Baylor professor debunks wildly popular muscle-building supplement
Category: Life & Style Created on Saturday - 08.13.11 @ 8:57 AM Written by Mark Wiggins @ kxxv.com
The nutritional supplement market is a multi-million dollar industry, fueled by amazing claims and little accountability. Now a local professor is taking on one of its biggest money-makers.
The advertising is hard to beat.
With names like NO2 Black, N.O. XPLODE and jack3d, nitric oxide products have taken the workout supplement market by storm. For anywhere from $10 to $100 per bottle, they contain the active ingredient arginine-alpha-ketoglutarate (AAKG), which claims to increase nitric oxide production in the body. The intended result is dilation of the blood vessels -- a process called "vasodilation" -- resulting in more blood to flow to the muscles and gigantic "pumps" in the gym.
It's marketed as a Holy Grail for those looking to get mind-blowing biceps -- but there may be a slight problem.
"Well, we found out that it doesn't work," says Dr. Darryn Willoughby, research professor at Baylor University. Willoughby is also a competitive bodybuilder with a laboratory split between scientific instruments and workout equipment, and says a hunch led him to put the popular supplement to the test.