There are two important benefits of increased buffering with sodium bicarbonate delivery through PR Lotion. First, enhanced buffering capacity to limit the negative impact of rapid acid production in the muscle. This can diminish the progression of fatigue during high intensity training session and competitions, thereby enabling high quality training and maintenance of performance during competition. Second, PR Lotion can reduce the sensation of post-exercise or delayed onset muscle soreness. That is, sodium bicarbonate may alleviate post exercise inflammation and edema or swelling following intense training, allowing athletes to recover more effectively and increase “readiness” for subsequent training sessions. Combined, PR Lotion can be an important tool to enhance the quality of training loads, allow effective recovery between training sessions, and enable the maintenance of desired performance outcomes. The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by the Institutional Review Board at the University of Oregon. The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study. Author contributions

BW holds equity in Momentous and has served as a scientific advisor to Momentous; BW stands to financially benefit from the success of Momentous’ products; BW has engaged in this research for and is publishing on behalf of Momentous. JH has received a research contract from Momentous; the University of Oregon remains Halliwill’s primary place of employment and all research are attributed to the University of Oregon. As the sets progressed and the weights increased, I did notice something: I was breathing just as hard as ever, but my legs still felt primed for more. Call it a fluke. Call it a placebo. IDK, but the fatigue I would normally experience just wasn’t there, particularly in my calves. Sodium bicarbonate is a simple, naturally occurring electrolyte that your body uses to regulate pH. While most people know it as baking soda, sodium bicarbonate has been widely used and researched as a performance aid since the 1930’s. However, there's a catch - when consumed orally, sodium bicarbonate can cause major GI distress, offseting any performance benefits. Using patented technology, PR Lotion delivers sodium bicarbonate directly to your working muscles through your skin, bypassing the gut and eliminating GI distress.

As expected, only using the lotion on my lower muscles, I got nearer the upper number of applications from the bottle – 14, to be precise. Early work by Costill et al., ( Costill et al., 1984), found that oral sodium bicarbonate could reduce metabolic acidosis in response to repeated bouts of supramaximal cycling and this was associated with improvements in cycling performance. Since then, the use of oral sodium bicarbonate as an ergogenic aid has produced mixed results due in part to differences in dosing practices, exercise models, acute ingestion versus chronic loading, and variation in gastrointestinal tolerance ( Carr et al., 2011; Calvo et al., 2021). The Topical Edge investigators recruited eight volunteer competitive cyclists and put them to the test: each of the participants completed two sessions of high-intensity intervals two days apart. For the first session, half were randomized to PR Lotion and the other half to a control lotion that contained all the ingredients of the PR Lotion except the active ingredient. For the second session, the participants “crossed-over” to the alternate lotion so that each participant performed one session using the PR Lotion and the other session using the control lotion. Neither the investigators nor the participants knew which lotion they received in both instances. In other words, this was a double-blinded, randomized, controlled crossover trial, which is a particularly rigorous study design. How do you avoid this problem? Ideally, the study is designed with a specific prediction or hypothesis in mind, which is then tested through experimentation to determine whether or not the hypothesis is wrong. In this case, the investigators hypothesized that PR Lotion would increase pH and lactate levels and would confer a performance benefit. When they tested this prediction with their experiments, the prediction was wrong. There was no significant difference in performance in either the short or long intensity tests. There was no significant difference in pH in either the short or long intensity tests. There was no significant difference in lactate in the longer intensity test, but lactate was significantly higher (10.8 vs 9.7 mmol/L for PR Lotion and placebo, respectively; P<0.05) after the short intensity series. In a separate poster presentation, the investigators hypothesized that PR Lotion would lower DOMS 24 hours after exercise and would result in faster recovery from DOMS from 24 hours to 48 hours after exercise. Again, the results suggest the prediction was wrong, as 24-hour DOMS scores were not reported and the 48-hour results were split: no significant difference after the long intensity test, but DOMS was significantly lower (P=0.007) with PR Lotion use vs placebo after the short intensity testing.

The answer to this question is... well, yes and no. I've had three months to try to quantify the benefits and the answer is: some.Sodium bicarbonate is a naturally occurring electrolyte in the body and it, along with all of the other ingredients of this lotion, is entirely legal under World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) rules. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. Publisher’s note Siegler, J.C., et al., Mechanistic Insights into the Efficacy of Sodium Bicarbonate Supplementation to Improve Athletic Performance. Sports Med Open, 2016. 2(1): p. 41. After giving the lotion a few minutes to soak in, I got right into my usual leg day workout that consisted of squats, deadlifts, and a couple other burners. BG, KN, BW, CM, and JH conceived and designed the experiment. BG, KN, BK, and JH performed experiments. BG, KN, and JH analyzed data. BG, CM, and JH interpreted results of experiments. BG and JH prepared figures and tables. BG and JH drafted the manuscript. All authors edited or revised the manuscript. All authors approved the final version of the manuscript. Funding