My initial reaction to this news was “It’s too good to be true”. But three researchers received the prestigious Nobel Prize for its discovery. Louise J. Ignarro, one of the prize winners, says, “There may be no disease process where this miracle molecule does not have a protective role.”
So what is this miracle molecule? And how does it protect us from so many diseases? To find out, I interviewed Dr. Nathan S. Bryan at The University of Texas, a world authority on this minute particle.
Bryan says that for 100 years researchers have known that nitroglycerine eased coronary pain by increasing blood supply to the heart’s muscle. But it was a mystery why arteries expanded to allow this flow. Now we know it is due to a molecule, nitric oxide (NO), which when produced, sends messages to coronary arteries and to every cell in the body in nanoseconds.