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Maurten BiCarb launches digitally-dosed supplements to improve performance

Maurten BiCarb sodium bicarbonate sports nutritional supplement
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If you’re training extremely hard, like with quad-incinerating intervals, or competing in extremely intense levels, like in cyclocross or criterium races, then you’ve probably heard of lactic acid. And felt that burn. And maybe you’ve heard that sodium bicarbonate can buffer that burning sensation. Maybe you’ve even tried it, then also didn’t like it, and gave up on it.

Now, Maurten says they’ve solved for the stomach and GI distress common with typical NaHCO₃ loading by combining it with a hydrogel that helps move it through the stomach quickly, where it can break down and be absorbed more slowly in the intestines. Here’s their video explanation:

The short of it is this: Extreme exercise creates Hydrogen ions, which lower muscle pH (called acidosis) and causes that burning sensation. Sodium Bicarbonate helps move those H+ ions out of the muscles faster, so you can go harder and longer.

Maurten BiCarb sodium bicarbonate sports nutritional supplement components B and C

Maurten BiCarb is sold in four-serving kits that include three parts: The mixing bowl, the hydrogel powder, and the sodium bicarbonate mini pills. The pills are dosed based on body weight and experience, and you enter your weight online when ordering, then they send the correctly sized packets.

The included gel contains about 40g of carbs, about 14g of which are sugars. You mix the powder with water to create a thick gel, then fold in the tablets when you’re ready to consume them, ideally 1.5-2 hours before training or competition.

At $65 per four-serving kit, it’s best reserved for race days and the most important training sessions. But also, they contain a LOT of sodium (4,100mg to 6,800mg, depending on dose), and recommend limiting them to 2-3 servings per week. The kit includes a link to use their app, which helps you time the pre-use meal and ingestion based on planned workout time, too.

Maurten.com

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Mark
Mark
11 months ago

horrible, who wants to live this way ? I raised 4 high level athlete at the national level and would never subject them to this level of ridicule.

Roger Pedacter
Roger Pedacter
11 months ago
Reply to  Mark

The only part that deserves ridicule is using the idiotic marketing phrase “digitally dosed” for goop you mix in a bowl.

Roger Pedacter
Roger Pedacter
11 months ago

Alternate title:

Maurten charges $16 per serving of electrolytes to cover ridiculous marketing campaign costs.

Also, for those in the audience that can’t parse marketing scam nonsense, Informed Sport “certification” is a pay for play program.

Collin S
Collin S
11 months ago
Reply to  Roger Pedacter

Correct. Programs like NSF safe sport and others give zero indication that marketing claims are true, only that they do not have potentially bad stuff in there (banned substances on the wada list, heavy metals, bacteria contamination). You could get a bag of sugar certified for sport. Back when I worked for one of these certifications companies, there were essentially that, only they would use more technical names for sugar as their active ingredient. That’s not to say the mark is worthless. If I was an elite athlete who depended on my piss to be clean and there were two electrolyte mixes, one certified, the other not, I’d go with the certified one. Don’t want to pull a contador “steak-gate”.

Collin S
Collin S
11 months ago

$65 or $16.25 a serving for some baking soda tablets, sugars, and some thickeners. Man, I’m in the wrong business.

You can get about the same benefit by eating a couple of Tums before a hard effort and you can buy a costco sized container for like $12

Angstrom
Angstrom
11 months ago

According to other reports, what Maurten claims to have solved is the GI upset common with other forms of oral sodium bicarbonate. It’s based on their work that allows consumption of very high concentrations of carbohydrate without GI distress.

Weiwen
Weiwen
11 months ago

As I understand the science, bicarbonate’s effect is likely small. So, this is a marginal gain. If a handful of seconds matter, then sure, you do this sort of stuff.

I had tried AmpHuman’s bicarbonate lotion, knowing that the effect was likely to be small and very hard to distinguish from placebo. I figured I’d just get an intro kit, knowing there was a free trial period, and I’d decide after that kit if I wanted to keep it. I later found out that a study had showed that AmpHuman’s lotion didn’t raise blood bicarbonate levels, which you kind of need to do to have any effect. So I returned mine. AmpHuman was not cheap, and when I saw this stuff I was expecting something in the cost range of that product.

Basically, this is very expensive, and also there’s a whopping amount of sodium in there. This has got to be many times what I would sweat out in even a long ride. I mean, 4100mg is nearly twice the recommended daily allowance for sodium.

Fake Namerton
Fake Namerton
11 months ago

Cyclists are so silly. Just ride the bike, and do the intervals and most importantly have fun. This stuff isn’t rocket surgery.

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