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Ok, I occasionally get into the mood to play around with a supplement. I got curious about Neo40 based upon some very interesting articles I read about it. Some people say extra Nitric Oxide is good, some say it’s really bad. What do you think? What’s your experience?
I’ve found nitric oxide to be noticeably powerful for workouts and stuff. Back in the supplement days, megadosing some arginine before workouts definitely made a huge difference with recovery, inflammation, muscle soreness, and workout quality. If that’s what you’re using it for.
I don’t have an opinion because I haven’t given enough attention to the effects of foods, herbs, or supplements reported to increase NO. However, I am very interested in what others have to say about this. So thank you, Thomas, for starting the thread. I hope others will chime in. As we’ve discussed elsewhere, I don’t automatically believe everything Ray Peat writes, but the NO thing is one that I have too little direct knowledge about to decide for myself. And Ray Peat certainly makes NO sound scary! I mean, from reading Dr. Peat I’d expect that taking a spoonful of arginine coupled with 5-HTP would be enough to kill a healthy adult…unless taken with coffee, that is. Thomas, what have been your experiences? Do you feel better with NO-boosting substances?
Also, maybe it would be worth listing out things that we know of that are meant to increase NO for anyone who may want to chime in but doesn’t necessarily know how to increase NO. They might be able to comment instead of their responses to things that are meant to increase NO. Here’s some of the things I know of off the top of my head.
arginine
epimedium (aka horny goat weed)
nose breathing (the nasal cavities produce NO during inhalation)
humming (there is some Scandanavian study that demonstrated that humming increases NO…incidentally, nose breathing and humming are two ways to potentially clear a blocked nose, probably because NO is a dilator/relaxant.)Thanks for responding Matt and @j-lo. I haven’t taken it yet, so I can’t say what my experience is yet. Neo40 is relatively new. It’s not arginine, it’s supposed to be better. Beet root has a lot of NO, I believe.
My boyfriend took arginine for awhile when he lifted. It worked for lifting strong and heavy and also for erections, but at the same time made him very aggressive, moody, and I swear that his skin had a green tint to it (it was noticeable to me, but he’s Asian, so maybe that has something to do with it?). I called it his Hulk period. I think he’s considered doing it again, but at a lower dose. It was very cheap, especially since he got even better results than his buddies who were buying the expensive mixes like NO-XPLODE, NOS, or whatever they’re called.
A male friend of mine had good results from drinking beet juice before his workouts (during my vegan days I had a lot of beet recipes that I showed him).
Nowadays, my boyfriend has been taking Niacin, which is supposed to help with Nitric Oxide utilization, for unrelated reasons. He gets some of the same good effects that he did with the arginine, but also with the usual flush symptoms.
Watermelon and its rind contains citrulline, which converts to arginine in the body. The rind supposedly has the most of any food item out there. I think you have to eat a lot of it, but it might be something to look into.
it really hasn’t been shown to have any benefit on exercise. Pre-workout arginine supplementation has even been shown lower GH response to exercise in some studies (contrary to what most would expect).
It won’t likely do much more than give you a cosmetic pump. Carbohydrates will do the same thing.
I disagree with the studies, then. There was a noticeable difference with, and without arginine. We changed only that, since he had some odd side effects (see above) and he’s a heavy lifter. Works for some.
haha okay, well N=1 and like anything context matters. If you look at the full text they look at one marker, in a controlled setting. There’s no way to control for all of the variables of how it might help or hurt.
placebo effect is an effect to.
Could he be more motivated by seeing a cosmetic pump? Absolutely. But is it doing something so direct physiologically – probably not so much (according to the studies) but see above as to how to apply that.
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