"Do Alkaline Diets Help Athletic Performance?"
Theoretically, bathing your muscles in an alkaline environment should enable
faster acid removal from muscle cells, delaying the muscle fatigue
that's due to the buildup of lactic acid in the muscle.
Given these buffering effects, no wonder sodium bicarbonate —
in other words, baking soda — has been found to have such
significant ergogenic or performance-enhancing
effects on muscular endurance.
The problem with loading with baking soda is that it frequently
causes severe gastrointestinal distress, and at standard doses
you could easily take in twice the recommended upper daily limit
of sodium in just that one load. Therefore, what about a low-acid diet,
which focuses on high intakes of fruits and vegetables?
That may be an attractive alternative to bicarbonate loading
for improving anaerobic exercise performance,
meaning short burst activity like sprinting.
Today's diets are acid-forming, meaning higher in animal foods
with fewer vegetables and fruits,
whereas in general, the alkaline- promoting diet is centered around
whole plant foods, with few processed foods and less meat, dairy and eggs,
which are accepted as acid-forming foods. Although alkalizing chemicals
such as sodium bicarbonate have been shown to consistently improve
performance, alkalizing diets do not demonstrate the same effect.
A review of ten studies that investigated
the effect of high versus low dietary acid loads on athletic performance
did not find consistently improved exercise performance
at maximal or submaximal exercise intensities.
However, maybe they just didn't go alkaline enough?
For example, in this study
they had people eat more fruits and vegetables
and less meat, cheese, cereals, and eggs,
but saw no difference in any performance-related parameters.
But a sufficiently alkaline diet is characterized by the production
of alkaline urine, a pH of pee at least 7 or higher.
And if you look at what the participants achieved,
most failed to meet the benchmark,
so their diet may just not have been alkaline-forming enough.
In this study showing enhanced 400-meter sprint performance,
they were able to swap out enough meat, eggs, cheese
and cereal products, and swap in enough fruits and vegetables
that they were just barely able to make 7,
and they did get a little performance boost, suggesting that it's possible
to improve sprint performance by consuming alkalizing natural foods
and beverages, without the ingestion of baking soda.
Thus, an alkalizing diet may be an easy and natural way
to enhance performance. However, the performance
enhancement was only about 2% — just a few seconds.
But check out this study.
The same general strategy: more fruits and vegetables,
and less the acid-promoting foods such as meats, cheeses,
and refined grains. But they weren't messing around.
Six to eight cups of vegetables,
plus more than four servings of fruit a day, got
their urine up over 7, and a 21% performance enhancement.
That's extraordinary.
Now this doesn't necessarily mean it has anything to do with the pH.
I mean they ate more vegetables, which contain dietary nitrates,
which alone acutely improve exercise performance.
It's possible that nitrates might have enhanced
exercise performance during the low-acid trial.
However, that would entail extracting more energy
from every breath, and they didn't find that.
But any time you make huge changes in peoples' diets,
it's hard to pinpoint exactly what made the critical difference.
But these extra benefits are a feature, not a bug.
Because a more alkaline-forming diet is rich in fruits and vegetables,
and deplete of many unhealthy foods, a low-acid diet could not only provide
exercise performance benefits, but might also reduce chronic disease risk.
Any performance benefits in non-athletes?
The effect of an alkaline diet on body composition
and aerobic exercise performance of sedentary women.
A randomized controlled trial, swapping in vegetable protein
sources like legumes for animal protein sources, and...
a greater decrease in weight, body fat mass, lactic acid accumulation,
and perceived exertion levels, all the while exhibiting a boost
in exercise performance duration and VO2 max levels,
which is a measure of fitness.
Again pH could just be one of many explanations why eating healthier
could make you perform better, but either way
we should recommend athletes of all ages focus on consuming
ample amounts of fruits and vegetables, if only to maintain long-term health.