Drinking beet juice every day helps reduce high blood pressure
Researchers have found that consuming just 500ml of beetroot juice a day can significantly reduce blood pressure. Research shows that it is the consumption of dietary nitrate found in beetroot juice and also green leafy vegetables, which ultimately leads to a reduction in blood pressure. The protective effects of vegetable-rich diets had previously been attributed to antioxidant content.
Researchers observed a reduction in blood pressure in healthy participants within just 1 hour of consuming beetroot juice, with the peak reduction occurring 3 to 4 hours after consumption. Some amount of reduction continued to be observed up to 24 hours later.
The researchers demonstrated that the reduction in blood pressure was a result of the formation of nitrites from the dietary nitrate in the juice. The nitrate in the juice is converted to nitrite in saliva by bacteria on the tongue. This nitrite-containing saliva is swallowed and is converted into nitric oxide in the acidic environment of the stomach or re-enters the circulation as nitrite.
The maximal time of blood pressure reduction correlated with maximal circulating nitrite levels, an effect that was missing in a second group of participants who did not swallow saliva during and for 3 hours after beet juice consumption.
Over 25% of the world’s population has hypertension and this number is expected to rise to 29% by 2025. Hypertension also causes about 50% of coronary heart disease and about 75% of strokes.
Drinking beet juice every day improves blood pressure and stamina
Other research has observed that consuming beetroot juice every day significantly improved blood pressure and exercise endurance in elderly individuals who had preserved ejection fraction heart failure.
Exercise intolerance, fatigue and shortness of breath with regular levels of exertion, is the main symptom of heart failure for preserved ejection fraction and is due to some extent to non-cardiac factors that reduce the intake of oxygen to active skeletal muscles.
Heart failure with preserved ejection fraction is a recently identified condition that reflects the way the left ventricle of the heart pumps with each beat. It occurs mostly in older women and is the most common type of heart failure and also the fastest growing cardiovascular condition.
Emerging evidence indicates that dietary inorganic nitrate supplementation has a beneficial impact on oxygen metabolism, exercise capacity, vascular health, and blood pressure control.
19 people took part in the study to find out whether consuming a single dose of beetroot juice or consuming one dose of beetroot juice every day for multiple days was better for improving exercise intolerance.
Blood pressure and aerobic endurance were first measured after individuals consumed a placebo or a single dose of beetroot juice.
A dose of beetroot juice was then given to all 19 subjects each day for an average of 7 days, and blood pressure and resistance were again measured. The dosage of beet juice in the study was 2.4 ounces which contained about 6 millimoles of inorganic nitrate.
It was observed that consuming beetroot juice every day improved aerobic endurance by 24% after 1 week, compared to consuming the juice only once which resulted in no improvement. Time pedaling to exhaustion at a pre-set pace less than the participant’s maximum was used to measure aerobic endurance.
Another finding was that resting systolic blood pressure was significantly reduced by beet juice consumption in the single-dose group and in the 5 to 10 mmHg daily dose group.
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