It’s marketed as a product that increase muscles growth, muscles hardness and fat loss, what else can a bodybuilder ask for!
In the article we will take a look on what is Nitric oxide? How does it work? Benefits from taking it, and how to boost it.

What is Nitric oxide?
Nitric oxide (NO) is a gas compound made up of one nitrogen and one oxygen atom, the systematic name of it is nitrogen monoxide. This gas is an important signaling molecule in the body of mammals including humans, and it plays a role in many bodily functions.
The main concept behind nitric oxide supplementation is that nitric oxide stimulates vasodilatation, by doing so, the blood vessels become wider and more open to carry more amount blood filled with muscle building agents to the muscles, more amino acids, sugar, creatine, oxygen, vitamins, anabolic hormones will be pushed into the muscles.
This will make a better use of any muscle enhancing agent.
Supplements don’t contain nitric oxide itself, but rather precursor to it. Most importantly they contain the amino acids arginine A-AKG & A-KIC; arginine is the main precursor for the synthesis of NO in the body. When arginine and some enzyme called nitric oxide synthase NOS come in contact with each other, they produce nitric oxide along with the amino acid citrulline.

Benefits of NO

The main use of NO is the vasodilatation effect. This will make transportation of the blood easier throughout the body, which will improve overall health, think about more blood supplies to the organs, muscles, skin, even brain.
More blood supply more nutrient and oxygen delivery to the cell better health and growth 
Starting with Muscles, which is our main purpose here, the muscle pump we get through our exercise is one of the body natural way of growth, by having higher NO levels, you even expanding this phase to more than just 45-60 min after training, in fact you it will last for hours, and you will have a better whole pump throughout the day.

Vasodilatation will also give you harder workouts supplying more oxygen and energy to the muscles while clearing off the lactic acid. When taking NO and increasing nitric oxide, you can naturally make best use of your contractile velocity of your muscle fibers, both fast twitch and slow twitch, which will increase overall strength of your muscles.
It also increase the amount of anabolic hormones reaching out the trained muscles, whether natural hormones or taking for exogenous source.
NO helps the heart and circulatory system, heart diseases mostly may block or contract the blood vessels, while NO dilates and help out the heart with its work and lower blood pressure.
Nitroglycerine which is a blood pressure medication actually works by increasing NO levels; it’s converted to NO in the body and cause vasodilatation.
Another medication that works with NO vasodilatation effect is the famous Viagra, which works by enhancing signaling through nitric oxide pathway in the penis, and thus support erection, which we bodybuilder may need when taking some steroids, NO supplementation helps also with sexual problems and improve sexual performance.
When taking NO and increasing nitric oxide, you can naturally make best use of your contractile velocity of your muscle fibers, both fast twitch and slow twitch, which will increase overall strength of your muscles.

Summary of NO benefits:

• Better muscle growth, strength, hardness.
• Helps in fat loss and prevent water retention.
• Improves muscles recovery, between sets and between workouts.
• Supports circulatory system, lower heart diseases and blood pressure.
• Improves the immune system, and overall health.
• Improve neurotransmitter and central nervous system.
• Helps in curing erectile dysfunction and improve sexual performance for both sexes.
• helps controlling blood sugar level, which make it great supplement for diabetes.

In short, Nitric Oxide NO is a supplement with a great benefits, both athletic and health ones, its can support your growth, strength, recovery, and overall health.

 How to boost Nitric oxide?
NO supplements don’t contain NO in them, but rather precursor to it as we said.
Most they contain arginine, which is the main precursor for the nitric oxide.
When you take arginine, and it comes in contact with the NOS enzyme in the body, the reaction produces Nitric oxide and the amino acid Citrulline.
Citrulline itself can be converted to arginine through a two step process that requires the amino acid aspartic (aspartate).
For maximum benefit and increased in arginine and NO production one should supply with these three amino acids

Now it’s not that simple as taken these three amino acids and the nitric oxide is up to the roof, nope it more complicated than that.
Nitric oxide production is limited by the availability of certain enzymes called NOS enzymes, since there are limited amount of the enzymes, large amount of arginine will only increase nitric oxide to a certain point. However, there are way to fix this limitation, supplementing with Pycnogenol and ginsenosides.
Pycnogenol which is the French maritime pine bark extract, stimulate and enhance NOS enzymes.
Ginsenosides which is the active component in ginseng extract also stimulate and enhance efficiency of NOS enzymes.
Most NO supplement contain these in their ingredient, so make sure to check before buying, you don’t really have to buy them separately unless you want to make your own product.
Another NO enhancer is folic acid, taking folic acid convert it to the active form folate. Folate has a big influence on cofactors that have a direct impact on how much of arginine is actually converted to NO.
You should also be taking Vitamin C along with Nitric oxide supplement. Vitamin C is needed for the enzyme nitric oxide synthase which is responsible for conversion of arginine to nitric oxide. Researches also show that supplementing Vitamins C along with NO increased its level significantly than taking NO by itself, and Vitamin C anti oxidant properties helped protecting NO from degrading and kept free radical away.

How much of arginine to take?
Arginine should be taken in the dosage of 3-5 grams 3 times a day, one before workout, one post, and one in the morning for benefits Of nitiric oxide.
Its also should be taking on an empty stomach for optimum absorption.
Arginine can be taken also as a great GH booster with the dosage of 10 grams prior to sleeping.

Some of the best NO supplement in the market:
Nitrix BSN
NO Explode BSN
Plasmajet Gaspri
NO shutgun VPX
Trac extreme NO MHP
Vassive N.O formula X ON
NaNoX9 Muscletech

Shady Eid is a certified Personal Trainer, writer and competitive bodybuilders based in UAE, for questions and comments you can contact him at: Shady@arabianmuscles.com