A very basic molecule, made up of just two simple atoms in the body—oxygen and nitrogen—could well be the key to healing most degenerative diseases, and it’s been largely overlooked by modern medicine.

Nitric oxide is a colorless gas that forms when nitrogen is oxidized, and it plays a central role in distributing blood around the body, dilating blood vessels, raising the blood supply and lowering blood pressure. But it’s also essential in protecting the body’s tissues from damage when blood supply is low.

Besides blood, this neurotransmitter sends messages from the brain to smooth muscle, including in the gastrointestinal tract. It can quickly heal altitude sickness. It’s even responsible for male erections.

Having adequate levels of nitric oxide affects heart rate variability (the time between beats, which vary ever so slightly, a measure of health or impending disease), plus blood pressure, breathing rate, immune functions, pain levels and even a person’s ability to respond to stress, anxiety and many other physical and emotional states.

The miracle molecule

It can spark new neurons to form, new neurological connections and pathways to develop, and still others to be remodeled or even pruned away when they no longer serve their purpose. It helps increase the availability of oxygen in the blood; closes pain “gates” (by stimulating the body’s a-beta fibers in the painful area); stimulates the vagus nerve, the largest nerve in humans that affects virtually every important organ in the body; and plays an important role in lowering inflammation. Its effect on the vagus nerve is particularly significant, as this nerve regulates many functions of internal organs, including the mechanisms of the heart, breathing rate and digestion.

Nitric oxide (or NO, as it’s often referred to) is also central to wound healing. It helps the body to form new blood vessels and even to produce more collagen, besides fending off bacteria and other microorganisms and calming inflammation.

NO decreases in our bodies as we age. But with a few simple practices—eating certain NO-rich healthy, whole foods, particularly your greens; exercising; letting healthy bacteria flourish in your mouth; maintaining a healthy level of stomach acidity; and other easy-to-follow measures—you can boost your NO levels quickly.

But for those who can’t, NO supplements and rub-on gels or creams are available. When used as a pill or ointment, its results in wound healing, cardiac illness and much more have been nothing short of miraculous.

Sorting a deficiency of nitric oxide with NO lozenges or ointments may well be the cure for all modern diseases.

Healing through our ears

But it’s also central to the hearing system, which may also be central to NO’s effects in healing the rest of our body. A team of scientists at the Neuroscience Research Institute at New York University discovered that nitric oxide and its signaling system play a central role in creating the auditory system itself, particularly blood flow within the cochlea, the snail-shaped and fluid-filled organ within the inner ear. It’s also the fundamental molecule responsible for the sense of ease and well-being that people experience with music.

Nitric oxide creates a perfect feedback loop within the body. It’s released when someone listens to music; the nerve fibers of the cochlea flow through the thalamus to the auditory cortex of the brain, but the thalamus is also within the limbic system, the brain’s emotional center.

All this means that when someone listens to music, they feel relaxation and enjoyment while also improving their hearing system by increasing blood flow to the ears—and of course, everywhere else.

That may be the ultimate reason for the simplest NO-booster of all.

Noted sound healer and musician Jonathan Goldman discovered that simple humming is one of the best ways to boost nitric oxide. The introduction to The Humming Effect (Healing Arts Press, 2017), which Goldman wrote with his wife Andi, noted evidence that humming causes nitric oxide levels in the body to increase 15-fold. You can enjoy all the extraordinary benefits above just by keeping your mouth closed and humming any single note your vocal range can easily reach for five minutes.

One of the most iconic scenes in movie history is in To Have and Have Not, when a young Lauren Bacall says, as a parting shot to an entranced Humphrey Bogart, that if he wants to see her again, “You know how to whistle, don’t you, Steve? Just put your lips together and blow.”

So perhaps for all those who need some healing, we could create a modern update: “You know how to hum, don’t you? Just put your lips together and hmmm.”