SuppVersity - Nutrition and Exercise Science for Everyone

From a physiological perspective NO is not primarily there to make you look vascular and pumped, boys. If you've read the headline and are asking yourselves "Why on earth would I even want to spend money on cosmetic pump?", you probably need a reminder of the multiple important functions nitric oxide (NO) serves in your body: (1) With their ability to relax the musculature of your blood vessels to increase the blood flow through your veins, normal NO levels are required to guarantee optimal blood flow to every body part; (2) since this includes your sexual organs, normal NO levels are also a prerequisite for normal / optimal sexual function; (3) having enough NO is also required to keep your immune defenses up, because the white blood cells need it in their fight against intruders; and if heart disease, sexual dysfunction and immune health are all things you don't care about (4) you may be interested to hear that your brain and metabolic health critically depend o...

The study tested only leg exercises, but you can safely expect increased reps on other exercises, as well. Citrulline? Yes that's the stuff the supplement industry claims to be a better version of arginine. A "super pump supplement", but not necessarily an ergogenic - in spite of the fact that corresponding evidence from rodent and human studies (Briand. 1992; Pérez-Guisado. 2010; Giannesini. 2011) existed years before the study at hand was published (Wax. 2014). Benjamin Wax and his colleagues from the Mississippi State University and the Auburn University  investigated the effects of citrulline malate supplementation on lower-body resistance exercise performance, blood lactate, heart rate, and blood pressure. Based on citrulline malate’s chemical composition and a review of the current literature Wax et al. hypothesized that citrulline malate supplementation would mitigate fatigue occurring to the working muscle; therefore, augmenting resistance ...

If you want other to see your pump, you got to be ripped. If not, why care about reductions in BMR? If you remember my posts about the first generation, arginine-based pre-workout products you will be aware that the only pump they produced was the word "pump" in their name or product description. The reason was and still is simple. The mere provision of l-arginine, which is a precursor to nitric oxide does not lead to an increase in nitric oxide production. Why? Well, think of a building a house: Just buying some concrete won't make you a proud home owner, either ;-) The bad thing: Arginine didn't work. The good thing: This means it didn't decrease your BMR, either Against that background it's quite astonishing that arginine and citrulline based pre-workout products have dominated the top-seller lists of the big supplement vendors for decades. A fact that's probably partly due to other potential benefits of these amino acids, of which one - you a...

There are a couple of important confounding factors which will determine whether or not you or anyone else can benefit from nitrate supplementation. Sex is yet - as far as I know know - not one of them... ah, by the way, there may be other benefits to nitrates that are "sex-specific", but in this case the semantics are somewhat different ;-) You know that the SuppVersity is all about self-education (hence "-versity " as in Uni versity ), so what would be better than using the publication of the latest paper on the purported ergogonic effects of nitrates as an incentive to "inform" you about the current state of the research? Sounds good? I would think so. Let's take a look, then. What's this nitrate business all about? Contrary to the argument many supplement vendors have been bringing forward to make muscleheads buy their products, the idea is not to use the vasodilating effects for cosmetic pumps that will make you feel - as Arnold said it ...

Image 1: This is what NO boosters promise, yet mostly don't deliver. Many people believe that there is some truth to every myth. And in fact, a recently published study rom the Department of Surgery, Biological Sciences and Human Anatomy & Cell Science (quite a mouthful) at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada, shows that even there may be a quantum of truth even in the "arginine" or "nitric oxide" or "pre-workout" or "however else you may want to call it" myth, which says that getting a decent pump will help you build muscle ( Leiter. 2012 ). Now, aside from the fact that the latest generation of those pre-workout supplements boasts of having no arginine in them and relies solely on the stimulant rush the various *amines in them will produce, there is not a single study in which supplementation with X, Y, or Z amount of l-arginine (or other forms of the alpha-amino acid) had produced greater increases in skeletal muscle ...

Image 1: With nitrate and nitrite, a single letter is of literally vital importance. You probably expected another issue of the famous "Ask Dr. Andro" segment today... ? Well, I have in fact been working on something, but firstly, the topic turned out to be so epic that I could hardly have delivered a post in the usual SuppVersity quality within the next few hours, and secondly, a previous installment of the series on creatine nitrate (cf. Ask Dr. Andro: Is Creatine Nitrate Worth It? ), in which I explained why I think that the heavily marketed "revolutionary" creatine supplement probably does not provide any additional benefits beyond supplementing creatine monohydrate and nitrate, individually, urgently needed a follow up. While the ergogenic potential of creatine monohydrate and its safety are well established (and I do not think I have to recite the whole litany about creatine causing kidney failure, again!? cf. Creatine Save - For Diabetics, As Wel...

As mentioned in previous blogposts, I highly credit all supplement companies which - instead of just putting out untenable claims about the "steroid-like" effects of their products - spend a few bucks of their immense marketing budgets on research on how fantastic their products actually are. In the case of LaBrada Nutrition 's Super Charge Xtreme N.O. it does yet seem that it would have been wiser to do some research before formulating their new " NO booster ". Other than the guys over at LaBrada Nutrition probably have hoped or even expected, the study ( JSCR. 2011 ) that was published in the March issue of the well-known Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research found no "significant improvements in LBM over the placebo drink" and only minor increases in bench press 1RM and squat power, which may well be attributed to CNS stimulation due to the hefty 450mg load of caffeine each serving of Super Charge Xtreme N.O. contains. Other than t...

Although I am aware of the magnitude of studies providing evidence for the positive effects of omega-3 fatty acids in general and EPA and DHA, in particular. I think you should be aware that research on its effects in athletes (as the general effect of anti-oxidants on healthy people) are less unequivocal than those on positive effects on your average pre-diabetic fatso. In a very recent study, scientists from the Unité de Formation en Sciences et Techniques des Activités Physiques et Sportives in France ( Filaire. 2010 ) found that judo athletes who took a standardized omega-3 supplement (600 mg EPA and 400 mg DHA) for 6 weeks had significantly increased stress markers compared to placebo: Significant interaction effects between supplementation and time on resting MDA [malondyaldehide] concentrations and Rmax were found (p = .03 and p = .04, respectively), with elevated values in the n-3 LCPUFA group after supplementation and no change in the placebo group's levels. The ...

You probably know it from the ingredient list of your pre-workout or amino acid product , l-citrulline . Being a possible precursor of l-arginine it is included in those formulas to increase nitric oxide levels and deliver those "skin bursting pumps" the advertisements brag about. In a recent study, scientists from Japan ( Ochiai. 2010 ) found that 1 week of l-citrulline supplementation at 5.6g/day effectively reduced arterial stiffness in 15 healthy males: Compared with the placebo group, baPWV [ index of arterial stiffness] was significantly reduced in the l-citrulline group (p<0.01). No significant differences in blood pressure (BP) were found between the two groups, and no correlation was observed between BP and baPWV. The serum nitrogen oxide (NOx, the sum of nitrite plus nitrate) and NO metabolic products were significantly increased only in the l-citrulline group (p<0.05). Plasma citrulline, arginine and the ratio of arginine/asymmetric dimethylarg...

While the NO-hype of the last years unquestionably is/was a scam, l-arginine, the amino acid that does not build muscle via increased NO-production, transpires to be ergogenic via very different mechanisms. Scientists from Iran ( Mozezzaneh. 2010 ) have now found that 5g of supplemental l-arginine significantly decreased the blood lactate levels of athletes (N=30) in the course of a 3 week supplementation period, but failed to induce consecutive or concurrent increases in VO2 max (a direct marker of exercise capacity): Blood lactate level was significantly decreased in the L-arginine group compared to the placebo one. There was no significant difference between the two groups in VO2max at anaerobic threshold. Only in the L-arginine group, VO2 max at anaerobic threshold was significantly increased. In addition, there was no significant difference in VO2 max at anaerobic threshold for the placebo group. If you remember the previous news on arginine , you may understand that I will r...

Most of the currently marketed preworkout products contain "the famous three", i.e. caffeine, creatine and some sort of amino acids, but is there science behind providing fitness junkies with specifically these nutrients before workouts? David Fukuda and his collegues say "YES" ( Fukuda. 2010 ), the combination of caffeine, creatine and amino acids is ergogenic, but only if it is taken previous to anaerobic (e.g. lifting weights, sprinting, etc.) exercise. The scientists had their 10 subjects perform a critical velocity (CV) in order to "quantify the relationship between total running distance and time to exhaustion (TTE), yielding aerobic (CV) and anaerobic parameters (anaerobic running capacity [ARC])". One group received the preworkout supplement (ACT) the other received a placebo (PL) before they completed the test at 110% vs. 90% and 105% vs. 100%, on separate occasions. Their findings are quite straight forward: The ACT elicited a 10.8% highe...

Regular visitors of the SuppVersity will remember the study on Size On Maximum Performance , which - despite being financed by Gaspari - showed, from an objective perspective, only marginal effects on exercise performance. MRI was not so lucky to sponsor Reid et al. (Reid. 2010) who studied the effect of their pre-workout product, NO2 Platinum exercise induced increases of nitric oxide: From the pre-exercise blood samples at each exercise session, L-argninine decreased 0.89% in the placebo group after supplementation, whereas the NO2 group significantly increased 84.67% (p = 0.001). Brachial artery blood flow was significantly increased in both groups (p = 0.001) immediately post-exercise, but was not different between groups . Nitric oxide was shown to significantly increase in both groups (p = 0.001) immediately post and at 30 min post-exercise, but was not different between groups. eNOS was significantly increased in both groups (p = 0.028) immediately post and at 30 ...

Arnold already knew: "If you want to grow, go for the pump!" A recent study by Soltow et al. ( Soltow. 2010 ) expands on Arnold's hypothesis - what you need is pump and stretch . The scientists studied the effect of nitric oxide (NO) on C2C12 myoblasts and found: NO, COX-2, and NF-kappaB are necessary for stretch-induced proliferation of myoblasts. Although COX-2 and NF-kappaB are both involved in basal proliferation, NO does not affect basal growth. Thus, NO requires the synergistic effect of stretch in order to induce muscle cell proliferation. So, more NO, some stretch and / or skin bursting pumps? That reminds me of the good old first generation pump supplements with arginine, of which I can only repeat do not dump your good old NO Xplode , White Flood , Super Pump 250 , VPX Shotgun , etc. down the toilette. It is not for nothing that they have been around for years! What's more, Arginine and Ornithine (ingredients of the first generation Pump Supps) ha...

A few days ago, my collegues from the Dutch version of Ergo-Log reported on an older study (Esporte. 2007) which showed improvements in strength in a group of subjects supplemented with 3g of arginine per day. Now, a more recent study by Bailey et al. (Bailey. 2010) investigated the effect of 6g arginine mixed in a beverage that was consumed 1 hour before the completion of "a series of 'step' moderate-intensity and severe-intensity exercise bouts". The scientists found that... Figure 1: Chemical structure of l-Arginine ( HMBD v2.5 ) Plasma [nitrite] was significantly greater following L-arginine consumption compared to placebo (ARG: 331 ± 198 vs. PLA: 159 ± 102 nM; P<0.05) and systolic blood pressure was significantly reduced (ARG: 123 ± 3 vs. PLA: 131 ± 5 mmHg; P<0.01). The steady-state VO2 during moderate-intensity exercise was reduced by 7% in the ARG condition (ARG: 1.48 ± 0.12 vs. PLA: 1.59 ± 0.14 L /min; P<0.05). During severe-intensity exercise,...