Latest findings regarding nitric oxide have the potential to reshape fundamentally the way we think about the respiratory system – and offer new avenues to save lives. Scientific dogma has the respiration process involving only two elements — oxygen and carbon dioxide. Specifically, the delivery of oxygen from lungs to tissues, and the removal of the waste product, carbon dioxide, through exhaling. Recently published information demonstrates that nitric oxide is essential for the delivery of oxygen to the cells and tissues that need it.