Beetroot Juice Helps Improve Endurance, Blood Pressure

A daily dose of beetroot juice may improve both endurance and blood pressure, according to recent findings published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology-Heart Failure.

During the study, reserachers administered a daily dose of beetroot joice to 19 patients for an average of seven days; the juice dose used in the study was equivalent to about 2.4 ounces and contained around 6 millimoles of inorganic nitrate. Then, they measured both endurance and blood pressure after time had passed, which was measured via cycling time to exhaustion at a fixed workload lower than their maximum. 

The team found that the daily dosing of beetroot juice improved aerobic endurance by 24 percent after one week, when compared to a single dose that produced no improvement.

Another finding was that consumption of the juice significantly reduced resting systolic blood pressure in both the single and daily dose groups by 5 to 10 mmHg, researchers noted. No adverse events were associated with either intervention.

"Although larger trials need to be conducted, these initial findings suggest that one week of daily beetroot juice could be a potential therapeutic option to improve aerobic endurance in patients with HFPEF, which has implications for improving everyday activities and quality of life," said Dalane Kitzman, M.D., professor of internal medicine at Wake Forest Baptist and senior author of the study, in a news release. 

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