Baking soda?!?

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hoosierdaddy
Posts: 17
Joined: Sat Jan 25, 2020 3:51 pm

by hoosierdaddy

The entire concept behind baking soda is flawed. The gist is lactic acid builds up during hard efforts, and baking soda increases the capacity to buffer it right? Wrong

Lactic acid doesn't exist, it's blood lactate. Lactate isn't bad. It isn't good. It's just lactate, a metabolic fuel. Muscular mitochondria consume lactate, and lactate gets combusted. It produces 2 ATP molecules, and then becomes converted into pyruvic acid. If oxygen is present, this pyruvic acid can re-enter the Kreb's Cycle and produce 36 ATP. This is known as the lactate shuttle!

flying
Posts: 2861
Joined: Mon Dec 19, 2005 9:16 am

by flying

Ive never used baking soda during exercise but many years ago I used it after in the form of Alka Seltzer

Was quite nice actually. When you got home really toasted it was something that helped a lot.
Probably because it is citric acid, aspirin, and sodium bicarbonate

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user83843
Posts: 56
Joined: Mon Mar 07, 2022 9:14 pm
Location: Idaho

by user83843

Ingesting bs has been around since the 60s for long sprint - mid distance events.
Last edited by user83843 on Mon Jun 19, 2023 6:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.

kervelo
Posts: 862
Joined: Wed Jan 21, 2009 6:58 am
Location: Finland

by kervelo

Seph wrote:
Wed Mar 22, 2023 9:43 pm
I read an article somewere declaring that some riders are experimenting a new supplement.
This new supplement is based on the use of baking soda, based on the testers that thing seems helping regarding the lactic acid during the final sprint.
Is that a real thing?
There is nothing new with the baking soda, it has been used decades ago. Also, it is BS.

One of the latest comments related to using baking soda by Iñigo San Millán:
https://www.cyclingnews.com/news/if-it- ... -benefits/

otnemem
Posts: 397
Joined: Fri Jun 28, 2019 7:55 am

by otnemem

Before quoting ISM, read this thread:
https://twitter.com/inside_exercise/sta ... F2Pbw&s=09
He tends to sound smart until people who are smarter show up. Then he sounds more like a petty kid.

RDY
Posts: 2327
Joined: Thu Jul 30, 2020 10:31 pm

by RDY

I use it in my bottles, but to neutralize acids in my mouth when riding - which it's far more useful for IMO.

Maybe it has some small effect on performance, in large doses ... difficult to tell - sample sizes are small as it upsets so many people's guts in the requisite doses. But 2% or more? No chance whatsoever. When so many athletes do so many dangerous and illegal things for less gain, the fact that so few bother even trying bs tends to suggest that any gain, if there is one, is really marginal. If it worked as well as some studies and sources indicated, the entire peloton would be on that new Maurten stuff (assuming it really doesn't upset your stomach), sponsored or not.

Berzin1
Posts: 237
Joined: Wed Jul 20, 2016 9:35 pm

by Berzin1

Doesn't sodium phosate supposedly do the same thing? The company Twinlab used to make it years ago, and I believe Hammer Nutrition still does-

https://hammernutrition.com/collections ... 1327545579

bikeboy1tr
Posts: 1394
Joined: Thu Mar 21, 2013 3:19 am
Location: Southern Ontario Canada

by bikeboy1tr

I do use it in my sport drink but only in small doses as I like the way it neutralizes the taste like RDY says. I have no belief it can do much performance wise and I am not about to take mega doses to try and find out.
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TheKaiser
Posts: 653
Joined: Thu Sep 05, 2013 3:29 pm

by TheKaiser

Just FYI, for anyone wanting to try Baking Soda/NaHCO₃, you don't need to do the big 20g+ acute doses if you don't want to.

The big doses provide the benefit of quickly seeing what effect you'd get from the supplement in only a couple of days of dosing, but for many they cause bowl upset, and even explosive loose stools, so it might be something best experimented with on the trainer, so a toilet is nearby. Testing on the trainer would also give you the most controlled environment for measuring any improvement you get.

The alternative to the big bolus doses is to do a chronic loading phase of 5g per day for 3-4 weeks. That is much better tolerated, even by those who couldn't take the 20g doses, and after the loading phase is complete your body's bicarb levels will be equivalent to where you would be after the short term big dosing strategy. Testing would be a bit harder, I suppose, as you couldn't do rapid A/B tests on the trainer, and the likelyhood of your fitness changing (in either direction) during the loading phase is greater, so, in other words, there is more opportunity for other variables to alter things, and less opportunity for repeat trials.

Regarding the worth of baking soda for cycling, there is some good data on people doing 5min Wingate tests, which is basically a Vo2 max effort, and it seemed to increase time to exhaustion, which could be good for cycling, but I have always wondered how that would/would not translate to that same 5min effort after 2hrs of riding at lower intensity, as that would be more representative of a bike race. I haven't looked into it in several years, so maybe someone has done some further testing, and if any of come across anything like that, please post it here as I'd love to see it.

pushpush
Posts: 280
Joined: Wed Feb 01, 2023 5:10 am

by pushpush

Speaking of things that seem like bullshit, I see people rubbing baking soda concoctions on their legs now too. I haven't bothered to look, but I don't think it even absorbs transdermally.

poulhansen
Posts: 297
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Location: Danmark

by poulhansen

I save it for baking and repairs with superglue :D
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