Baking soda pre and mid workout ?

Hi !

I read an article

 http://www.livestrong.com/article/485588-baking-soda-for-sore-muscles/

hope you can see.

The article is about supplementing baking soda pre and mid workout to reduce muscle soreness ( the build up of lactic acid ) 

Is someone familiar with this ?

What are the negative effects of baking soda ? 

Thank you !

Lactic acid doesn't cause soreness. I don't see any reason to do this.

Daniel Burnham said:

Lactic acid doesn't cause soreness. I don't see any reason to do this.

I don't know man, it's a great way to get mid-exercise explosive diarrhea. I hear some people like that!

The soreness is caused by micro muscle tears and not the waste products created while exercising ?

It definitely does NOT come from lactate buildup, no.

No one really knows for sure where soreness comes from, but at this point the literature is fairly consistently showing that the pain seems to be due to post-exercise inflammation, which in turn is due to some membranes partially rupturing. This leaks positive ions out, which draw monocytes to the area and starts the cycle of acute inflammation, which in turn brings nutrients to the area and potentiates satellite cell recruitment, which is what finally causes most (if not all)of the healing and growth to occur.

There is one surefire way to prevent soreness: Exercise regularly. Your body will adapt and will not get sore because it develops better tension distribution systems within the muscle tissue. This greatly reduces the amount of damage done, in turn reducing inflammation and finally soreness.

You'll always feel a bit tight, because that is the inflammation healing your muscles. You will not, however, experience DOMS if you are training correctly.

Joshua Naterman said:

It definitely does NOT come from lactate buildup, no.

 

No one really knows for sure where soreness comes from, but at this point the literature is fairly consistently showing that the pain seems to be due to post-exercise inflammation, which in turn is due to some membranes partially rupturing. This leaks positive ions out, which draw monocytes to the area and starts the cycle of acute inflammation, which in turn brings nutrients to the area and potentiates satellite cell recruitment, which is what finally causes most (if not all)of the healing and growth to occur.

 

 

There is one surefire way to prevent soreness: Exercise regularly. Your body will adapt and will not get sore because it develops better tension distribution systems within the muscle tissue. This greatly reduces the amount of damage done, in turn reducing inflammation and finally soreness.

 

You'll always feel a bit tight, because that is the inflammation healing your muscles. You will not, however, experience DOMS if you are training correctly.

Wow, I used to trust the Livestrong articles but now I am confused. It seems that I believe the most stuff that is written on a shiny paper. Im ashamed now.

I have seen very little good information on that website.

The theory it came from lactic acid is old and has been replaced by basically what josh said.

MrPuppeh said:

Wow, I used to trust the Livestrong articles but now I am confused. It seems that I believe the most stuff that is written on a shiny paper. Im ashamed now.

We all go through this.

The hardest part of being a true professional is to allow your beliefs to change as the body of evidence changes, and to do this you have to constantly keep up with the research.

You cannot trust very many internet sources.

If you're interested in muscle soreness you may want to look into Hydroxy-proline.

now I am curious. Off to Google!

I couldn't find much, in terms of supplementation, only that some people seem to believe that hydroxyproline, a specific hydroxyamino acid that is also a rate limiting factor in collagen synthesis, is largely responsible for the soreness, and that trials with gelatin supplementation yielded no significant results in DOMs modification.

Apparently, though, increasing heat shock proteins with a pre-emptive exposure to heat appears to limit how bad soreness gets. That's just something I remember from a while ago, I don't remember too many specifics as far as WHY that would work.

Yeah it rises in urine levels following tissue damage, specifically to connective tissue, and has been correlated with muscle soreness. This could specifically be damaged elastin.

It's interesting research.

It is. It wouldn't surprise me, considering the nature of eccentric contraction and the amount of strain induced.

It's an easy trap in which to fall. There are an every increasing number of outlets for information. As a percentage, less of those are reliable. As a has-been reporter I devour news for a few hours a day and I trust very few sources of information. Sites like Livestrong generally pay freelancers very small amounts on a "per article" basis. As these folks are freelancers most sites neither check the individuals' qualifications nor fact check the articles. The less time these folks spend learning about the subjects, the more "articles" they write, the more money they make. They often sell the same "article" to multiple sites. While they are far from perfect, the standards of professionalism and fact-checking held by large publications like the New York Times do count for something. If you have the time, peer-reviewed journals are also great. 

If you're looking to be able to judge articles with a more critical eye start by looking at their sources. Note, the article linked contains almost no sources in the body of the article, only a few in a list below. Sloppy at best. Two of the sources are non-reviewed opinion sites (although the "reporter doesn't tell you that... shady). The third source is a news outlet (always poor form to base your reporting largely on another outlet). The fourth source held hope because hey, it's the Mayo Clinic... those folks are freakin brilliant! It turns out that it really has nothing to do with Mayo clinic. The link is just a generic pharmacy entry from a database that has nothing to do with Mayo Clinic research. It's just a database they link to through their website to drum up traffic. Even it makes no mention of using it for exercise.

The above posts seem smart and are batting well out of my league. I noticed a far simpler problem with the idea. It assumes, without testing, that changing the pH of the stomach will automatically change that in the muscles (which as pointed out, still wouldn't address DOMS). The GI system is very complicated and there are a lot of steps between putting something in your mouth and producing results in the muscle. They've made a huge jump that has a folk appeal but without testing is nothing better than a guess. Thank goodness they didn't stretch it any further than they already did... it was only a matter of time before they applied their logic to cannibalism and it's benefits for building muscle.

Don't feel bad though, we all get sucked in by seemingly good ideas. I make mistakes like this every day.

At least your teeth will be nice and white.