CTD Sports Noxivol Supplement Review

Continuing my supplement review series, this time CTD Sports Noxivol.

Cover to Cover

Noxivol is advertised as a “muscle fullness” product which increases muscle pump during workouts that also reduces lactic acid and increases ligament health. The advised dosing instructions is to take twice daily with one of those being 30-45 minutes prior to working out for an extended period of time (30-90 days). Again as a reviewer I have to stress that normally I take the supplements I’m using directly prior to my workouts, although in this case I took it quite often throughout the day for several weeks just whenever I needed to hydrate.

The title graphic advertises the subtitle of “Endurance” and “Muscle Fullness” as the priorities of the supplement. The side panel talks about the product being designed for muscle fullness, lean muscle growth, strength increase, healthy joints and increased endurance. Of course these are your standard non-FDA certified claims, I appreciate that they are kept straightforward here.

As for the cover, it’s very basic and straightforward which gets a plus from me. Versus my last review which had a gaudy silver/gold motif, this has a simple blue/white motif, the polar opposite in a way and perhaps verging on being too simple.

Ingredients – Flavor & Nutrition

This particular supplement commits one of my cardinal sins, the use of “mix” labels in nutritional facts to obscure exact measurements of each ingredient. I’m sorry to CTD Sports but no trade secret of yours is worth the integrity lost when you don’t disclose exact contents of your product. A huge pet peeve, anyone considering buying this should know you won’t know exactly what you’re getting at least as far the label on the product is concerned.

The product uses a basic silica mix with citric acid and the powder maintains a great dryness and mixability being the most mixable of any drink I’ve had lately. It also includes maltodextrin and dicalcium phosphate for reasons not quite clear to me (I assume maltodextrin is to enhance deliverability/absorption of the mix and the dicalcium phosphate is a calcium additive). One thing that aggravates me is the product is dyed with FD&C Red #40 which makes no sense because the product I received is clearly white, there really is no reason to dye this product in my mind. Sucralose is the product sweetener which is typical.

Ingredients – Noxivol Mix

So I’ll have to do a little guesswork to go over the proper ingredients of this drink as none of it is straightforward.

L-Arganine Alpha-Ketoglutarate 2:1 (I’d estimate about 1.5g-2g worth) is present and surely is a backbone of the product’s nitric oxide levels (surely the “NOx” of “Noxivol”) and while I have no objection to this supplement I’ve always been a little nonplussed by it. It surely is correlated to all the positive effects on the label but I never feel it is as strong a correlation as supplement makers would like you to believe. Regardless this ingredient is a core reason behind the claims of this product boosting your vascularity and pump.

Beta-Alanine (based on the parasthetic tingles I’d estimate also is around 1.5g-2g) is present and is in my mind an essential supplement, probably the main basis of the muscle endurance claims of the product. The rest of the following ingredients all share somewhere between 2.7g to 1.7g of remaining weight between them based on my estimation.

L-Ornithine HCL definitely helps the nitrogen clear your system and I’d like to see more of this included in other supplements. You just don’t see it often and I feel the non-protein focused aminos are often neglected, so this is a good inclusion.

L-Histidine is surely here to help the “muscle and joint health” claims, but I feel it is unique as an amino acid for its great antioxidant and immune system effects.

L-Norvaline works in conjunction with the main ingredient L-Arganine to improve that pump and enhance your nitric oxide levels. I believe this is a good way to ensure your pump is good, and I feel like it deserves as much focus as the L-Arganine in a way due to this.

Lastly you have the cissus root extract, while root extracts often have great and interesting effects in this case there just isn’t enough information. Some information online suggests a study here or there supports the product’s joint health claims, but most of the information out there is anecdotal. If anything its long history of being used as a herbal medicinal treatment by tribal societies is about the only real background this ingredient has, which is really not very reliable for obvious reasons.

Ingredients – Nitric Oxide Support Matrix

This “mix” is only 130mg which is such a low serving size divided amongst its components – so little in fact that I question if it adds much of anything to the drink. It contains Choline Bitartrate (surely here for fatigue delaying purposes), Rutaecarpine (helps inflammation and pain), Vanadyl Sulfate (insulin resistance I suppose, but again a low dose), Black Pepper Fruit Extract (I always like extracts, probably for increased absorption of the other ingrecients) and Alpha-GPC (not sure why this is included, but it is good for the brain and liver).

At 130mg for all those things, I hardly consider ANY of the ingredients to be even half the dose you’d want for them to actually do anything. Take choline bitartrate for instance, the primary ingredient of the mix, it should really be 250mg on its own not in a mix of 130mg with 4 other ingredients.

Workout Results

While on Noxivol I do find the drink itself leaves me a little refreshed and I drink it frequently because of this. It’s a very easy to mix drink and I have taken it prior to workouts instead of my normal preworkouts (although if you take it as a preworkout I highly advise taking a good ol’ 200mg caffeine pill with it).

The critical flaws of this product in my eyes are a little bit of a lack of commitment in throwing down on its ingredients, I just feel a serving size should be a little bigger for many of those ingredients especially those in the “Nitric Oxide Support Matrix” mix although it’s hard to be specific when you simply have no exact serving measurements available. Failure to disclose exact quantities to me is a pity and a shame. Supplements like this are always difficult to grade their real life usefulness and sometimes the best way to do so is to simply break down expectations of what the product will do for you based on the dosage of all the particular ingredients – you just can’t figure that out for sure when the breakdown is not provided for you.

I find it difficult to recommend due to these flaws, but I will admit that I got my sample for review and do drink it consistently. Perhaps I’ll end on the note that I think there is perhaps a missed opportunity in advertising the general health benefits of many of the ingredients in this mix (lots of things great for the immune system, liver and brain and your body being healthy definitely affects your workouts considerably) and I definitely could see the product being improved by committing more to key ingredients and upping the serving sizes on these ingredients and perhaps adding an extra stimulant or two (lots of good plant extracts could make for a handy and enticing stimulant to make this mix magical).