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.

Early in life we produce large amounts of NO in the endothelial lining (the innermost lining) of blood vessels. This keeps arteries expanded to permit a good supply of oxygenated blood to organs.

But after age 40, nitric oxide decreases, arteries constrict, causing hypertension and increased pressure injures the inner wall of coronary arteries. This damage results in a chemical and inflammatory reaction that kills one North American every 37 seconds, making heart attack the nation's number one killer.

Bryan adds this interesting fact. "Nitric oxide first attained star status when treating erectile dysfunction. ED is cured by drugs that produce NO, sending increased amounts of blood to the male organ."

But bringing more oxygenated blood to cells fights other common problems as well. Bryan claims decreased amounts of NO may play a major role in the development of Type 2 diabetes. Low levels of NO result in insulin resistance, making it difficult for insulin to enter cells to maintain normal blood sugar level. High blood sugar triggers heart attack, stroke, kidney failure, blindness, amputation of legs. Italian researchers discovered that diabetes patients with kidney disease had nitric oxide levels 37 percent lower than healthy people.

A contraceptive injection for men has been shown to be almost 100 per cent effective, and may also increase libido. The hormone-based jab is designed to lower sperm counts by acting on the brain's pituitary gland.


Over a year-long trial, nearly 96 per cent of couples relying on the injection to prevent unplanned pregnancies found it to be effective. During this time, only four pregnancies occurred among the men's partners.

However, researchers said more work was needed to address the treatment's reported side effects, which included depression and other mood disorders, muscle pain and acne. However it did also increase libido.

Dr Mario Festin, from the World Health Organisation in Geneva, Switzerland, said: "The study found it is possible to have a hormonal contraceptive for men that reduces the risk of unplanned pregnancies in the partners of men who use it.

"Our findings confirmed the efficacy of this contraceptive method previously seen in small studies."

Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin 1928 and it became available for widespread use in 1945. Since then people have benefited from the use of antibiotics in curing infections that would have previously sent them to their graves. Now, however, this golden age is coming to an end. Top researchers state that we are entering into the post-antibiotic era. Superbugs such as MSRA and CRE are on the rise and becoming increasingly difficult -- if not downright impossible -- to treat with our current stock of antibiotics and new pharmaceutical options are few and far between.

Join us on this episode of the Health and Wellness Show where we'll discuss how is it that what was once a boon for humanity has become a scourge. Does the responsibility lie with Big Pharma, Big Ag, family doctors or ourselves? Has the medical industry painted us into a corner or is the answer to antibiotic resistance to be found elsewhere?

Stay tuned for Zoya's Pet Health Segment where the topic is raisin toxicity in dogs.

Running Time: 01:27:58

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An injected male contraceptive has been shown to be almost 100 per cent effective in a trial involving 320 men.

The hormone-based jab is designed to lower sperm counts by acting on the brain's pituitary gland.

Over a year-long trial, the injection was effective in nearly 96 per cent of couples. However, researchers said more work was needed to address the treatment's reported side effects, which included depression and other mood disorders, muscle pain, acne and increased libido.

When his fever spiked, he thought someone was setting him on fire. When orderlies slid him into an MRI, he thought he was being fed into an oven. Frequent catheter changes seemed like sexual abuse. Dialysis? He thought someone was taking blood out of a dead woman's body and injecting it into his veins.

The horrifying, violent hallucinations plagued David Jones, now 39, during a six-week stay in the intensive care unit at Chicago's Northwestern Memorial Hospital — and for months after he was discharged. He thought he was going crazy and felt very alone.

He wasn't.

The brain is capable of incredible things.

A 16-year-old in Atlanta has made headlines this week after waking up from a coma speaking fluent Spanish.

Rueben Nsemoh is a native English speaker who knew some basic Spanish before he suffered a concussion during a soccer game, but when he woke up from the injury, he was able to speak Spanish "like a native", and struggled with English.

"It started flowing out," Rueben told Melissa Chan over at TIME. "I felt like it was like second nature for me. I wasn't speaking my English right, and every time I tried to speak it I would have a seizure."

"It was weird," he added. "It was not scary at all. I actually liked it a lot. It was really unique to me."

". . . new chemicals come from our laboratories in an endless stream; almost 500 annually find their way into actual use in the United States alone...500 new chemicals to which the bodies of men and animals are required somehow to adapt each year, chemicals totally outside the limits of biologic experience." - Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (1962)

Two years after Rachel Carson sounded the above warning, she died of breast cancer. Now 50 years later, the pesticide and chemical assault on our health that Carson exposed in her book, Silent Spring, has intensified. Newer toxic chemicals like Monsanto's Roundup and Syngenta's atrazine have taken over where DDT and arsenic left off. Despite massive scientific evidence that these chemicals are poisoning us, U.S. regulatory agencies have avoided or delayed taking action on thousands of deadly chemicals, including Monsanto's Roundup (active ingredient glyphosate) and Syngenta's atrazine, the two most heavily sprayed poisons on GMO corn and soybeans, America's top crops.

The European Union, utilizing the "precautionary principle," has banned several dozen agricultural pesticides and practices that still pollute U.S. food, food packaging, water, body care, cosmetic, and cleaning products. Still, and despite the fact that the President's Cancer Panel, in 2010, warned that up to 80 percent of U.S. cancer cases—currently striking 48 percent of men, 38 percent of women, and increasing numbers of children—are directly caused by poisons in our environment and food, by Big Food, pharmaceutical, chemical and genetic engineering corporations, aided and abetted by federal government bureaucrats, are still telling us "don't worry."

With the UK's Digital Economy Bill set to be finalized today, new 5G microwave spectra are about to be released across the planet without adequate safety testing, writes Lynne Wycherley. Global neglect of the Precautionary Principle is opening the way to corporate profit but placing humans and ecosystems at risk, and delaying a paradigm shift towards safer connectivity.

In Drowning in a Sea of Microwaves, the late geneticist Dr Mae-Wan Ho - a visionary voice who opposed GMOs - identified pollution from wireless technologies as a pressing issue of our times.

Noting evidence for "DNA damage ... cancers, microwave sickness, [and], impairment of fertility", she concluded: "Evidence is emerging that the health hazards associated with wireless microwaves are at least comparable to, if not worse than, those associated with cigarette smoking."

Since the advent of radar, followed by mobile phones and dense WiFi networks, such anthropogenic radiation has sky-rocketed. Although it is non-ionizing, and does not destabilize molecules directly, evidence of other harm has been growing since 1950s studies on radar workers.

The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), facing criticism over its classification of carcinogens, has reportedly been advising its scientific experts not to publish internal research data on its 2015 report on "probably carcinogenic" glyphosate.

The IARC urged its scientists not to publish research documents on its 2015 weedkiller glyphosate review, according to Reuters. The agency told Reuters on Tuesday that it tried to protect the study from "external interference," as well as protect its intellectual rights, since it was "the sole owner of such materials."

The scientists had been asked earlier to release all the documentation on the 2015 report under US freedom of information laws.

The groundbreaking review, published in March 2015 by the IARC - a semi-autonomous agency of the World Health Organization (WHO) - labeled the glyphosate herbicide as "probably carcinogenic to humans." Glyphosate is a key ingredient of Monsanto's flagship weedkiller well-known under the trade name 'Roundup.' It is one of the most heavily used herbicides in the world and is designed to go along with genetically-modified "Roundup Ready" crops, also produced by Monsanto.

Since 1987, the so-called "Patient Zero" of HIV was believed to be a Canadian flight attendant, blamed for importing the virus that causes AIDS into the US. New research has determined that he was not the first infected person in the US, however.

Gaetan Dugas has been blamed for the appearance of AIDS in the US. However, research from the University of Arizona has exonerated Dugas, no longer the first villain in the deadly epidemic.

Dugas was first identified as "Patient Zero" in Randy Shilts' 1987 bestseller about the AIDS epidemic, titled 'And the Band Played On.' The former Air Canada flight attendant died of AIDS in 1984, but new discoveries about the genetic makeup of the AIDS virus have revealed that Dugas was not the source of the infection in the US, merely another victim of the disease during its earliest days.

Michael Worobey, the evolutionary biologist at the University of Arizona, led the study that pieced together the genetic sequence of the HIV virus, using eight blood samples collected from gay and bisexual men during a hepatitis B study between 1978 and 1979, Reuters reported.

What Worobey and his team discovered was that AIDS first came to the US by way of the Caribbean in 1970 or 1971. Instead of originating in California and spreading eastward via Dugas, as it was long believed, the spread of AIDS was actually the opposite.