pHour Salts™ created by Dr. Robert O. Young is the “ultimate” antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anti-aging, energy and athletic enhancer formulation of bicarbonate mineral salts:

A combination of four powerful bicarbonate mineral salts (sodium bicarbonate, magnesium bicarbonate, potassium bicarbonate, and calcium bicarbonate) These four antioxidant/anti-aging mineral salts are naturally occurring in all fluids of the body.
Specifically, they may aid in the reduction of dietary and metabolic acid (lactic acid) helping to maintain the alkaline design of the human body and slow down or reverse the aging or decay process.

“During the Olympics in Athens, Greece and Beijing, several top athletes have improved their athletic performance and even broke world records using sodium bicarbonate,” states Dr. Young.

A recent London Times article and scientific research substantiates Dr. Young’s claims, “some athletes relied on more rudimentary and legal means to boost their race times, including using a substance tucked away in a kitchen cupboard or in the back of a refrigerator.” This substance is sodium bicarbonate or baking soda.

“Athletes for years have sworn that taking a spoonful of bicarbonate of soda (baking soda) helps them to keep going for longer. For years, experts doubted that there was anything other than a placebo effect to these claims until they subjected the substance to rigorous examination. Most exercise scientists investigating the trend for “soda-doping” among athletes and gym-goers have shown that it offers
significant benefits for endurance and speed.”

At Loughborough University, for instance, physiologists reporting in the June issue of
the International Journal of Sports Medicine showed that swimmers who took baking soda about one hour before a 200m event were able to shave a significant time off their usual performances. Dr Jonathan Folland, who led the study, says that it is not uncommon for top swimmers to take sodium bicarbonate (another name for the substance) before a competition to give them an edge. Indeed, he showed that of nine swimmers tested, eight recorded their fastest times after ingesting a supplement of the common baking ingredient, sodium bicarbonate.

Another small study by Dr Ronald Deitrick, of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), showed that competitive runners also benefited. Dr Deitrick, who presented his findings at the ACSM annual conference, gave 800m runners either a placebo or a sodium bicarbonate capsule, which they took with water. Although a few of the runners had minor gastrointestinal problems after swallowing the capsules, a greater number benefited significantly.

Dr Deitrick believes that bicarbonate of soda can significantly improve performance. “If you took out the participants who experienced negative side-effects… you’d see an average improvement in running times of about 2.2 seconds,” Dr Deitrick says. “For a relatively short running distance, that’s very significant.”

How Does Sodium Bicarbonate Improve Athletic Performance?

During prolonged or intense exercise muscles produce large amounts of acidic
waste products, such as lactic acid, that lead to soreness, stiffness and fatigue. Because sodium bicarbonate naturally reduces acids, it acts as a buffer against the acid which would otherwise limit performance.

Current research suggests that it is particularly helpful in speed based events, including sprints, football and other fast moving games, and middle distance (up to 10km) running, swimming and cycling.

“Essentially, sodium bicarbonate is an alkaline substance that increases the pH of the blood,” Dr Folland says. “This seems to reduce and offset the acidity produced in the muscles during intense, anaerobic exercise that produces lactic acid most quickly, such as fast running or swimming.”

In Dr Folland’s study, swimmers who took the sodium bicarbonate knocked 1.5 seconds off their time for 200m, a difference that may seem insignificant to recreational swimmers but which is substantial at elite level.

Check out Dr Robert Young’s pHour Salts if you want to enhance your athletic performance.