Michael Greger M.D. FACLM February 21st, 2012 Volume 7
Those of you paying close attention to this discussion of how beets can boost athletic performance may have noticed a term that sounded familiar—nitric oxide, which I talked about before in The Power of NO. It’s a vasodilator; helps open up blood flow. That’s how those nitroglycerine pills work when someone’s having angina. So if that’s how beets work, no wonder it lowers blood pressure as well.
Increasing athletic performance is nice and all, but if high-nitrate vegetables can do that, then these novel findings may have several clinical implications. A dietary therapy that lowers blood pressure and increases exercise tolerance may obviate the use of expensive drugs with potentially deleterious side effects. Look at this: drink some beet juice, and look what happens to your blood pressure within hours—and still working a day later!
We’ve known that fruits and vegetables reduce heart disease risk—particularly dark green leafy vegetables. We just haven’t exactly been sure why. These findings suggest that dietary nitrate underlies the beneficial effects of a vegetable-rich diet, and highlights the potential of a natural, low-cost approach for the treatment of cardiovascular disease. That’s why this prescription was published in an American Heart Association Journal.
Two cups of beet juice is a lot of nitrate, though. Although the magnitude of the improvement in performance after consumption of the natural vegetable juice beverage might seem surprising, it’s important to note that the acute dose of nitrate used in the present study (a half liter) is 4–12 times greater than the typical daily dietary nitrate intake in the United States. Yeah, but if it’s found in vegetables, how much is that really saying?
