Copyright © 2006 Jonathan Perez

Nitric Oxide, also know as "N.O.", is one of the latest supplements to hit the market, promising lean muscle tone and a sculpted body, enhancing the weight loss and fat burning appearance.

Can this supplement in fact help you to tone up, lose weight, and burn body fat?

If you believe what all the magazines are saying , then I have some land in the Everglades I'd like to sell you.

The bottom line behind nitric oxide supplements (when you shuffle through all the "mumbo-jumbo" sales pitch and hype that are in the ads that promote these products) is that it is a "vasodilator", which simply means that it supposedly dilates, or opens up, your blood vessels.

This "opening" up wider of the blood vessels supposedly will allow more blood to flow to the working muscles, which will supposedly "enhance" the pump, which will supposedly engorge them and make them larger, helping you build lean muscle tissue, which helps speed up your metabolic rate, which in turn will speed up any weight loss or fat burning that goes on.

Well, there are 2 major points that have to be considered here when evaluating how well they truly are in helping you:

1) Does nitric oxide really open up the blood vessels?

2) Is getting a "massive pump" important if you are trying to build lean, toned muscle to raise the metabolic rate and burn fat and lose weight?

If and how much nitric oxide dilates your blood vessels is still a topic in discussion.

There have been no un-biased, independent, peer-reviewed studies done on this to make it conclusive.

So, we really can't say "yes" or "no".

However, let's play "make believe" and pretend that "yes", nitric oxide supplements do allow more blood to flow into a working muscle.

If that's the case, then let's consider the next point.

Do you need to get a big blood pump into the muscle to develop or tone it?

Will it help the weight loss / fat burning process?

Just about everyone thinks that "yes", you must get a pump in a muscle to build it.

However, when you are training a muscle in reality you aren’t pushing or sending more blood to the muscle.

What's actually happening is that when the fibers contract the area inside of the muscle gets smaller, which results in the blood that's already in there to become trapped and the pressure increased.

So, in reality, there isn’t more blood going into the muscle, there's actually less since the blood that's in there is trapped, cannot leave, nor allow fresh blood to enter.

That's also why as you continue to do reps you begin to feel the "burning" sensation in the working muscle.

That's a major sign that there is no oxygen anymore inside the blood that's in the muscle.

When there is no oxygen in the blood it creates a chemical called lactic acid.

Lactic acid is what causes this "burning" feeling.

There is no oxygen in the blood because fresh blood can’t get in there with new oxygen and nutrients!

Plus, you can do 1000 reps of an exercise using a 20 pound dumbbell and get a major pump.

But I guarantee you that you won't build as toned of a muscle as if you were to use heavier weight, even though it may not make it easier to get as big a "pump".

So all of this "hoopla" about nitric oxide supplements allowing you to get a better pump to build more lean muscle mass, enhancing the metabolism, weight loss, and fat burning systems is nothing but hype!!!!

It won't help you lose one ounce of fat / weight.

You watch and see, shortly all of these "N.O." supplements are going to fade into the shadows and some new powder or pill is going to be the new "talk of the town", I guarantee it!