Page 201 - The Miracle of Hormones

A Wonderful Messenger:
Nitric Oxide

The Production Facility For Nitric Oxide:
The Endothelial Cell

The amino acid known as Argentina-L, the nitric oxide synthesis,
nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate, calmodulin, oxygen, fla-
vin mononucleotide, flavine-adenine-dinucleotide, tetrahydrobiopterin.

The endothelial cell knows these microscopic materials very well
and uses them to produce nitric oxide molecules.
Using modern advanced technology, factories producing chemical
products are a trillion times trillion times larger than endothelial cells. In
spite of this, the technology of the microscopic factory we call endotheli-
um is much more advanced than that of the giant industrial installations
that we are familiar with. The endothelial cell, whose complex operations
have been understood only within the last ten years of the twentieth cen-
tury, accomplish all these without difficulty.
The endothelial cell knows what chemical material must be used
and in what proportion to produce the NO molecule. There is no error in
production. For example, N O (laughing gas) is not produced instead of
2
NO. The production within the endothelial cell never relies on chance; the
balances in the production are very delicate. At this point, recall that if the
endothelial cell produced fewer messengers than required, our blood ves-
sels would constrict, and our blood pressure would rise quickly, causing a
heart attack. If too much is produced, our blood vessels would dilate
excessively, our blood pressure would fall too low, and we would go into

shock. But endothelial cells never make such mistakes that could cause
our deaths.
These cells are ready to produce NO at every moment of our lives;
when the need arises, the production goes into action immediately. This
tiny factory works very efficiently; it does not store the NO molecules it
produces, so that problems associated with storage do not arise.
This remarkable factory in the depths of our blood vessels does not
produce unwanted by-products. If we consider that global warming, acid

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