Bicarbonate Supplements and Athletes
About Bicarbonate Supplements and Athletes
Sodium bicarbonate has the chemical formula NaHCO3. It’s a mildly alkaline salt made up of sodium and bicarbonate ions.
Sodium bicarbonate reduces acidity in your muscles, which helps you exercise longer.
Increased acidity alters pH levels, causing your muscles to burn and feel fatigued.
Reduces the buildup of lactic acid.
Muscles work hard to keep up with the demand for energy by converting carbohydrate to lactic acid. A build-up of acid inside the muscle cells is one factor responsible for fatigue. Sodium bicarbonate (NaHCO3) has been proposed as a performance enhancing aid by reducing acidosis during exercise. By increasing bicarbonate concentration in muscles can increase the buffering of hydrogen ions and prevent or slow the acid buildup. This helps delay muscle fatigue and give a boost for longer lasting performance (Shelton & Kumar, 2010).
Sodium bicarbonate is used as an ergogenic aid and as an ingredient in prescription and over-the-counter medications. Many studies have explored the effects of sodium bicarbonate on performance in various modes of exercise, including combat sport tasks, resistance exercise, and single and repeated high-intensity cycling, running, swimming, and rowing (Grgić et al., 2021). Athletes’ consumption will allow them to load sodium bicarbonate before training or race.
Supplementation
Ergogenic sources help delay the onset of fatigue. These resources can a positively affect physical or mental performance. Sodium bicarbonate, which has other names such as names such as baking soda, bread soda, cooking soda, bicarbonate of soda, may be beneficial in enhancing muscular endurance, especially during high intensity exercise and in the later stages of endurance workouts. studies have also shown that sodium bicarbonate helped increase performance in interval and high intensity training, especially in increasing time to exhaustion and muscular endurance (Lino et al., 2021).
What is the Proper Dosing?
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.
For single-dose supplementation protocols, the recommended timing of sodium bicarbonate ingestion is between 60 and 180 min before exercise or competition.
Long Term Effects?
Long-term use of sodium bicarbonate (e.g., before every exercise training session) may enhance training adaptations, such as increased time to fatigue and power output. The most common side-effects of sodium bicarbonate supplementation are bloating, nausea, vomiting, and abdominal pain. The incidence and severity of side-effects vary between and within individuals, but it is generally low.
To Use or Not to Use?
Sodium bicarbonate has the potential to improve sports performance especially in terms of time to exhaustion for endurance athletes. The benefits can vary from person to person, depending on the type of activity and a person’s sex, personal tolerance, and training level. Overall, supplementation with sodium bicarbonate (doses from 0.2 to 0.5 g/kg) improves performance in muscular endurance activities.