What is Active Nitric Oxide?
It’s the body’s natural regulator for oxygen delivery to blood and muscle tissue.
We all know the roles of oxygen and CO2 in the human body. But less well know is the role of Active Nitric Oxide (NO).
Active nitric oxide refers to the biologically active form of nitric oxide, a molecule with a crucial role in the cardiovascular system. It acts as a vasodilator, meaning it relaxes the smooth muscle in the walls of blood vessels, causing them to widen, increasing blood flow.
This process can help improve circulation and increase the delivery of oxygen and nutrients to the body's cells and tissues — particularly during exercise.
For athletes, more NO can mean better performance.
Active nitric oxide levels in the blood increase during physical activity, which helps to deliver more oxygen and nutrients to the muscles. In turn, this can help improve muscle endurance and strength, and reduce the risk of muscle damage.
Nitric oxide can also help to reduce the amount of lactic acid buildup in the muscles, which can help reduce muscle soreness and fatigue.
Until NNOXX, however, there’s been no way to monitor active nitric oxide. Now, trainers and athletes can use NNOXX to measure and calibrate production of active nitric oxide during exercise — something previously impossible in real time.
For trainers, NNOXX means better insight.
Personal trainers may use measurement of nitric oxide as a training tool to monitor their clients' progress and make adjustments to their training programs.
Using NNOXX, trainers can measure if their clients' bodies are producing enough nitric oxide to improve blood flow and deliver oxygen and nutrients to the muscles. If active nitric oxide levels are low, the trainer may consider adjustments to their workouts. Until now, these adjustments were elusive at best, as there was no way to measure NO.
Only NNOXX helps trainers track and advise during workouts, to help clients achieve peak performance.
Need more science? Read on.
Active nitric oxide is produced by enzymes called nitric oxide synthases (NOS), which catalyze the production of nitric oxide from the amino acid L-arginine.
There are three isoforms of NOS: endothelial NOS (eNOS), neuronal NOS (nNOS), and inducible NOS (iNOS). eNOS and nNOS are constitutively expressed and are involved in physiological processes such as blood flow regulation, while iNOS is induced by cellular stress and inflammation and produces large amounts of nitric oxide to help fight pathogens and cells damage.
Once produced, active nitric oxide can interact with other molecules, including proteins, lipids, and DNA. It can also diffuse rapidly through cells, tissues and even across membranes, where it can bind to and activate target proteins. This is the mechanism through which active nitric oxide works in the body, helping enhance the body’s ability to deliver oxygen efficiently through bloodflow.
NNOXX goes beyond anything else on the market
While an oximeter can provide an indirect measure of nitric oxide's impact on the blood by measuring the oxygen saturation level, it can’t measure nitric oxide directly. Plus, interpretation of the such results would be nearly irrelevant, or even impossible, even in a lab setting.
NNOXX instead measures active nitric oxide as you exercise, rendering a single data measurement (“personal nitric oxide”, or PNO) athletes and trainers can monitor in the moment. This allows for on the fly calibration of workouts, using NNOXX’s mobile dashboard.
In short, oximeters aren’t capable of measuring what NNOXX can; they’re completely different tools.
