Bicarb: What % of top athletes 1500 up using it. HS, College, Pro

Marketing BS, which many suckers will fall for.

The acidity in your muscles has natural buffers, the first of which is lactate production from muscle glycogen. So with proper training and race pacing, you can control acidosis in a race.

Look at how the fastest runners do this in 400 and 800 meter races. They don't decelerate as much as the other runners and they aren't in obvious distress.

Which is how Hodgkinson won the Olympic 800 this year... oh wait, her whole club (M11) is sponsored by Maertens.

Wake up.

I don't care who is supposed to be using it. You can't just reinvent biochemistry to sell snake oil and not be called out for it.

Don't be so naïve.

Facts are facts.

60% of the Middle Distance medals in Paris using it.

Do yourself a favor, go to a major meet and watch athletes openly use it.

I'm so naive, it's just marketing. LOL

There have been studies on sodium bicarbonate for decades.

My recollection from college 20-25 years ago is that the amount needed to provide a performance benefit does not outweigh the gastrointestinal side affects.

Alan

Ditto. I lost the NIH study that essentially showed it's junk, even at 400m, but I'm digging for it.

Your GI and stomach are acidic Edens- by the time the bicarb made its way through that gauntlet, there wouldn't be enough left to effectively move through your bloodstream into your muscles.

Are large % of pros using it? Yes. Is that why the 800 times plummeted this year? I'm not sold. That's an event that has stagnated for over a decade now. A breakthrough was ready. The cynical side of me says other supplements had more to do with the Tual's and Sedjatis of the world...

I suppose you believe in lactic acid too?

And beetroot juice too?

So you will believe anything that's marketed at your gullibility. What next?

.... don't forget about spring shoes. No sarcasm intended. Just adding to your list I agree with.

My recollection is that all the studies pointed towards decent performance gains (like 4s in 2:00 runners) with about half the people having stomachs issues that interfered with testing.

Eighty dollars bucks seems like a lot.

We get that training helps. I think folks are looking at it as a legal ped that might help a second or two, which for more people than you think is important to them. 1 or 2 in a HS 800 is large. snake oil doesn't have evidence based studies. This stuff has some evidence developing

Dude, you have to stop with the "biochemistry" angle. We get that "lactic acid" is not what we were taught 30 years ago. That's not the intention here. The intracellular and extracellular PH is low during vigorous exercise. Think protons. That's called acidic, and in theory a buffer might help to the extent you can transport it there. That..is simple biochem.

Shirley you mean Bi(Carr)B? https://www.bicarrb.com/

You're laboring under the illusion that acidosis is the cause of fatigue. It's not, it's a symptom. It's really not hard to figure out, but you hhave to apply a bit of logic and common sense.

I'll make it simple for ya. Muscle glycogen to lactate reduces acidity and provides 3 ATP per 2 lactate in glycolysis. Blood glucose to lactate increases acidity and provides only 2 ATP per two lactate.

When you run a 400 or 800 you rapidly cycle through fast twitch motor units, they deplete rapidly. So to avoid excess acidity in the muscles you need a good warm up before the race and a controlled acceleration and deceleration. No supplement can change these biochemical facts, no matter how much money you spend.

Don't be a sucker for marketing and pseudoscience.

20 - 25 years ago that was correct but things change. As long as you can get the bicarb past your stomach then you won't have gastrointestinal side effects and the bicarb will help. That's the whole point of Maurtens bicarb. It gets the bicarb past your stomach.

Wouldn't using it for intense training runs be of huge value and provide for success on race day even if you DIDN'T actually even use it on "goal race day"?

That's how I'm considering using it to my own situation.

This^

Maurten uses a two pronged approach. Firstly, the he hydrogel is the solution the bicarb is suspended in and it does a good job protecting the bicarb from being nullified by the stomach. Secondly, the bicarb is in a small pellet form allowing it to be more "time released" in the intestines. So you don't want to chew on the pellets as you eat the pudding.

Go ahead, waste your money. If you aren't interested in how your body actually works, then you will always be a fool for such things.

Consensus statement:

International Society of Sports Nutrition position stand: sodium bicarbonate and exercise performance
Jozo Grgic 1, Zeljko Pedisic 2, Bryan Saunders 3 4, Guilherme G Artioli 5, Brad J Schoenfeld 6, Michael J McKenna 2, David J Bishop 2, Richard B Kreider 7, Jeffrey R Stout 8, Douglas S Kalman 9 10, Shawn M Arent 11, Trisha A VanDusseldorp 12, Hector L Lopez 13 14, Tim N Ziegenfuss 13, Louise M Burke 15, Jose Antonio 16, Bill I Campbell 17
Affiliations Expand
PMID: 34503527
PMCID: PMC8427947
DOI: 10.1186/s12970-021-00458-w
Abstract
Based on a comprehensive review and critical analysis of the literature regarding the effects of sodium bicarbonate supplementation on exercise performance, conducted by experts in the field and selected members of the International Society of Sports Nutrition (ISSN), the following conclusions represent the official Position of the Society: 1. Supplementation with sodium bicarbonate (doses from 0.2 to 0.5 g/kg) improves performance in muscular endurance activities, various combat sports, including boxing, judo, karate, taekwondo, and wrestling, and in high-intensity cycling, running, swimming, and rowing. The ergogenic effects of sodium bicarbonate are mostly established for exercise tasks of high-intensity that last between 30 s and 12 min. 2. Sodium bicarbonate improves performance in single- and multiple-bout exercise. 3. Sodium bicarbonate improves exercise performance in both men and women. 4. For single-dose supplementation protocols, 0.2 g/kg of sodium bicarbonate seems to be the minimum dose required to experience improvements in exercise performance. The optimal dose of sodium bicarbonate dose for ergogenic effects seems to be 0.3 g/kg. Higher doses (e.g., 0.4 or 0.5 g/kg) may not be required in single-dose supplementation protocols, because they do not provide additional benefits (compared with 0.3 g/kg) and are associated with a higher incidence and severity of adverse side-effects. 5. For single-dose supplementation protocols, the recommended timing of sodium bicarbonate ingestion is between 60 and 180 min before exercise or competition.

There are also studies that show no effect. But acidity does affect performance contrary to your statement, you can say its not lactate per se, but it goes hand in hand with H+ and lower PH. Reduction of acidity is needed for muscle to recover contractility. So it makes perfect sense to raise PH a bit. In vivo studies show bicarb does raise PH of extracellular environment, so its getting past stomach somehow.