Beetroot For More Than Just Your Blood Pressure

Beetroot is well-known for being good for blood pressure, but what else can it do?

Firstly, blood pressure, yes

This is because… Well, we’ll quote from a paper:

❝As a source of nitrate, beetroot ingestion provides a natural means of increasing in vivo nitric oxide (NO) availability and has emerged as a potential strategy to prevent and manage pathologies associated with diminished NO bioavailability, notably hypertension and endothelial function❞

Source: The Potential Benefits of Red Beetroot Supplementation in Health and Disease

That’s a little modest in its wording though, so let’s just be clear, it does work:

• The effects of dietary nitrate on blood pressure and endothelial function: a review of human intervention studies
• Clinical evidence demonstrating the utility of inorganic nitrate in cardiovascular health
• Vascular effects of dietary nitrate (as found in green leafy vegetables and beetroot) via the nitrate-nitrite-nitric oxide pathway

…where you can see that it significantly reduced systolic and diastolic blood pressure.

Note: this does mean that if you suffer conversely from hypotension (dangerously low blood pressure) you should probably skip the beetroot.

For your blood sugar levels, too

The fiber in whole beetroot or powdered beetroot extract (but not beetroot juice) is, as usual, good for balancing blood sugars. However, in the case of beetroot, it (probably because of the betalain content, specifically betanin) also improves insulin sensitivity, resulting in lower fasting and postprandial (after-dinner) insulin levels:

Evaluation of 12-Week Standardized Beetroot Extract Supplementation in Older Participants: A Preliminary Study of Human Health Safety

See also (cited in the above paper): Post-prandial effect of beetroot (beta vulgaris) juice on glucose and lipids levels of apparently healthy subjects

For your blood lipids, also

This one has less readily available research to support it, so in the category of “papers that aren’t paywalled into oblivion”, here’s one that concludes with the entertainingly specific:

❝Results: Beetroot juice intake increased plasma high density lipoprotein (t= -60.88, P<0.05). Triglyceride, total cholesterol, and low density lipoprotein were reduced (P<0.05). Compared with placebo, beetroot juice reduced the concentrations of triglyceride, total cholesterol, and low density lipoprotein (P<0.05).

Conclusion: Regular beetroot juice intake has significant effects on lipid profile in female soccer players, hence its suggestion for preventing diseases such as hypercholesterolemia and hypertension in female soccer players.❞

However, even if you are not a female soccer player, chances are it will have the same effect on your physiology as theirs (but, credit where it’s due, it’s right that they make claims about only what they know for sure).

Here’s the paper: Efficacy of Beetroot Juice Consumption on the Lipid Profile of Female Soccer Players

What’s good for your blood, is good for your brain

…and that’s just as true here:

Exploring beetroot (Beta vulgaris L.) for diabetes mellitus and Alzheimer’s disease dual therapy: in vitro and computational studies

When reading that, you’ll see that as well as two health outcome benefits (antidiabetic and anti-Alzheimer’s), there are also two mechanisms of action, which are:

• The blood sugar lowering, insulin sensitivity increasing, lipid improving, qualities we discussed already
• Its fabulous flavonoid content

These two things each in turn have a lot of other components and nuances, so here’s an infographic covering them ← this flowchart makes it all a lot clearer

On which note, those flavonoids aren’t the only active compounds present that result in…

Antioxidant & anti-inflammatory action

This one’s pretty straightforward, but it’s worth mentioning also that (as is commonly the case) what fights oxidation also fights cancer:

❝In recent years, the beetroot, especially the betalains (betanin) and nitrates it contains, now has received increasing attention for their effective biological activity.

Betalains have been proven to eliminate oxidative and nitrative stress by scavenging DPPH, preventing DNA damage, and reducing LDL.

It also has been found to exert antitumor activity by inhibiting cell proliferation, angiogenesis, inducing cell apoptosis, and autophagy.❞

Read in full: Beetroot as a functional food with huge health benefits: Antioxidant, antitumor, physical function, and chronic metabolomics activity

Want to try some?

We don’t sell it, but you can easily grow your own or find it at your local supermarket; if you prefer it in supplement form, dried is better than juice (for a multitude of reasons), so here for your convenience is an example product on Amazon 😎

Enjoy!