Nitric Oxide is healthy but it's a free radical?

[ycpspartan]

So possibly an elementary question but regardless, can someone shed some light on this for me? Nitric oxide is a free radical which free radicals are bad, at least from what I know. Anti-oxidants are good because they rid the body of free radicals, therefore nitric oxide should be bad... right? Now I'm not under the impression that it's bad for us, I just don't understand how this all fits together.

[TheFugitive]

Plenty of fruits will counter the negative effects, blueberries, pomegranate and acai berries

[cumminslifter]

where did you see NO is a free radical?

[spinietzschon]

So possibly an elementary question but regardless, can someone shed some light on this for me? Nitric oxide is a free radical which free radicals are bad, at least from what I know. Anti-oxidants are good because they rid the body of free radicals, therefore nitric oxide should be bad... right? Now I'm not under the impression that it's bad for us, I just don't understand how this all fits together.

Alright so firstly Nitric oxide (aka NO) is formed from L-arginine by three enzomatic isoforms of nitric oxide synthetase (NOS): neuronal-type (nNOS, you can also see NOS1), cytokine-inducible NOS (iNOS, aka NOS2), and the endothelial-type (eNOS, or NOS3). These enzymes (and thus NO formation rates) differ markedly in their localization and function. Loads of cell types, most notably endothelial cells (round blood vessels), constitutively express NOS3, generating relatively LOW levels of NO that are under tight control by regulatory factors. Contrast, NO2 which is normally not expressed, except when induced by inflammatory cytokines – it can generate way larger amounts of NO.

So if you have NO it dilates blood vessels. Great for CHF or certain respiratory distress types, and also you may have heard of using nitrates for anginal pain (mainly vasodilates venous ‘unstressed’ pool so actually works by decreasing preload, not by getting more blood to ischemic myocardium). However, you should know, that even as a free radical, free radicals can ‘cancel out’ but most of the CHF research for instance focuses on increased free radicals in HF, which don’t affect health by ‘canceling out’ the NO but rather because they alter NO in such a way as to prevent adequate compensation by blood vessel dilation.

Bottom line – you are being marketed to when someone paints such a simplistic picture as ‘NO is good for you’ or ‘free radicals are bad for you’. If you take it to be a ‘safe’ fact in all cases, then you’ll get paradoxes like ‘how can NO be good for you if NO is a free radical and those are bad.’ Whether NO is ‘good for you’ or ‘bad for you’ (or even certain USUALLY highly damaging types of free radicals which in some cases particularly vis a vis immune function they are essential to you surviving at all!) – is HIGHLY situationally dependent.

It is an interesting area of inquiry and I encourage you to learn more; but mainly textbooks and papers. If you surf around the web and try to use Wikipedia or google to clarify issues as they come up, you will end up barking up the wrong tree. For today, answer is you aren’t being fed very good understanding of what these things are or how they work, and I assure you you are better off signing up for college courses rather than trying to figure this whole mess out by yourself. Otherwise, I’d say toss the whole mess behind you and don’t worry about NO (which may be the best answer for you). Best!

[Valhallabound86]

NO has an incredibly short half life, so lasting effects are not likely. And I would think that the upregulation of it in most pump profiles is not reaching the level that would be detrimental to DNA, etc.