A new clinical trial, published in the journal Exercise and Nutrition, yielded positive results on supplementation with the popular pre-workout ingredient nitrosigine – in addition to the improvements to physical exercise performance, tests showed that significant improvements were also achieved in post-exercise cognitive function tests compared to placebo.
 
The ingredient, a patented complex of inositol-stabilized arginine silicate marketed by Nutrition21, has been established as beneficial to cognition at rest in previous trials, with the purpose of this study being to further substantiate that this cognitive benefit is maintained following intensive exercise. Nitrosigine was formulated based on previous research showing that the amino acid arginine, known for its benefits to cognitive performance in sports nutrition applications, becomes more bioavailable when bound to silicon.
 
In the trial, 24 healthy, recreationally active males were enrolled in this randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover study. In the trial, a single dose of 1500 mg of nitrosigine was administered to the experimental group 30 minutes prior to a maximally graded exercise test. Following the exercise regimen, cognitive function was assessed via the Trail Making Test, which is considered to be a good evaluation of motor speed and visual attention. Safety was evaluated during and at the end of the study. In the placebo group, the authors of the study found that cognitive function was impaired, demonstrating that mental fatigue was induced by the maximally graded exercise test. The time to complete the cognitive test was reduced by a mean 2.8 seconds in the experimental group, whereas, in the placebo group, exercise caused the cognitive test times to increase by an average of 19.82 seconds.
 
“At all competition levels, sports performance requires participants to anticipate and react continuously in a changing, and relatively unpredictable situation,” the authors concluded. “Success in sports does not rest solely on physical capability, as there is a major cognitive component based on how information is processed given the complex and quickly changing contexts in a game or event[…] To our knowledge, arginine supplementation and cognitive evaluation via the tMT test ahs not been examined in the context of exercise, except for Kalman et al. (2016) where pre-exercise ASI supplementation was shown to improve cognitive function. Such an improvement in mental focus and acuity with a single dose of ASI suggests future work investigating a role for ASI in cognitive enhancement in athletics deserves further investigation.”
 
The authors of the study believe that the significant improvements in cognitive function following exercise could translate to enhanced athletic performance, and that the trial shows nitrosigine has the ability to prevent exercise-induced mental fatigue, a factor that could have profound effects on recreational athletes and physically active individuals who suffer from mental fatigue during extended amounts of exercise.
 
This study represents the 30th on nitrosigine as a sports nutrition compound, and thus far, the body of research surrounding this ingredient provides evidence that its benefits to focus, mental flexibility, and executive function can be achieved within 15 minutes, and has been shown to boost muscle pump with significant increases in muscle volume post-exercise compared to baseline.