Does Drinking Baking Soda Really Help You Lose Weight?
Baking soda, or sodium bicarbonate, is a common household ingredient that is frequently used in baking. However, it's also thought to promote weight loss. That's because baking soda can act as an antacid. According to LiveStrong, this means that baking soda works to neutralize the acids in your stomach, which can help soothe indigestion. When baking soda reacts with stomach acid, it releases water and carbon dioxide, which can gastrointestinal gas and lead to burping.
While this can certainly help settle your stomach, it is also commonly believed to help your body break down fat. However, this theory has been disproven. As it turns out, baking soda does not have a direct effect on body fat. Therefore, drinking or ingesting it cannot help you lose weight. In order to lose weight, you can need to burn more calories than you eat, and baking soda has no direct impact on that.
Baking soda may influence athletic performance
Although baking soda won't cause you to lose weight, it may have an impact on your athletic performance. According to Women's Health, research has shown that consuming baking soda may help improve your workouts at the gym. A 2013 study published in the European Journal of Applied Physiology found that people who consumed baking soda an hour before working out had less muscle fatigue and were able to exercise for much longer. Meanwhile, another study published in PLOS ONE found that baking soda improved participants' cycling time to exhaustion.
"Sodium bicarbonate may benefit endurance by making the blood slightly more alkaline (i.e., less acidic)," Dr. Rachele Pojednic, an assistant professor of nutrition at Simmons College, told Women's Health. "Having less acid in the working muscle would actually delay the onset of muscle fatigue."
This means that baking soda may be able to help improve your endurance, allowing you to exercise for longer. However, further research is still needed to confirm the effects of baking soda on athletic performance.