As an athlete, run coach and researcher, Amanda Regnier is fascinated by how the body responds and adapts to physical activity.
The former University of Saskatchewan Huskie is now a PhD student at Edge Hill University in England and is wrapping up her thesis on sodium bicarbonate in athletes. Regnier’s thesis involves a few distinct studies: looking at when bicarbonate peaks in the blood of active females during different phases of their menstrual cycles; studying how sodium bicarbonate supplementation affects cycling and running performance in females; and surveying recreational runners to understand what (if anything) they know about sodium bicarbonate supplementation.
Regnier hopes to defend her thesis this spring. As she wraps up her first draft, Regnier took time to speak to the Brainsport Times about her research and what runners should know about sodium bicarbonate supplementation. This interview has been edited and condensed.
What is sodium bicarbonate and how is it used in sports?
It’s basically just baking soda.
When you’re exercising, you’re increasing the acidosis of your muscles. A lot of people think it’s lactic acid that’s building up. There are some theories as to whether or not lactic acid even exists. We know there’s an acid part from the hydrogen ions and we know there’s lactate in your muscles and those both accumulate in high-intensity exercise. But it’s likely the hydrogen ions that are causing that acidosis and that burning sensation, not the lactate. The lactate’s actually metabolized and used for energy.
We have natural bicarbonate in our body and the bicarbonate kind of neutralizes that acid so we don’t have as much acid in our muscles when we’re working out. In theory, this should allow us to work out harder.
Sodium bicarbonate has traditionally been used by cyclists and we’ve found this to work quite well; they just mix baking soda with water and drink it. Runners have typically shied away from sodium bicarbonate because of the bouncing as they’re running. All the salt that goes into their stomachs can bring in a lot of water as well and cause a lot of upset stomachs.
The product I’m studying is a Maurten product of the bicarb system; the way you ingest it is through a gel. Instead of taking baking soda and mixing it with water, the sodium bicarbonate are formed into little tablets and surrounded by a hydrogel. The idea is that this will allow the bicarbonate to bypass your stomach and be absorbed as opposed to getting all of that bicarbonate and sodium in your stomach and your stomach filling up with water.
What have you discovered in your research so far?
With the menstrual cycle and cycling, I didn’t really find a lot of differences between phases of the menstrual cycle. There’s a lot of research to suggest that exercise isn’t really affected by the menstrual cycle and that’s what I found.
(In exercise tests), our lab saw significant improvements in 40-kilometre time trial performance in male cyclists. However, I did not see improvements in my research with females (four-kilometre cycling time trial and five-kilometre running time trial). For my runners, I was looking at recreationally trained female runners. Although I didn’t see a lot of benefit for my runners that I’ve tested, when I release that work I’m also going to explore some ideas of why, potentially, this population didn’t see the benefit and where, in theory, other runners may see the benefit. Some of the runners in my lab did benefit from the bicarb. I could publish and say: “On average it didn’t really improve performance,” but if you go through one by one you see some people did actually experience improvement with the bicarb. I think for higher level runners it may be beneficial. So looking at the results you might say: Maybe I want to try it because it works for some people.
Have you encountered any myths or misconceptions about sodium bicarbonate in the running community?
When I did my initial survey, I found a lot of people talked about the salt part of sodium bicarbonate, and that it’s great to have salt when you’re training, but I think the misconception is that sodium bicarbonate isn’t about taking the salt — it’s about the bicarbonate, which is buffering against that acidosis in the muscles.
There’s not a lot of research showing its benefit in runners at the moment because most runners using it have been using the water and baking soda method, and I think there’s a lot of misconception with diarrhea and vomiting and nausea. So those symptoms have really killed any wanting to use sodium bicarbonate.
It also seems like not a lot of runners are even aware that sodium bicarbonate is a thing that could impact performance. I had no idea it was a thing until I came across this project (for my PhD). Now that I’ve learned more about it, I think there is some potential — but it’s for a specific runner.
What kind of runner could benefit from sodium bicarbonate supplementation?
It’s for a runner who is pushing themselves to the max — likely in a race — where the product can really be beneficial as long as they’ve tested it out before
There’s been evolving theories on when to take it. The most popular one is to exercise when bicarbonate is highest in your blood. Typically, if you’re using baking soda in water, you get that peak in your bicarb and that’s when you exercise because your bicarb levels drop shortly after that. However, with the Maurten product, your bicarb levels will peak, but then they stay quite elevated so you have a little bit of flexibility with that. The company is suggesting that you take the product 90 minutes to two hours before you exercise because you do need to let that product elevate in your blood. Most of the research is showing that if you were just to take the product and then do your race right away, the bicarb doesn’t have enough time to get high enough in your blood to actually buffer that acidosis during exercise.
In terms of when you would take it or for what purpose you would take it, you would definitely have to take it during training because you never take new products during races. So you take it during training, likely during an interval workout, because that’s when you’re getting the most acidosis buildup and that’s what you want to be buffering so you can hold your really hard pace for a longer effort. If it’s working in interval workouts and you don’t have any gut issues, then that’s when you would take it to the race. And you would take it an hour-and-a-half to two hours beforehand.
It is important that you’re working at a hard effort. It’s in that hard effort that this will allow you to work harder and a little bit longer. If you’re working at a moderate effort, you’re likely not going to get the same acidosis build up in your muscles, and then the product’s not going to be working as well for you. It’s not to help make exercise easier — it’s to help you sustain those really hard efforts for longer.
What do you hope recreational runners take away from your research?
I would hope that they understand that bicarbonate could help their performance and that it is a safe product. We have bicarbonate naturally in our body anyway, so it’s not some kind of drug that you’re taking. And I would hope that they understand that the goal is to help them sustain high-intensity exercise if they’re working at a certain level. You have to be working quite hard for it to work — if you’re really pushing yourself in interval workouts or you’re really pushing yourself in a race. And then knowing that you could use this, but it’s really important that you practice before.
It seems there’s responders and non-responders, so you can try it, but there’s no guarantee that it’s going to work. But you could be a responder and see a benefit from it.
