Exploring the Science Behind Active Nitric Oxide
What Is Active Nitric Oxide?
Active nitric oxide is a crucially important molecule for helping to promote health, fitness, and exercise performance. Additionally, improving active nitric oxide production through regular exercise and diet can have many health and metabolic benefits for aging adults and help slow down age-related decline.
Remarkably, few people are aware of active nitric oxide and its roles in the body because our traditional understanding of the respiratory cycle is incomplete. We've all been taught the traditional view of the respiratory cycle, depicted in the image below, where we breathe oxygen in and breath carbon dioxide out.
Our traditional understanding of the respiratory cycle depicts blood as a simple fluid that passively transports oxygen and carbon dioxide to and from tissues. At the same time, the heart acts as the master controller, regulating systemic blood flow throughout our bodies. In reality, this couldn't be further from the truth. In fact, there's much more happening underneath the surface.
As you read this article, blood is being pumped from your heart into large arteries that fan out into progressively smaller arteries, called arterioles, which eventually reach individual organs and tissues, like exercising muscles.
Our blood is packed with hemoglobin-containing red blood cells, and as the red blood cells travel through the body, hemoglobin flips back and forth between two distinct shapes. When hemoglobin is loaded with oxygen, it takes on one shape, and after it releases oxygen, it changes to another shape, then picks up carbon dioxide. Simply put, hemoglobin changes change depending on its oxygen supply.
The previously mentioned traditional view of respiration accounts for oxygen and carbon dioxide, but a third lesser-known gas completes the respiratory cycle. You guessed it - active nitric oxide.
Active Nitric Oxide Vs. Ordinary Nitric Oxide
Many forms of nitric oxide exist in the body, and not all forms are equal. Ordinary nitric oxide is produced by nitric oxide synthase enzymes, which convert the amino acid l-arginine into the amino l-citrulline, producing nitric oxide in the process. After ordinary nitric oxide is produced, it is released from the endothelial cells in the inner lining of blood vessels.
Regular exercise has been shown to increase ordinary nitric oxide, which has several health benefits, such as lowering blood pressure and supporting endothelial function. However, ordinary nitric oxide does not oxygenate tissue or directly enhance exercise performance. Additionally, ordinary nitric oxide is both short lasting and inactive in blood. However, the body converts ordinary nitric oxide into active nitric oxide under special conditions.
Active nitric oxide is released from red blood cells and is both long-lasting and active in the blood. Whereas ordinary nitric oxide helps lower blood pressure by dilating large blood vessels, active nitric oxide is responsible for oxygenating tissues, including the brain, heart, and exercising muscles.
The Role of Active Nitric Oxide In Respiration
After ordinary nitric oxide is released from endothelial cells in the inner lining of blood vessels, it rapidly dissolves in the bloodstream. When red blood cells travel through a tissue's bloodstream, hemoglobin scavenges the nitric oxide from the blood, and the ordinary nitric oxide binds to the hemoglobin molecule's iron center.
After red blood cells deliver oxygen to tissues, they travel back to the lungs, loaded with carbon dioxide and ordinary nitric oxide. Once the red blood cells enter the lungs, they release carbon dioxide, which is expelled as a waste product. Then hemoglobin picks up oxygen in the pulmonary capillaries, and the ordinary nitric oxide molecules move from hemoglobin's iron center to a specific cysteine amino acid, forming s-nitrosohemoglobin (SNO-Hb), which is the active form of nitric oxide. In other words, the body converts ordinary nitric oxide to active nitric oxide, as demonstrated in the image below:
Importantly, it is active nitric oxide that controls blood flow to tissues. After the red blood cells leave the lungs, there are packed with oxygen and active nitric oxide. Then the red blood cells travel to the heart and are pumped out to the rest of the body to nourish tissues, including the brain, heart, and exercising muscles.
Active Nitric Oxide Controls Blood Flow To Tissues
When red blood cells, packed with oxygen and active nitric oxide, travel through a tissue's micro-vasculature, the hemoglobin molecule inside red blood cells senses how much oxygen is present. If the oxygen level in a tissue is low, hemoglobin responds by changing its shape, causing oxygen and active nitric to be released into the surrounding blood. Oxygen nourishes the surrounding tissues, whereas active nitric oxide signals for the blood vessels to widen, resulting in even greater blood flow and oxygen delivery to the tissues as depicted below:
Alternatively, hemoglobin doesn't change shape when the oxygen levels in tissues are high and oxygen and active nitric oxide are not released. This system makes sense when you consider the need to regulate blood flow at the level of individual tissues. For example, when you exercise, you must deliver more blood and oxygen to working muscles to provide energy. But when you stop exercising, you want to slow blood flow back down. Each tissue has its own blood flow requirements, and hemoglobin regulates blood flow to individual tissues as needed.
The Role Of Active Nitric Oxide In Health And Performance
Doctors have long known that there is a significant disconnect between the amount of oxygen carried in the blood and the amount of oxygen delivered to the tissues, such as exercising muscles. Therefore, the current generation of wearables that measure blood oxygenation levels lacks an essential ingredient for giving you a better biomarker of health or fitness. While the aforementioned devices tell you how much oxygen is carried in the blood, they still leave you wondering how much oxygen is delivered to tissues.
Active nitric oxide increases blood flow to tissues, and without active nitric oxide, the ability to increase blood flow and provide tissues with oxygen is significantly impaired. Thus, by measuring both active nitric oxide levels and the amount of oxygen in muscles, NNOXX provides a powerful first-of-its-kind index of health and fitness. In fact, NNOXX is the first and only wearable device to measure muscle oxygenation (SmO2) and nitric oxide release from red blood cells (NO) in real-time.
In the image below you'll find an exercising muscle oxygenation (SmO2) and nitric oxide (NO), recorded during a bike sprint with the NNOXX wearable device, displayed in NNOXX's High Performance Platform:
Increasing Active Nitric Oxide Naturally
Regular exercise can increase nitric oxide production, improve performance, and help people stay healthy for longer as they age. Additionally, it's well known that routine exercise can elevate active nitric oxide levels over time. However, the type, intensity, and duration of exercise that best increases active nitric oxide levels varies from person to person.
Unfortunately, traditional measurements of active nitric oxide require a blood sample and complex laboratory procedures, and cannot directly predict oxygen delivery to tissues. As a result, scientists have previously been incapable of discovering optimal and individualized exercise protocols to increase an individual's active nitric oxide levels in real-time. That is, until now!
NNOXX is changing the game with the first real-time non-invasive measurement of active nitric oxide and other biomarkers of tissue metabolism. NNOXX combines advanced wearable technology with an AI-powered mobile insight dashboard to guide exercisers outputs in real time, allowing for maximally efficient and effective workouts.
For the first time, you can use measurements of active nitric oxide as a training tool to monitor your progress and adjust your training program over time. Additionally, with NNOXX training can measure if their clients' bodies are producing enough active 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.
Only NNOXX helps trainers track and advise during workouts, to help clients achieve peak performance.
