The Beet Juice Conundrum: Does It Boost Blood Flow?

For years, athletes have been drinking beet juice before working out to increase blood flow to muscles and boost performance. Now comes a study from researchers at Penn State suggesting that the beet juice strategy was all for naught. A Penn State news release reports that while beetroot juice is in fact rich in nitrates, it did not enhance muscle blood flow or vascular dilation during exercise. The good news, although not necessarily for athletes, is that the researchers found that it did “de-stiffen” blood vessels under resting conditions, potentially easing the workload of the heart. How to they know? When the  researchers gave subjects either a placebo drink containing beetroot juice minus the nitrate or a relatively high dose of nitrate-rich beetroot juice, they found that the latter did not enhance the natural rise in blood flow to the forearm muscles during graded handgrip exercise. The researchers did notice, however, a direct correlation between nitrite levels in the blood and the slowing of participants’ arterial pulsation velocity, an indication that the supplement did indeed have a biological (artery de-stiffening) effect. That finding has encouraged the researchers to look into the effects of beet juice/nitrate supplementation on vascular function in older adults, including those with elevated blood pressure and impaired muscle blood flow during exercise.