Question:

What is the evidence of beetroot juice to lower blood pressure?

29 June 2010

An article in the March 2008 edition of Hypertension [1] looked at the effects of ingestion of 500ml of beetroot juice.  This reported:

“..approximately 3 hours after ingestion of a dietary nitrate load (beetroot juice 500 mL), BP was substantially reduced (Delta(max) -10.4/8 mm Hg); an effect that correlated with peak increases in plasma nitrite concentration...
...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.”

This article was appraised for the NHS Choices website [2] as part of the ‘Behind the Headlines’ series.  We recommend you read the full appraisal but the key points are:

“The study was very small and therefore should be repeated in more people. 

It was conducted in healthy volunteers and should be repeated in people with hypertension or at increased risk of heart attacks. 

Long-term beneficial effects of beetroot juice were not investigated, nor were any potential harms measured.”

A more recent 2010 study , also in Hypertension [3] used a randomized crossover study design, to show that nitrate supplementation (KNO3 capsules: 4 versus 12 mmol [n=6] or 24 mmol of KNO3 (1488 mg of nitrate) versus 24 mmol of KCl [n=20]) or vegetable intake (250 mL of beetroot juice [5.5 mmol nitrate] versus 250 mL of water [n=9]) causes dose-dependent elevation in plasma nitrite concentration and elevation of cGMP concentration with a consequent decrease in blood pressure in healthy volunteers.

They concluded:

“Our findings demonstrate dose-dependent decreases in blood pressure and vasoprotection after inorganic nitrate ingestion in the form of either supplementation or by dietary elevation. In addition, our post hoc analyses intimate sex differences in nitrate processing involving the entero-salivary circulation that are likely to be major contributing factors to the lower blood pressures and the vasoprotective phenotype of premenopausal women.”

References

1) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18250365
2) http://www.nhs.uk/News/2007/January08/Pages/Beetrootandbloodpressure.aspx
3) http://hyper.ahajournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/HYPERTENSIONAHA.110.153536v1
 
 

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