Nitrate Supplementation and Athletic Performance: A Literature Review

This report provides a concise overview of nitrate supplementation's impact on athletic performance. It explores nitrate's role as an ergogenic aid, focusing on its effects on muscle power and endurance, as supported by scientific evidence from the literature search. The report discusses dietary sources like beetroot and green leafy vegetables, highlighting the conversion of dietary nitrates to nitric oxide (NO) and its vasodilatory effects, enhancing blood circulation and muscle contractibility. Dosage recommendations and cost-effectiveness are also considered, with a focus on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) guidelines and the practical aspects of commercial supplement usage. The report reviews various research findings, including randomized controlled trials, and presents conflicting evidence regarding nitrate's effectiveness, with some studies showing positive effects on maximal cycling power while others show no significant impact on time trial performance or oxygen consumption. The conclusion emphasizes the need for further research, particularly on long-term effects and the use of sensitive plasma nitrate biomarkers to fully understand the benefits of nitrate supplementation for athletes. The report concludes that further research may be required for the usage of nitrate as an ergogenic aid due to lack of benefits observed in chosen scientific literature.

Running head: SUMMARY PAPER
SUMMARY PAPER
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1SUMMARY PAPER
Introduction
The chosen ergogenic aid is nitrate and the following essay will focus concisely on its
effect on athletic performance and existing scientific evidence as per the literature search
conducted in Part A.
Discussion
Ergogenic Aid and Athletic Performance – Nitrate
Dietary nitrate supplementation has been implicated to yield beneficial effects on the
athletic performance and muscle power improvement associated with high intensity, endurance
sports and training. Nitrate supplementation enhances the bioavailabiliry through reduction of
dietary nitrates to NO upon consumption and digestion. NO then proceeds to improve athletic
performance by exerting its vasodilatory properties resulting in increased muscular blood
circulation. NO also enhances calcium bioavailability by regulating calcium homoestasis
resulting in improved muscle contractibility essential for performing short bursts of high
intensity athletic performance (Jonvik et al., 2017).
Dietary Sources
The dietary sources be rich in nitrate include beetroot, celery, green leafy vegetables,
rocket salad, root vegetables, with acute benefits in athletic performance observed from a
consumption of 5 to 9 mmol bolus consisting of 310-560 mg nitric oxide (Avort et al., 2018). In
accordance to the observations by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), there seemed to
be limitations in dosage recommendations with a lack of benefits observed beyond the
consumption 16.8mmol/liter as compared to a dosage of 8.4 mmol/liter (Maughan et al., 2018).

2SUMMARY PAPER
Upon comparison to the researches taken into consideration in Part A, conflicting evidence could
be observed where beneficial effects were exerted at dosages of 12.5mmol/liter.
Dosage, Costing and Feasibility
As observed in the studies taken into consideration in Part A, there was no administration
of commercial sources of nitrate supplements and instead, dietary sources in the form of
supplemented beetroot juice was utilized by the authors. Due to the lack of commercial product
usage and absence of costing information reported by the authors, no conclusions could be
derived from Part A, concerning the cost effectiveness of supplementation. For the evaluation of
the costing of commercial nitrate supplement, ‘BEET IT Sports Stamina Shot’ was chosen. One
bottle of 70 ml, provides 400mg of concentrated nitrate and the recommended dosage is 1 bottle
(70 ml). Considering a pack of 15 bottles costing $55, the cost of one bottle will be
approximately 4 dollars. While the investment of a pack of 15 bottles may seem to be cost
effective, however, considering the conflicting and lack of beneficial effects observed in Part A,
the concerned athlete must engage in more research to ensure adequate justification of his/her
investment on nitrate (Beet It, 2019).
Insights from Research
The randomized controlled trial conducted by Rimer et al., (2016) observed beneficial
effects on the supplementation of dietary nitrate on maximal muscle and cycling power in
athletes. However, the research conducted by Lowings et al., (2017) and Richard et al., (2018)
did not observe any beneficial effects on the time trial performance and duration and speed in
swimmers and skaters. Additionally, the randomized controlled trial conducted by Curtis et al.,
(2018), observed no changes in the performance of endurance cycling sessions upon
consumption of commercial nitrate supplementation. Similar results were also observed in the

3SUMMARY PAPER
study conducted by Nyakayiru et al., (2016) where no effects on time-trial or oxygen
consumption improvements were observed upon administration of nitrate supplementation for 6
days despite increments observed in plasma nitrate concentrations. Hence, considering the above
studies, nitrate consumption as an ergogenic aid seems to be relatively ineffective due to lack of
observed effects on duration, speed, oxygen consumption or time trial performance. However,
further research is required since most of these trials focused extensively on short term effects
which may pose to be erroneous since nitraye benefits may be observed after several days of
consumption. Further research considering bioavailability of dietary nitrate may still be required
since most of these studies focused extensively on less sensitive nitrate biomarkers.
Conclusion
Hence, to conclude, further research may be required for the usage of nitrate as an
ergogenic aid due to lack of benefits observed in chosen scientific literature. The concerned
athlete must emphasize on studies focusing on long term effects and usage of more sensitive,
plasma nitrate biomarkers.

4SUMMARY PAPER
References
Avoort, C. M., Loon, L. J., Hopman, M. T., & Verdijk, L. B. (2018). Increasing vegetable intake
to obtain the health promoting and ergogenic effects of dietary nitrate. European journal
of clinical nutrition, 1.
Beet It. (2019). Where To Buy - Beet It Sport Shots & all natural Beet Juice. Retrieved from
https://beet-it.us/where-to-buy/
Curtis, K. J., O’Brien, K. A., Tanner, R. J., Polkey, J. I., Minnion, M., Feelisch, M., ... &
Hopkinson, N. S. (2015). Acute dietary nitrate supplementation and exercise performance
in COPD: a double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomised controlled pilot study. PloS
one, 10(12), e0144504.
Jonvik, K. L., Nyakayiru, J., van Dijk, J. W., Wardenaar, F. C., Van Loon, L. J., & Verdijk, L. B.
(2017). Habitual dietary nitrate intake in highly trained athletes. International journal of
sport nutrition and exercise metabolism, 27(2), 148-157.
Lowings, S., Shannon, O. M., Deighton, K., Matu, J., & Barlow, M. J. (2017). Effect of dietary
nitrate supplementation on swimming performance in trained swimmers. International
journal of sport nutrition and exercise metabolism, 27(4), 377-384.
Maughan, R. J., Burke, L. M., Dvorak, J., Larson-Meyer, D. E., Peeling, P., Phillips, S. M., ... &
Meeusen, R. (2018). IOC consensus statement: dietary supplements and the high-
performance athlete. International journal of sport nutrition and exercise
metabolism, 28(2), 104-125.

5SUMMARY PAPER
Nyakayiru, J. M., Jonvik, K. L., Pinckaers, P. J., Senden, J., van Loon, L. J., & Verdijk, L. B.
(2017). No effect of acute and 6-day nitrate supplementation on vo2 and time-trial
performance in highly trained cyclists. International journal of sport nutrition and
exercise metabolism, 27(1), 11-17.
Richard, P., Koziris, L. P., Charbonneau, M., Naulleau, C., Tremblay, J., & Billaut, F. (2018).
Time-trial performance in world-class speed skaters after chronic nitrate
ingestion. International journal of sports physiology and performance, 13(10), 1317-
1323.
Rimer, E. G., Peterson, L. R., Coggan, A. R., & Martin, J. C. (2016). Acute dietary nitrate
supplementation increases maximal cycling power in athletes. International journal of
sports physiology and performance, 11(6), 715.