Michael Woods ate bicarb with a spoon during the World Championships — why didn't it send him rushing to the toilet?

Michael Woods's meal to go, consumed in the earlier stages of the World Championship road race at the weekend, may have set Cycling Social Media (TM) on fire, but all the same didn't look like much. Unwieldy and not particularly appetising either.

Granted, riding in the Worlds road race at 25mph and more while eating with a bowl and spoon is fairly impressive. But it was what was in that bowl that was key.

"It was just some Maurten bicarb, it's really effective," Woods told US outlet Flobikes.

As many readers will already know, 'bicarb' – sodium bicarbonate to give it its full name – can improve athletic performance. Its benefits, which seem to come chiefly in the form of buffering against lactic acid, are well documented.

It can also be prescribed to combat heartburn, while studies have shown it can dampen inflammation in rats and slow the progress of kidney disease.

It is also entirely above board in the eyes of WADA and the UCI – as Woods's very public display would suggest.

It's no silver bullet though. It has downsides: a limited window of usefulness, for example and, crucially, the fact that it often causes gastric issues.

However, unlike the more common bicarb capsules, the Maurten bicarb Woods used comes in a gel that promises to eliminate much of the usual gastric distress, as well as keeping bicarb levels in the body higher for longer – claims that were backed up by a recent study in Sports Medicine, which compared Maurten's hydrogel supplement to a standard vegetarian capsule.

The Maurten bicarb system mixes bicarbonate of soda with hydrogel to offer what Maurten calls smoothest, most effective bicarb experience ever. All the same it does point out that high doses can lead to stomach issues: "You need to train the guts," it says.

The study was published earlier this year by Gough & Sparks of Birmingham City and Edge Hill universities. It concluded that the Maurten system "presents a major potential benefit for athletes considering SB as an ergogenic supplement as GI discomfort is almost eliminated."

Subjects using the bicarb system suffered significantly less severe symptoms, which range from stomach cramping to diarrhea.

It also showed that bicarbonate levels in the blood remained higher for longer with the Maurten hydrogel than with the capsules, concluding, "this might suggest there is an “ergogenic window”, and ingestion timing could therefore be flexible prior to exercise."

It did however add that "future research should determine if M-SB is performance enhancing."