How is sodium bicarbonate used??

majorkey wrote:

Okay.. thanks for the feedback. Do you guys know any other clean way to "performance enhancement"

Drop as big a deuce as possible prior to the race and empty your bladder. Shave legs, nads, head. Race barefoot, and nude if possible. The less weight you carry the better. All legal except for nudity, perhaps.

I used it before almost every marathon, and, though it was probably mainly psychological, felt like my legs were able to take the beating of the marathon better without hitting the lactic acid wall as early. My first marathon, I crashed hard at mile 19, and every marathon after that (except Chicago), I was generally not feeling shitty till mile 22-24, and was able to maintain my form better to the finish. Got under 2:30 thanks to this "PED", and would use it again.

Thanks o.o. for that detailed post.

Do you have an opinion on the use of Tums (calcium carbonate)? Is it not sufficiently alkaline? Thanks.

Oregon oldtimer - I just wanted to say thanks, your post was amazing. I've tried to learn about bicarbonate loading online before, but your post is the best summary I've seen. Very detailed and informative. I'm not sure whether I'll try this or not, but now I can make a much more informed decision. (I probably wouldn't do it in a high stakes competition, even if it proves to work for me in workouts, because I would feel bad about the fairness aspect. But if I could finally break 2:00 for the 800 this way in a time trial, that would be a lot of fun.)

Anyway, thanks again, oregon oldtimer!! Also, just out of curiosity, have you tried this yourself and how did it go? (Not as informative as the research, of course, but I'm curious!)

B-Sample wrote:

Thanks o.o. for that detailed post.

Do you have an opinion on the use of Tums (calcium carbonate)? Is it not sufficiently alkaline? Thanks.

I will add my 2 cents as an organic chemist who uses these compounds regularly in the lab. Calcium carbonate is more basic (it is the doubly deprotonated form of carbonic acid) so it is actually more alkaline than sodium bicarbonate. Also, calcium salts have lower aqueous solubility than sodium (in general). So I would guess it might not be as good as baking soda (but will defer to oregon oldtimer).

From my experience, potassium bicarbonate is WAY more soluble in water than sodium bicarbonate. I had to use bicarbonate for the workup of a reaction, and the required volume of water using sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO3) was enormous. I found potassium bicarbonate (KHCO3) was dramatically more soluble, and I could use a lot less water to dissolve the required amount. Thus KHCO3 may be even better than NaHCO3, in that you would not need as much water volume to take with it. Again, I defer to O.O. for his expert opinion on the matter. Not sure if the accompanying potassium ion would have different effects than the sodium ion.

Along the lines of the calcium carbonate question, I wonder what the effect would be of sodium carbonate (Na2CO3) versus NaHCO3. You would get two "deprotonations" or neutralizations per molecule of base using Na2CO3 compared with NaHCO3. But with Na2CO3 having a significantly higher pKa, there may be harmful effects to ingesting it.

Meb FTW wrote:

Yeah. Tried it. Crappy result.

Crap. That blows.

Sodium bicarbonate no longer exists. The chemistry community now refers to that particular substance as "sodium hydrogen carbonate." Thanks, please revise your vocabulary.

It is used for abortions. You can read about it over in the planned parenthood thread.

FINALLY! Someone who knows what they're talking about.

This study is pretty clear:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2403

. It's too bad most won't be able to access the full text. I did upload an image of a graph that's pretty descriptive:

http://oi68.tinypic.com/214d361.jpg

. There's a lot of other great data in the full text that's really interesting.

Bad copy/paste job: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24031

1 tsp is 5gm - holy moly - I take 500mg if I've had too much protein and salt (I've had gout before) and sometimes if I haven't had too much to eat I will experience absolutely painful nausea. Memory is hazy but maybe I just needed more water based on another post (by a chemist).

i think those that want to try this should weigh out 20g of sodium bicarb (thats about right at 0.3g/kg bw for a 68kg person). just see how much that is. no fun way of taking that, capsule or not. that's also a ton of sodium, about 5.5g - daily intake of 2.5g was just revoked but if high BP and sensitive to Na then still recommended to keep under 2.5g/day. so if you are one of the unlucky who are sensitive to salt for BP, watch out...

be sure to have tp in hand and the bathroom near by for this one.

Here are a couple of links to abstracts of a couple of applied bicarbonate studies. The first one is specifically looking at bicarb use for the 800-m, the second one at 400-m.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6312244

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2830108

I never tried it myself for the very reason that I was never in competitive track racing shape when I thought it would be beneficial. I have had several 1500-5000m athletes (3:50-14:10) try it out and ALL of them felt that it worked. All anecdotal but... One of my recent grad students investigated the potential effects of bicarbonate with resistance training and the results appeared to be promising; however, we had two previous studies that showed it to not impact resistance exercise performance.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22941193

Disregarding the moral/ethic issues, knowing what I know about it, I'd probably try it if I was a competitive athlete. Essentially, any activity that promotes a high acid load in the muscle/blood would benefit by enhancing the buffer system, of which bicarbonate is the primary extracellular buffer and very easy to manipulate.

Calcium carbonate (TUMS) is very poorly absorbed from the stomach and as such does not have any impact on plasma pH. It can be packed in gelatin capsules to use as a placebo in bicarbonate studies (double-blind studies). It essentially acts in the gut as a very effective buffer for stomach acid (i.e., acid indigestion).

1.5s over 400 is an extreme improvement

Would calcium carbonate nullify sodium bicarbonate in this application? If not it might mitigate the g.i. side-effects. I remember I at least felt more comfortable at 800-1500 pace using the antacids. I never was a post-race puker, but it was nice to not feel like I got hit by the "gutmobile" afterwards.

I don't compete on the track anymore, but rock climb at a high level, where muscular acidosis is a limiting factor. I may give it a try in that context this season.

Calcium carbonate wouldn't likely mitigate the negative side-effects of sodium bicarb. The issue is that the sodium bound with the bicarbonate has an osmotic effect and draws water into the gut causing gastric cramping and diarrhea. It is essentially like drinking salt water. The sodium dose is huge. If one was to take too much sodium bicarbonate (>0.3 g/kg) you have the possibility of increasing pH of the blood over 7.5 and at that point you will start getting nausea. The key to ingestion of sodium bicarb is to dilute it down with plenty of fluid. Almost without exception, the individuals that have g.i. problems don't not drink adequate fluids. Even those that do drink adequately, about 10% will still have g.i. issues.

Spot on with what I know about it.

My question is why take it for a triathlon? Not creating that much acidity for an event lasting >2 hours. Seems like a lot of risk for what reward?