I am currently reading the book, "YOU Staying Young", by Michael F Roizen, MD. Here is the section on NO.

Inside you body, you have a short-lived gas that tremendously affects your body's function. This gas - Called Nitric Oxide - has a half life of less than several seconds. Like a wind that comes in and blows away pollution, nitric oxide is fleeting and exhilarating. You have nitric oxide, then you don't.

So what? We've all got gas from time to time. But we're not talking about that gas that clears dinner parties; we're talking about the kind that's important enough to have generated a Nobel Prize in Medicine, important enough that is powers a man's anatomical cranes. In fact, this gas, NO, was discovered to be the neurotransmitter in the nerve cells that control erections.

And that makes the declining functions of NO over time a key cause or ED and other age related and artery related problems. The bottom line when it comes to NO and aging is this: NO play a fundamental role in keeping a body healthy, and the reverse is also true. In many cases, the production of NO is impaired, and that leads to cell injury or the dysfunction of organs.

Despite its short lived existence, NO affects many organs. In the brain, NO acts as a neurotransmitter to rapidly transmit messages. Much like the way the brain chemicals serotonin and dopamine promote don't worry be happy emotions, NO has a calming effect. Why? NO turns on a chain reaction in our cells that allows our blood vessels to relax and dilate. People with atherosclerosis commonly don't make enough NO to keep their arteries open. The lack of NO help to explain the detrimental effects we feel during periods of high stress as well as periods of low sleep. The common angina treatment nitroglyceride increases NO, dilating the blood vessels and thus decreasing heart pain.

Now you should be asking, how do you get your hands on this? If you want to open the valve on your own biological NO tank, you do it through your nose. NO is found in the highest levels in the nasal pharynx, and that why nasal breathing and meditation are so important. The flow of air that happens when you breathe through your nose allows very rich sources of NO to be fuel injected into your system. The NO then helps dilate your arteries, so that your blood keeps moving as if it's on an empty country road rather than a LA freeway.

What you need to know about NO:

Stimulating NO is one of the ways to promote wakefulness.

Not having enough NO promotes aging of the skin.

NO enhances the action of minoxidil, which has been shown to slow hair loss.

Sleep apnea, a condition in which you stop breathing during sleep, inhibits the absorption of NO into your body.



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