Medicine

The benefits of beetroot on high blood pressure are staggering! They reached top of the list in the high blood pressure foods. If you drink 500ml of beetroot juice every day, it can significantly reduce your blood pressure, according to UK researchers.

When healthy volunteers drank the juice their blood pressure dropped within the hour.

What was causing this effect? Nitrates. These nitrates are also present in other green, leafy vegetables that you are encouraged to eat in your nutrient rich diets.

Professor Amrita Ahluwalia of the William Harvey Research Institute at Barts and the London School of Medicine was leading the research, along with Professor Ben Benjamin of the Peninsula Medical School.

How does the nitrate reduce high blood pressure?

When the beetroot is chewed, saliva mixes with it along with bacteria from off the tongue. It is then converted into nitrite. Then we have another chemical reaction when it reaches the stomach. Because the stomach has an acidic environment, another chemical reaction occurs, the nitrite in the saliva turns to nitric oxide or will re-enter the circulation again as nitrite.

Observation showed that the peak time of reduced …