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Re: [RC] sodium bicarb - Jon . LindermanMaggie, Briefly: Sodium bicarbonate is the major blood buffering system for metabolic acids like lactic acid, and the major carrier of CO2 in the body. To be effective the dose is enormous for a horse. Std Bred trainers try to "jug" or "milk shake" horse with a stomach tube to get the dose in the neighborhood of 300 mg/kg bodyweight. That would be over 120 grams of sodium bicarb in a 900# horse. It is illegal according to the US Trotting Association and a positive test would yield very high blood PCO2 values or very high urine bicarbonate values. Too much and it can make blood to alkaline supressing the central nervous system. Small doses have no effect. Jon K. Linderman, Ph.D., FACSM (brief enuf?)
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