Does L-citrulline enhance endurance performance? 🧐

A nitric oxide booster, but does it actually work?

Ergogenic effects of a 10-day L-citrulline supplementation on time to exhaustion and cardiorespiratory and metabolic responses in healthy individuals: a double-blind, randomised, placebo-controlled crossover trial

Study Details

This new study recruited 20 healthy active adults to receive a 10-day dose of either…

1️⃣ L-citrulline (100 mg/kg/day)

2️⃣ Placebo

Participants completed both trials with a 7-day washout period 🗓️

Performance, cardiorespiratory and metabolic were on day 10 during time-to-exhaustion (TTE) tests 🔍

Here is what they found ⬇️

Key Findings

There was no significant differences between L-citrulline and placebo for…

❌ TTE performance

❌ Cardiac output

❌ VO2

❌ Blood pressure

❌ Respiratory exchange ratio

❌ RPE

Conclusion

High doses of L-citrulline taken over multiple days do not appear to enhance endurance performance or have any meaningful impact on cardiometabolic parameters ⚠️

Chronic dosing may be required to see effects, but at this stage I’d save your money 💰

Reference

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40980088/

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