be absorbed straight into blood via upper intestine, increase blood pH (availability of H+) and neutralise the lactic acid, increasing lactate

The dosage and method of delivery promoted commercially is pretty much copied straight from meta analyses of research on this. You could do a better home brew quite easily.

Close, but not quite. Lactate is the form that exists in your body, not lactic acid. During high intensity exercise, the rate at which you're breaking down glucose/glycogen (everyone remember high school biology? this is the glycolysis pathway) exceeds the rate at which you can take the end product (pyruvate) and transport it into the mitochondria to produce energy aerobically. So we have a side-reaction that turns this pyruvate into lactate and a H+, not lactic acid. This is because at physiological pH (i.e., your body's natural state), lactic acid dissociates to lactate (which can be used as a fuel) and H+, which can be exported out of the muscle. It is the build up of H+ and other metabolites like inorganic phosphate (Pi) that are the cause of fatigue, not lactate. Sodium bicarb is aimed at targeting the rise in H+ in the blood (a rise in H+ = a drop in pH as it makes things more acidic). This is in contrast to supplements like beta alanine which tries to limit the build up of H+ in the muscle itself.

As others have noted, sodium bicarb has been around for decades, beyond simply mixing baking soda in water and trying to drink it. There are pill forms as well as enteric coated capsules that are protected in the stomach to limit GI issues. There is nothing more special about Maurten versus those pills other than marketing (and a heavily inflated price). And there have been questions raised previously about how effective their hydrogel actually is anyways. My guess is you'd get similar effects with the other forms of bicarb, at much lower price point.