HI everyone,
Here’s a question. Do Nitrous Oxide boosters and Caffeine cancel each other out? NO causes vasodilation, but caffeine causes vasoconstriction. How to take both and get benefits?
THanks
Peter
Hi Peter, Great Question.
You are right on the fact that Nitrous oxide products cause vasodilation, primarily from the use of arginine AKG, citrulline malate, other other muscle volumizing compounds; however, caffeine has shown to have a similar vasodilating effects on the body (causes smooth muscles [in the internal organs and blood vessels] to relax), which ultimately allows more blood to travel to your working muscles.
So to answer your question, NO booster and caffeine do not cancel each other out. Many NO products contain caffeine within its proprietary blend of ingredients.
Which NO booster are you using? I’ve tried them before. It just gave me “pumps” and gives the placebo effect to my friends who use it.
Chances are there’s no NO effect at all if you’re using one of the typical “NO” products. Something like 98% of the mainstream NO boosters are caffeine, creatine and L-Arginine. Arginine has been shown to increase the body’s NO levels, however the body already knows it has enough, therefore supplementing more has been shown as useless. Perhaps your pumps were natural. The only two products I’ve seen that actually don’t contain that stuff but do increase NO are C-BOL (no stimulants) and PreSurge Unleashed (contains caffeine).
[quote]1: J Nutr Biochem. 2008 Aug 15. [Epub ahead of print]
Liu TH, Wu CL, Chiang CW, Lo YW, Tseng HF, Chang CK.
No effect of short-term arginine supplementation on nitric oxide production, metabolism and performance in intermittent exercise in athletes.
Arginine supplementation has been shown to alleviate endothelial dysfunction and improve exercise performance through increasing nitric oxide production in patients with cardiopulmonary diseases. In addition, arginine supplementation could decrease accumulations of lactate and ammonia, metabolites involved in development of muscular fatigue. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of short-term arginine supplementation on performance in intermittent anaerobic exercise and the underlying mechanism in well-trained male athletes. Ten elite male college judo athletes participated with a randomized crossover, placebo-controlled design. The subjects consumed 6 g/day arginine (ARG trial) or placebo (CON trial) for 3 days then performed an intermittent anaerobic exercise test on a cycle ergometer. Blood samples were collected before supplementation, before and during exercise and 0, 3, 6, 10, 30 and 60 min after exercise. ARG trial had significantly higher arginine concentrations than CON trial at the same time point before, during and after exercise. In both trials, nitrate and nitrite concentration was significantly higher during and 6 min after exercise comparing to the basal concentration. The increase in nitrate and nitrite concentration during exercise in both trials was parallel to the increase in plasma citrulline concentrations. There was no significant difference between the 2 trials in plasma nitrate and nitrite, lactate and ammonia concentrations and peak and average power in the exercise. The results of this study suggested that short-term arginine supplementation had no effect on nitric oxide production, lactate and ammonia metabolism and performance in intermittent anaerobic exercise in well-trained male athletes.[/quote]