body (urine) pH and workout capacity

Started by Edward Henigin, August 17, 2017 · 3 Replies · 8,090 Views

Edward Henigin

I've been following/reading Chris Masterjohn for years now. He just posted something today that's got me scratching my head.

https://chrismasterjohnphd.com/2017/08/16/measuring-urine-ph-got-love-working/

Basically, he found that after adding bicarbonate and creatine supplementation, his workouts have gotten much stronger.

Like, wow? It's got me pretty curious. We'll see how this all plays out, of course. It could end up being spurious, nothing real or useful. Or, it could be a neat tool/approach.

Suzanna McGee

I am not going to comment the article itself, but just from my own experience, I eat almost entirely alkalizing foods and it has definitely helped my training and recovery. I have done the soda bicarbonate experiments back in the past (when bodybuilding, long time ago) but at this point of my life, I prefer to make things simple, go back to the nature and eat just a bunch of vegetables and fruits, which give me  also many other health benefits.

Nick Murray

Blood pH isn't predicted by urine pH.

https://sciencebasedpharmacy.wordpress.com/2009/11/13/your-urine-is-not-a-window-to-your-body-ph-balancing-a-failed-hypothesis/

Something else that's come to mind. Ingesting bicarbonate (don't forget there are many types of bicarb, depending on the metal the C03 is bonded with) prior to an intense workout might reduce the effects of other metabolites - lactates and similar - but the kidneys are still going to try to get your blood pH back to its 7-7.4 normal range, so the bicarbonate effect will be temporary. The other issue is that trained muscle has a higher capillary density than untrained muscle, so the benefits of ingesting bicarb, it getting into the bloodstream, and then to muscle will probably - I have no evidence to cite, just thinking about the physiology - be higher in people who are already trained. So someone just starting out may not really notice any difference. Or they may not train hard enough to notice any difference.