Get pumped! Want your muscles to bulge and veins to pop? Since nitric oxide is a vasodilator, it widens your muscles’ blood vessels, allowing more blood flow.

Amps Up Your Energy. Nitric oxide increases blood flow to the muscles, meaning your muscles have enough oxygen and nutrients to sustain you during workouts. As oxygen is depleted during workouts, you get tired. To counter this effect, nitric oxide increases glucose uptake by muscle cells, giving you a burst of energy (second wind) to finish.

Boosts your endurance. Endurance is important if you want to increase your muscle growth. However, when engaged in intense exercise, your body breaks down carbs, glycogen, and other molecules to create adenosine triphosphate (ATP) which is then converted into energy. But this process consumes oxygen and releases hydrogen ions, collecting in your muscles, dropping pH, and interfering with muscle contraction. This is what causes the mid-workout burn that makes you want to give up. Nitric oxide encourages consistent blood flow, so you can train harder and longer without feeling fatigued. This is great for bodybuilders and endurance athletes.

Decreases soreness. Some weight-training exercises are so intense that the body can’t supply oxygen fast enough to produce energy. When this happens, lactic acid builds up in the muscles, causing exhaustion, extreme fatigue, body weakness, muscle cramps, and pain. Nitric oxide prevents this by increasing blood flow to the muscles, ensuring your body has enough oxygen to create energy.

Improves recovery time. After a tough workout, you may feel exhausted and unable to move. Shorten the amount of recovery time you need before the next workout session. Nitric oxide replenishes your muscles with nutrients and oxygen, and any lactic acid buildup is cleared.

Stay driven. Nitric oxide is important for muscle growth. It gives you the energy to train harder and longer and allows your muscles to recover faster.

Improve your sex life. Nitric oxide can do wonders for your sex life. It causes your blood vessels to relax, increasing blood flow to your sexual organs. Nitric oxide is important for the muscles in the penis to relax. As the muscles relax, it allows the chambers within the penis to fill with blood, which makes the penis erect.

Testosterone plays a very important role in hundreds of bodily functions, and nitric oxide production is one of them. Testosterone helps maintain the health of blood vessels (decreased inflammation and atherosclerosis), allowing more efficient nitric oxide production through better vasodilation, blood flow, and in the case of the penis, a firmer erection. Arteries coated in atherosclerotic plaques can’t release nitric oxide very well at all.

As men get older, nitric oxide production in the body can drop. An unhealthy diet and a lack of exercise can increase arterial plaque (buildup in the arteries) and circulatory disorders, which can interfere with the healthy production of nitric oxide. NO acts as an important signaling molecule in the vascular system, and it helps to dilate blood vessels which increases blood flow and nutrient delivery to muscle cells.