Nitric oxide is also a key ingredient in common NO-Booster or NO-Enhancer. Sponser Sport Food offers with Vinitrox Pepto a typical product.

Previously, a general reluctance against high nitrate (NO3-) contents in vegetables was commonly known - you may remember winter season vegetables from greenhouses. Nowadays even blood pressure medicals are based on nitrate because it is metabolized within our body enzymatically to nitrogen monoxide (NO), which has a vasodilative and consequently blood pressure lowering effect.

A recent study on athletes found also that the formation of NO from nitrate-rich red beet juice caused very distinct performance enhancements for endurance as well as for high-intensity running bouts (1). The intake of 500 ml red beet juice (with converted 694 mg NO3-) during 6 days increased nitrate val-ues in the blood from day 4 on and reduced at the same time systolic bloo pressure significantly (124 vs. 132 mmHg, p<0.01). The exercise-induced gain of oxygen demand of the lungs was reduced by 19% during moderate exercise (p<0.05). Meaning that with less oxygen the same performance could be maintained, or in conclusion, with the same amount of oxygen a higher performance would be possible. This outcome is accounted for the vasodilative effect of the formed NO in the body and the concomitant improved microcirculation and oxygen supply.

On day 6 of that very study a time-to-exhaustion trial at a fixed severe work rate was performed, too. The time to task failure was extended by a massive 16% from 9 min 43 sec to 11 min 15 sec (p<0.05) on average!

Such impressive performance enhancements are even more remarkable, when thinking that the causal reduced oxygen cost by supplementation of nitrate-rich red beet juice cannot be acquired by means of long-term endurance training (2,3,4,5)! These results suggest that NO induces an increased work load tolerance during endurance as well as during high-intensity anaerobic, lactic acid forming, sports!

Assuming a maximum nitrate content of 3000 mg/kg fresh vegetables, approximately 230 g of fresh red beet are needed in order to reach the nitrate amounts of this study. But because of strong sea-sonal and cultivation-induced variation of nitrate content in vegetables, it is not very efficient. Nitrate itself is considered not harmful for adults, yet there are provisos against a high intake because of its metabolite nitrite. Nitrite can be formed in food from nitrate by microorganisms under oxygen exclu-sion, whereas the main sources of nitrate and nitrite stem from the human organism itself: intestinal microflora as well as salivary enzymes reduce nitrate to nitrite. Nitrate also tends to accumulate in saliva and up to 30-60% of our total nitrite load can stem thereof.

SPONSER offers with VINITROX PEPTO a so-called Nitro-Booster, which promotes NO formation and the concomitant vasodilation by synergistically working bioactive whey peptides and fruit enzymes. Hence, it contains no nitrate as the substrate for NO formation, but NO is formed by different mechanisms.

(1) Bailey et al, 2009: Dietary nitrate supplementation reduces the O2 cost of low-intensity exercise and enhances tolerance to high-intensity exercise in humans. J Appl Physiol.
(2) Bailey et al, J Appl Physiol 106:1875-87, 2009
(3) Burnley et al, J Appl Physiol 89:1387-96, 2000
(4) Moseley et al, Int J Sports Med 25:374-9, 2004
(5) Wilkerson et al, Respir Physiol Neurobiol 153:92-106, 2006