Nitric oxide eases altitude sickness–by genetic adaptation or Viagra-like drug

My sister and her husband recently had to cut short their vacation in the mountains of western U.S. They got extremely sick with altitude sickness. Scary.

viagra is a commercial produced medicine conta...
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Well, apparently even 500 years of living at high altitudes is not enough time for humans to adapt so that their lungs work well enough to prevent altitude sicknesses. But Tibetans, who’ve been living at high altitudes for 25,000 years, and Bolivians who’ve also lived in the mountains for thousands of years have adapted so well that they completely avoid altitude sickness. Their lungs now automatically produce more nitric oxide than we plain dwellers, according to this article on CNN.com about how Tibetans and Viagra demonstrate the power of nitric oxide.

They don’t advise mountain climbers to run out and buy Viagra to solve the issue. The drug comes in big doses and only lasts “up to 4 hours,” but your lungs don’t need that much. More research will certainly be done to determine the magic combination and proper dosage that will work for high-altitude short-termers.

I love discovering new uses for this multi-talented substance that our bodies produce. Check out some interesting BioMedNews posts on nitric oxide.

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