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Those tiny green shots you're seeing in Mads Pedersen's Instagram stories aren't beetroot juice 2.0. Dr Filip Larsen, exercise physiologist and Chief Scientific Officer at Nomio, sat down on the Roadman Cycling podcast to explain the actual mechanism and what the numbers showed.
Nomio is 80% broccoli sprout extract, 15% lemon juice, 5% sugar. The active compounds are isothiocyanates, which activate something called Nrf2 in your muscles. Nrf2 is a signalling pathway that, when switched on, triggers mitochondrial production and your body's own antioxidative defence. In a randomised double-blinded crossover study, athletes who trained on hard 4x8 minute build-to-max intervals for one week straight showed lower lactate at threshold and higher power output when they had the isothiocyanates compared to placebo. The placebo group didn't adapt to the training. The Nomio group did.
The dose matters. One shot outperformed two in their acute response study, with peak blood concentration at three hours post-consumption. Larsen also said the response is more pronounced in trained athletes than untrained ones, which is the opposite of what you'd expect from most supplements. The study from late 2023 is published. The acute response study is on bioarchives, not yet peer reviewed. Independent replication hasn't happened yet. That's the honest position on where the science sits right now.
If nutrition timing and absorption is what you're thinking about after this, the episode on how I lost 9kg eating more food is worth going back to. And if you're wondering whether chasing weight loss is quietly making you slower, that one is at /podcast/ep-3-is-losing-weight-actually-making-you-slower.
Nomio's active ingredient is approximately 80% broccoli sprout extract, 15% citrus juice (lemon), and 5% sugar — with isothiocyanates from broccoli sprouts being the established bioactive compound and citrus and sugar serving stability and palatability functions.
Source: Dr Filip Larsen, Nomio Chief Scientific Officer
Isothiocyanates from broccoli sprouts induce Nrf2 signalling — a "master regulator" pathway that activates several hundred genes involved in detoxification, antioxidant defence, and mitochondrial biogenesis, paralleling the same pathway that exercise itself activates.
Source: Dr Filip Larsen, citing Nrf2 research
In Nomio's published research on recreational cyclists undertaking one week of hard training, Nrf2 expression measured via muscle biopsy was higher in the supplemented group than in the control group — providing the empirical basis for the product's adaptation-enhancement claims.
Source: Nomio recreational cyclist research, cited by Dr Filip Larsen
The lactate-reduction effect of Nomio supplementation was an unexpected finding rather than a predicted hypothesis from the product's cancer-research origins — Dr Larsen acknowledges the complete mechanism is not yet fully understood despite the observable performance effect.
Source: Dr Filip Larsen, on the Roadman Cycling Podcast
“So they trained trained really hard for one week. Uh and it was a randomized double blinded crossover study. So they trained like a one week super hard training. So it was basically 4 minute or 8 minute build to max intervals every day for one week. And I mean the intent was to uh to get them tired, slightly overreached and uh then let them recover for a few days and see how they bounce back.”
“So say the cycle at 250 watts or something if they had a threshold there. So after this tough week, they actually had a higher lactate level at the same workload when they got the placebo just because they didn't adapt to the training. But when they got the isotyanates in the normal drink, it was lower. So it was a big big difference there uh between how they responded.”
“They were given a like a small like a small experimental scar like in the like in the mouth somewhere. And they they done did that twice. So once was uh during you know summer break or whatever and once was before final exams. And they found out, okay, so during the exam period, the wound actually healed much slower than when you were not stressed. And that is, you know, so it's your mental stress levels, they will affect your physiological ability to recover.”
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