Is Drinking Bicarb Soda Good for You? The Ultimate Guide to Bicarbonate Supplementation for Endurance Athletes
Is drinking bicarb soda good for you? Baking soda has become one of the most talked-about supplements in endurance sport. Some athletes swear by it. Others tried it once, spent the session looking for a toilet, and never touched it again. Both experiences are common, and it usually comes down to one thing: how you take it.
This guide will allow you to understand how bicarb works, whether it’s safe, and exactly how to use it to boost your next high-intensity effort.
WHAT IS SODIUM BICARBONATE?
It's the same stuff as baking soda in your kitchen cupboard. The difference with a sports supplement is the dose and the way it's delivered, both designed specifically for exercise rather than baking. In your body, it works as a buffer that soaks up some of the acid that builds up in your muscles during hard efforts, helping you keep going longer before fatigue sets in.
THE SCIENCE OF THE BURN: HOW THE BICARBONATE SYSTEM WORKS
When you push hard, your muscles produce hydrogen ions as a byproduct of working at high intensity, and it's these, not lactate, that cause the burning feeling in your legs or lungs. Lactate is closely linked to this process (it's produced alongside those hydrogen ions), but it's used as fuel rather than causing the burn itself.
Bicarbonate raises your blood pH before you start, giving your body a bigger buffer to mop up the hydrogen-ion build-up as it happens.
Think of it as topping up a sponge before you need it to soak something up.
IS IT SAFE TO DRINK BICARBONATE OF SODA?
For a healthy adult using it occasionally at a sensible dose, yes. It's been used by athletes for decades and isn't a banned substance.
It's not something to take every day as a general habit, though. A single sporting dose contains a lot of sodium, roughly four times what you'd get in a normal meal. That's fine as an occasional protocol before a hard session or a race. Don't sip it throughout the week.
Check with a doctor first if you have:
- Kidney disease
- High blood pressure or a heart condition
- You're on medication affecting sodium or blood pressure
- You're pregnant or breastfeeding
The most common side effect is an upset stomach: bloating, cramping, nausea, sometimes worse. This is the main reason people give up on it, and it's almost always down to how much you took and how you took it, not a reason to avoid it altogether.
BICARBONATE SUPPLEMENTS FOR ENDURANCE ATHLETES: DOES IT ACTUALLY WORK?
For the right kind of effort, yes, and it's better backed by research than most sports supplements. A large review of buffering supplements found sodium bicarbonate was the most effective one studied.
Across the wider research, athletes have seen performance improvements of around 3% in high-intensity efforts, and up to 10% in how long they can sustain hard exercise before exhaustion.
To put that in perspective, that's a similar scale of gain to what athletes pay a lot more for with aero wheels or race-day kit.
It helps most with: hard efforts lasting roughly one to ten minutes, or repeated hard efforts within a longer race. Think track events, time trials, HYROX, swimming, rowing, or a hilly ride with several hard climbs.
It won't do much for an easy, steady pace over a long distance. A marathon runner will likely see only a 1% improvement in performance; holding an even effort won't feel as beneficial as repeatedly pushing hard. But that doesn't mean it’s not worth it for longer efforts.
MANAGING THE SIDE EFFECTS: GI DISTRESS AND HOW TO AVOID IT
GI Distress is the side effect that decides whether you receive a genuine edge or a rough afternoon.
Dose.
Most research uses 0.2 to 0.3g per kilogram of bodyweight. If you're new to it, start at the lower end.
Timing.
The effect usually peaks somewhere between one and three hours after taking it, though this varies person to person, so you'll need to find what works for you.
Never try it for the first time on race day. Everyone responds a little differently. Test it in training a few times before you ever rely on it for a race.
A SIMPLE WAY TO TRY IT
- Pick an easy training day, not a key session, for your first go
- Start at 0.2g/kg bodyweight and sip on OTE Bicarb mix over 10/15 minutes 2 hours before your event/session.
- Take it alongside a small carb-based snack
- Finish around 120 to 90 minutes before you train
- Note how your stomach felt and how the hard efforts went
- Adjust and repeat a few times before considering it for a race
HOW OTE BICARB DRINK MIX SOLVES THE STOMACH PROBLEM
The science behind bicarbonate has never really been in question. The problem has always been getting an effective dose down without spending the next hour looking for a toilet.
Bicarb for Athletes is built around solving exactly that. It uses a natural gelling agent from fruit fibre to help protect the bicarbonate as it passes through your stomach, reducing the gastrointestinal discomfort so many athletes run into. Across more than 100 athlete trials, it's reported zero GI issues.
Because it's a bulk powder rather than a fixed dose, you control your serving size based on your body weight, which makes it easy to use the split-dosing approach above. It's also affordable enough to test regularly in training, not just save for race day, which matters given how individual your own response is likely to be.
It's best suited to athletes doing sustained or repeated efforts at or above threshold: track racers, time triallists, HYROX competitors, and triathletes tackling hilly or surging courses.
