When it comes to dietary supplements, sports nutrition is a very progressive category. Science and innovation help lead the way to incredible breakthroughs for enhanced performance, while also ensuring product safety and usefulness through well documented clinical trials. As a result, sports supplements like nitric oxide (NO) boosters are now safer and more effective than ever. Still, it’s important for weight trainers to have a solid understanding of this and any other supplement being used.
Arginine is a pre-cursor to nitric oxide and is involved in regulating blood circulation. For training purposes, NO can speed up your recovery rates by increasing blood flow to the muscles, providing them with more nutrients for greater growth. During vigorous lifting routines, lactic acid build up can occur. This is mainly due to your body being low on oxygen, which leads to fatigue. Since NO enhances blood flow, oxygen levels will be increased—allowing for more energy and muscle pumps.
There have been numerous arginine variations to enhance NO levels, but there’s one that stands out. Enter Nitrosigine, with FDA New Dietary Ingredient notification status and backed by a human clinical trial. It’s composed of bonded arginine and silicon—arginine silicate. This patented complex stimulates the release of NO — a substance that widens your blood vessels, which prompts better blood flow.
Pre-clinical studies of Nitrosigine have indicated that the compound can relax the blood vessels five times more than arginine HCl. Silicon alone is challenging to absorb into the blood from dietary intake—10 to 40 milligrams a day, but when it's bound to arginine (arginine silicate) the rate of absorption into the blood is increased by 200 percent. This can strengthen the lining of blood vessels, making them less permeable.
Nitrosigine’s clinical study encompassed healthy men who were between the ages of 20 to 38. They were all given daily 1,500 milligrams of Nitrosigine for 14 days. After the first dose on day one, plasma arginine levels surged after a half hour, as did silicon levels after an hour. Nitrosigine works in 30 minutes and has lasting effects for up to three hours. Two pre-workout products with Nitrosigine are Gaspari’s Superpump 3.0 and Allmax Nutrition’s Razor8.
