Long: cea, Keloids and Nitric Oxide

[Guest guest]

I had earlier posted an email where I posited some connection between

cea and Keloids or extra scarring (I will include hypertrophic

scarring) - basically when your body just over-heals its wounds. I

have received some feedback from other cea sufferers who also

have some scarring issues. (Usually for Keloid scarring to become an

issue it needs deep surgical type skin tearing). I had also earlier

talked about a possible excess of arginine possibly being the

culprit. After looking around the web, I think I have another idea.

It seems the smart money now points to cea being caused by Nitric

Oxide overabundence or at least some problem in dealing with the

stuff. Nitric Oxide comes about in the human body after the Amino

Acid Arginine comes into contact with a Nitric Oxide Enzyme.

Now this group seems to be touting the benefits of staying away from

Arginine. Presumably this is to deprive the NO enzxymes of anything

that they can turn into the evil Nitric Oxide. (And towards this end

I am taking Lysine supplements - comments anyone?).

One of the best websites I have seen for detailing how the NO works

is http://www.diabetesincontrol.com/burkeseries.htm Here though,

they discuss the problem of diabetes and how this is now thought to

be a result of a LACK of Nitric Oxide. Interestingly enough,

diabetes is usually coupled with a problem that is the exact opposite

of keloidism. Diabetics frequently have open wound issues. The

website above details how lack of NO is implicated in this.

The website also explains how lack of NO is counteracted by sunlight -

the exact thing that is a trigger for most ceans (gives a little

credence to the whole NO being behind the problem of cea).

In short, my uneducated guess is that cea is not caused by too

much Arginine. A possible culprit is an overabundance of one of the

enzymes (iNOS or ecNOS - but likely ecNOS) that converts Arginine to

the dastardly Nitric Oxide.

Keloidism is implicated because in addition to helping convert

Arginine to NO, both the enzymes that do the work (iNOS and ecNOS)

are the enzymes that do the heavy lifting in wound healing. (See the

site above or any that discuss wound healing). Thus, an

overabundance of the enzymes could lead to too much NO (cea) and

too much wound healing (Keloidism/Hypertrophism). As a side note, it

is curious that EMU oil - a relatively obscure substance - is touted

on both Keloid sites and cea sites. Continuing the thought, the

lack of the NO enzymes would explain one of the possible causes of

Diabetes and the wound healing inabilities associated with it.

Ultimately, I wondered earlier how many ceans suffer from

Keloidism/Hypertrophism. My theory would say more than would be

expected from a random sampling. Alternatively, my theory would

predict that very few diabetics suffer from Keloidism (and perhaps

cea). Are any DR's looking into this?

Thoughts?