Bicarb and PR Lotion - Still in Vogue?

Training
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This is an interesting question and discussion.

My curiosity was piqued so like @Weiwentg, I looked into this.

Why sodium bicarbonate lotion?

It is thought that GI distress mitigates some of the performance-enhancing effects of sodium bicarbonate. Momentous have created a lotion as a possible alternative, which in theory, would allow Sodium bicarbonate to hit the bloodstream while bypassing the stomach.

What does the research say?

As @Weiwentg pointed out, in 2020 McKay and colleagues found no effect of PR lotion on blood buffering capacity compared to a placebo group. In contrast, orally consumed sodium bicarbonate did improve blood buffering capacity, which is consistent with the sum of the literature.

Following this study, Gibson and colleagues (2023) looked at the impact of a higher dose of PR lotion on pH. McKay et al. (2020) used a PR Lotion dose of 0.90 g/kg of body weight, whereas Gibson and colleagues used, on average, 1.23 g/kg. In contrast to the prior study by McKay et al. (2020), they found that pH was altered compared to placebo, but crucially, they did not look at whether those changes translated into performance improvements.

Gibson and colleagues observed pH for 120 minutes whereas McKat et al. (2020) only observed pH for 90 minutes. Interestingly, Gibson et al. (2023) observed the highest serum pH at 120 min which might suggest that the timing of the application is important.

HOWEVER, some researchers involved in this study hold equity in the company supplying the PR lotion, have served as a scientific advisors to Momentous and ultimately stand to financially benefit from the success of Momentous’ products.

Finally, I found one other paper that was similarly funded by Momentous.

They looked at the impact of PR lotion on performance in male team sport athletes. The participants were split into three groups:

  1. Sodium bicarbonate oral capsules + placebo lotion
  2. Placebo capsules + Sodium bicarbonate lotion
  3. Placebo capsules + placebo lotion

They found that consuming sodium bicarbonate orally improved repeated sprint performance by about 2% and maximal aerobic endurance capacity by about 21%. Similar improvements in repeated sprint times were observed after applying the lotion (~2%), but no significant benefits were reported for maximal aerobic endurance capacity or blood acid–base balance compared to the placebo. The authors concluded that “PR Lotion might not be an effective delivery system for transporting NaHCO3 (sodium bicarbonate) molecules across the skin and into systematic circulation”.

So what can we take away from this?

As you guys have alreayd said, at the moment, the evidence doesn’t seem to support the use of Sodium Bicarbonate lotion for improving performance.

Does that mean you should throw it away if you have already bought it?
No! I can’t see any down sides to using it. And there’s always a possibility that you respond better than the average person :wink:

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Yes an no! :smiley: If you want to use sodium bicarb to enhance performance there a wide & deep body of literature tell you
1.) How to do it in terms of dose, timing, methods to avoid GI distress, etc
2.) What kinds of activities sodium bicarb will improve
3.) What sort of performance improvement to expect.

PR lotion uses menthol to make the skin permeable and allow transdermal transport of sodium bicarb. Similar to what most caffeine shampoos do…ever use a caffeine shampoo that doesn’t have menthol in it?

Problem is, the transport isn’t all that effective & (in my opinion) insuffcient to induce an ergogenic benefit.

So if you want to use bicarb, just use bicarb. It’s proven effective. The dose is well understood. Method of consumption is well understood. It’s super cheap.

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And we’re back to Def Leppard again😆

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I think the paper reported about 40g a dose on average. I should point out that a standard Amp Human bottle is reported as 300g, and it says 10-15 uses. So the company’s intended average dose is 20-30g.

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Great point @Weiwentg! This is definitely worth noting for anyone who does find themself with the gel already. Make sure you use a large enough dose to at least give yourself a chance of reaping ergogenic effects :+1:.

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It does follow that if we can’t poison ourselves with topical amounts of antiperspirant or non-mineral sun screen that a topical bicarb wouldn’t make it through to the blood stream in any meaningful amount. That being said I do wonder about fascial interactions and bicarb lotion. It could be that maybe instead of actually lowering the amount of free hydrogen created during exercise it just creates somewhat of a numbing sensation thanks to the menthol. Sort of the opposite of undrbutr’s light it up. Though I do wonder where the sensation of fatigue or soreness actually comes from and if it’s not from deep within the working muscles and more from the fascia that such a bicarb cream could help with whatever “acidity” is created at that level. For those who say that because a white paper says this stuff doesn’t work probably shouldn’t go looking for anything about sports massage not actually lowering lactate levels any more than just putting your legs up lest you not believe your foam rolling and normatec boots actually do anything for recovery other than make you feel good. And to that effect we come full circle back to what Amp is probably most useful for. Making you feel good, or at least better, or maybe just different. Considering the high mental component to performance I’m never one to discount anyone’s methods for a mental boost no matter how “ineffective” it’s supposed to be.

For myself I do have a bottle I bought long ago with a strava coupon that’s just below half full maybe and getting to the point where I have to wonder if it “expires” or gets weird/separates. I never really liked the sensation it provided because it just made my legs feels strange and highlighted any working areas I didn’t apply it to like my glute meds. Plus it makes putting on bib shorts extra difficult as it’s rather tacky. The one place I do find it somewhat useful is for recovery as when applied after a workout/ride my legs “feel” better sooner. If it weren’t for the smell of it that I can barely tolerate I’d probably use it more often. I emailed them a while back asking if they’d make a “recovery” version of the lotion that smelled nicer but clearly that’s not on the roadmap as they haven’t.

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Just pointing out also that the CL- part of salt is what can give you the emergency blows when taken in large quantities. The sodium citrate greatly reduces the risk of those stomach issues that can lead to a Tom Doumalin episode.

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I always that it was 1) an osmolarity thing: e.g. 3 Na + Citrate vs. 1 Na + 1 Cl, so you get more Na more molecular with sodium citrate and 2) a taste thing (less salty).

It’s been a while since my Acid/Base chemistry and buffering agent days so can’t say there isn’t an element (hahahah) of a acid/conjugate-base buffering system going on.

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I would not use it here or there
I would not use it anywhere

–Dr Seuss, probably