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--------------- Subject: N.O. (L-Arginine) upset?"I have cycled on and off of N.O. Xplode for a few years and the effects have surpassed anything that could be considered a placebo effect. While taking the supplement my veins are much more noticeable and significantly so. I have attached three pictures. One of my arms while taking the supplement for 2 months, and the others of the same arm when cycled off of the supplement. Did I psychologically produce more pronounced veins? I am a firm believer in the placebo effect, but this is somewhat extreme for even the best theory. I did notice gains that were significant. I am able to bench double my body weight and surpass plateaus when I use the supplement as directed over time. Any ideas? I hope that there is a better explanation then that I am just an anomaly. I look forward to your reply. Thank you"
----------------- My reply is as follows: [Author] I appreciate you coming to me with your dilemma. It represents perfectly what I am opposed to in the supplement industry -and you're not the only victim. Let me begin by asking: do you know what's in NO-Xplode? I'm sincerely enquiring. Do you know what each of the ingredients does to the body? Of course not, and this is not meant to be unintentional. You're not alone. In fact I strongly recommend that you read "The Supplement Industry is Violating Your Rights", to see why ignorance is such a powerful tool. Getting back to your specific issue, look at it this way: there are roughly 40 ingredients in NO-Xplode (yes, that's 40 ingredients!!!) and yet you've attributed your elevated blood flow to arginine. There are a couple of problems with this, one of which was mentioned in the previous paragraph. I don't doubt that this product increases vascularity and likely even blood flow, but you must understand that parsing one ingredient from 40 is erroneous -particularly when that one ingredient has overwhelmingly demonstrated to not have the claimed effect. Further, I must make it quite clear that vascularity is a result of blood pressure which does not necessarily relate to nutritive blood flow. The Stimulant EffectsFor example, the one consistent claim about this product is that it contains a large quantity of stimulants. How much? We don't know because it's part of the proprietary claim, but a well-known effect of stimulants (think caffeine) is an increase in blood pressure (which makes our veins appear more pronounced). This is consistent with the results of the strength increases you find -stimulants are great for strength, although I'd be more than a little concerned about consuming an unknown quantity of these drugs. Lastly, the stimulant effect is also consistent with the other claim about this product: it needs to be cycled. To make this clearer, at the time of this writing, the NO-Xplode FAQ from the official BSN web site cites "a tolerance that has built up to caffeine from coffee." as an example of why something would need to be cycled. No supplements have ever shown the need or even a benefit from cycling, although this is patently obvious requirement with stimulant use. Other Reasons For VascularityGetting to the other potential reasons for an increase in vascularity (thank you for the pictures BTW), as I wrote in the literature review of Arginine AKG, it is possible to stimulate blood flow through insulin. In fact I strongly recommend this method to every client, as it has the potential to be most anabolic nutritional/supplement intervention we know of -this is contingent of the presence of protein/essential amino acids. Sadly, although NO-Xplode contains maltodextrin which can stimulate insulin (and subsequently blood flow), it doesn't have any protein for the stimulation of growth and recovery. Lastly, the elevation in vascularity you experience is likely a consequence of the glycerol in the product. This is widely used to pull water into the bloodstream -again, creating a more vascular appearance. A more detailed discussion about which of these ingredients is having a predominant effect would be a great idea, but again we have no clue as to how much of each you're actually putting in your body. Other Concerns About NO-Xplode While we're on the topic of the ingredients in this product, I strongly recommend you check out the full array of effects from Anti-creatine (guanidinopropionic acid) and Creatoxin (glycocyamine). They have the potential to be both ergolytic (performance impairing) and harmful to health. While I don't doubt for a second that the stimulant effects override much of the majority of the ergolytic potential, even a slight detriment to maximal performance is clearly unwarranted. Oh yeah, and the whole health thing too. :) The addition of citrulline to NO-Xplode is also of interest. Citrulline supplementation has also been shown to have an ergolytic effect and could theoretically hinder nitric oxide production, but I'll leave the details for a more thorough literature review. For more information I'd love to point you to my full review of NO-Xplode, complete with detailed literature reviews of Anti-creatine and Creatoxin, but everyone has refused to publish it. Score a big win for the industry (and ignorance). The Strange PsychologyLastly [Author], the very title of the email concerns me. I'm not going to nitpick the science (that'd be a whole other page), but rather discuss the very idea of being upset about a literature review. This is important because once again, you're not alone. Why do people actually get upset about the presentation of science? It's due to an internal conflict between previously held beliefs and conflicting novel information. This is a natural psychological phenomenon called cognitive dissonance, and it usually manifests itself in anger or frustration. But who do we get upset about in this case? The researchers for conducting the study? The editors for publishing the work? Or maybe the subjects for having their specific physiological responses? No of course not. The anger is most often directed at the person who presents the data: me. This anger and frustration is even greater when the novel information conflicts with what someone wants to believe -and we all want to believe that something can be of benefit to us. Adding fuel to this fire is the marketing of products which use the armamentarium of psychology to make people want something (although this shouldn't be news to anybody).
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