Beetroot supplementation for heart issues

So. BITD I used to work as a neuroscientist at Leeds University. This would've been maybe 2009? One of my colleagues was looking at vagal nerve stimulation for a variety of things (well, she was mostly looking at sympathetic nerve activity). When the NO and beetroot juice thing first came out, I was recruited as an extremely early phase guinea pig to see if there might be something in it (there was just me, as I have high BP and was in the bay next to my colleague ;-)). It actually did something - lowered my BP reliably overt the 5 days I tried it. It's was pretty quick.

There were caveats, however. I had to drink a *pint* of beetroot juice slowly, over amount an hour. If you don't like beetroot juice, this is pretty hideous. I couldn't just chug it.

HOWEVER - from the (brief) reading I've just done the NO enters your blood stream via some kind of "entero-salivary circulation" - Nitrate in the beets is absorbed in the small intestine, converted into nitrite and concentrated in the salivary glands - where it's then swallowed , and the stomach acid converts it into nitric oxide. Pretty interesting!

Personally, I'd suggest trying it. check your BP/hr/etc at hourly intervals before and after using the supplements, and see what happens. If you can go to your GP with hard facts, then it'll be harder for the to blow you off (so to speak)...

Thanks that's really appreciated.

I'm going to try the 'beet it' shots first I think as they're pretty concentrated shots, rather than glugging a pint of the juice. Luckily I like beetroot, but probably not in the quantities you need to just eat it 🤣

Do some reading around first, I would - Pretty sure that you can have digestive - uh - side effects from all that NO too... Pretty sure I only had to drink it slowly as the precise mechanism of metabolism wasn't well understood at the time - but all of that nitrate hitting your stomach at once might be *interesting* 🙂

Ah this is interesting. I have been trying to lower my BP to take it out of the "keep an eye on it" zone. To this end I have cut out caffeine (in coffee and tea) and tried to be more regular with my high intensity riding/workouts. But Mrs g and I have developed a taste for smoothies in the morning and a regular ingredient of them is beetroot. My bp does seem to be reliably a little lower, which I had put down to moving from 8 mugs of ordinary tea to decaf tea. But maybe it it the beetroot.

Not sure I can be bothered to do an experiment on this though as I have got used to and like the way things are.

Fair point Barney. I guess the sports beet it is dosed to avoid any disaster pants but we'll see! Obviously I'm aware of the red pee!

Sports beet it...
Sport beer it

They do a juice drink too...
Juice

Greyspoke I've no BP issues, but I do notice I very sensitive to coffee,I can feel pretty yucky after a normal coffee shop latte, I drink decaf coffe at home. Tea doesn't appear to affect me, but I've never checked BP after it. My BP at the docs and hospital has always been fine.

I worked as a research assistant on a beetroot study circa 2014. A few thoughts from me (a non medical person, so pinch of salt to be taken...) would be to try and take the minimum dose you can get away with. If it's only post exercise angina opposed to day to day blood pressure, I would be tempted to take a shot of beet it the night before then 2-3 hours before exercise. It tends to work super quick and if that does not work you could add in an extra shot starting a day earlier or even post exercise if you feel the angina coming on.

Also, I encourage getting the beetit shots. It's easy to know how much nitrate you are consuming and the taste is more manageable. At the start I would top up the shot with a little apple juice to sweeten it out a bit. But by the end I got used to the taste as it is.

From experience I was self trailing the upper limits of beetroot juice and found it great, until I took too much the week of a race and spent the race day on the toilet thanks to it's side effects if you take too much. I never really went back to it after that...

I’ve been drinking it recently to try and reduce blood pressure. I wouldn’t advise drinking a lot in a short space of time. It err, comes back out quickly, colourfully and violently.

Great to know you can rely on STW for some excellent responses! Cheers guys.

I'm on holiday just now so will order some beet it for when I get home. Currently resting up today despite it being a stunning day in the Dales. Did around 2.5 hour bumbly walking Saturday and 3.5 hour bumbly ride yesterday and not feeling so good today, hence the post. If I see any juice locally (unlikely) I'll grab some though.

There's plenty of evidence online suggesting it may help you - good luck! Let us know how it goes!

Oh, and enjoy the rest of your holiday... 🙂

So. BITD I used to work as a neuroscientist at Leeds University

I worked as a research assistant on a beetroot study circa 2014

You wait all year for a beetroot juice expert, and then two come along at once

I’m going to try the ‘beet it’ shots first I think as they’re pretty concentrated shots, rather than glugging a pint of the juice.

Not qualified on the health benefits but if you are going to try those shots I would suggest to buy the smallest quantity available initially.
I like beetroot but tried the shots a couple of times (second to check it really was that bad) and found them really unpleasant.

I've used Beet It shots occasionally as a training / exercise aid. Not had any violent digestive reactions, though you get some interesting coloration. I don't have heart or blood pressure issues, but subjectively it seems to work for improving endurance and I've had improved indoor training results when using it. I take it a couple of hours before I head out. I've read that pre-event daily loading is the most effective option, but mostly I just use it as a one-off on days when I'm doing something hard and remember.

Initially I thought the taste was rank, but I've got used to it and don't really care these days. Beet It also used to /may still do flapjacks - was given some and they tasted quite nasty in a vinegary sort of way, very definitely not recommended.

I'm not sure that's much help, but there seems to be real scientific justification behind the claims, so not just mumbo jumbo. I guess it may or may not help you, but the only way you can say for sure is to try it, which is what you're doing.

Interestingly, in performance terms, I seem to recall that it works best for amateur athletes. Proper, super-fit elite category folk have a less pronounced/negligible benefit from it.

Nothing to add advice wise, but when all the stuff came out about sports performance benefits of beetroot, I bought some raw and whizzed it through the juicer and chugged it before meeting mates for a ride, I like beetroot but that quantity in one hit was quite unpalatable, but I forced it down and it was repeating on me on the ride, we did a quite brutal climb early on and as I got to the top the whole lot reappeared as I chucked it up - it looks quite spectacular when it comes out again and my mates were extremely concerned for me until I explained what it was - I’ve never bothered with it since!

I once had a beetroot rear end incident, whilst driving on the A1. I could not get to Durham Services quick enough, and when I got there, all the toilets were full. Never before have I felt so smug about using and leaving the disabled toilets, because I felt like I had a colonic clear out.

You wait all year for a beetroot juice expert, and then two come along at once

Errr... Fabulous pharmacology and a compelling story; you need the bacteria in the mouth to covert salivary nitrate to nitrite, since we can absorb but can't process nitrate ourselves (mammals lack nitrate reductase enzyme). The challenge is the dose. You need to drink a LOT of beetroot juice, and after a while, it's the taste that limits. Full disclosure, I used to work on an inducible nitric oxide synthase inhibitor quite a few years ago. The pathway is very interesting, the drug was not so interesting.

https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/csem/nitrate-nitrite/biologic_fate.html#figure3
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5707742/ (placebo controlled clinical trial in volunteers)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4288952/ (same in hypertensive patients)

250 mL per day, taken as, say 125 mL in the morning and 125 mL in the evening is a LOT of beetroot juice.

I'd also like to state that I'm in NO WAY an expert in this - I just mentioned the neuroscience bit because I happened to be sitting next to people that were 🙂

TiRed - Ooh, I remember reading about the saliva thing. Antibacterial mouthwash completely mitigates the effects IIRC? Is there no endogenous nitrate reductase? The link you posted to suggest a tissue specific oxidation process somewhere.. or is that in non-human mammals?

I was pretty much at my limit at a pint daily when I did this, and as I said I had to drink it slowly. Just urgh!

250 mL per day, taken as, say 125 mL in the morning and 125 mL in the evening is a LOT of beetroot juice

Challenge accepted

No knowledge on the medical side.

I don't mind the taste of the cartons of Beet It out of the supermarkets but I ended up binning loads of the concentrate stuff as it was vile no matter how diluted. Think I've got some of the Cawston stuff in the fridge now which also tastes okay. Tend to supplement that with actual beetroot too so I don't have to go daft with the drinks. For initial testing I'd go for the ready made stuff first.

Challenge accepted

In the patient study I linked to, everyone completed the four weeks of dosing. When looking at any trial results, it's always important to see whether patients finished their treatments or stopped taking them - for whatever reason. Good luck! I prefer roasted mini-beets myself.

Antibacterial mouthwash completely mitigates the effects IIRC?

Think it only reduced the effect of bacteria not completely removed, but I could be wrong.

This has just reminded me that Leicester City football team were involved in some research that beetroot aids recovery after exercise.
Linky

All interesting stuff 👍 I've set my wife the challenge of finding some as she's gone out shopping today.

125ml twice a day of juice doesn't sound too challenging for someone who's happy to try fermented and sour foodstuffs, but I could be proved wrong.

Well I am going to give that beet it stuff a wide berth. And beetroot juice generally. But from what is said, my sub-golfball sized beetroot per day is not likely to have any effect, other than being an ingredient in a yummy smoothie. It probably would be a bit yuck on its own.

Well Mrs Longdog has returned from the big smoke with a litre of Beet It, so I'll have a gulp later as I'll not be straying from the house today.

Have you seeked professional dietry advice for cardiovascular risk? There may be other more impactful basics to consider first. For example reducing salt and saturated fat, introducting a 'Mediterranean diet', aerobic activity, stress management, stoping smoking (if you do). No expert, but getting the basics right may bring the biggest gains.

Nothing to add on the performance side, but I do drink beetroot juice fairly regularly, and completely un-scientifically feel better for it. Looking at all the responses above, I might be unique in actually liking it (the brands with a bit of apple juice in), and can happily drink a pint a day without any side effects… except for purple poo of course*

*I don’t count that as a negative!

Have you seeked professional dietry advice for cardiovascular risk? There may be other more impactful basics to consider first. For example reducing salt and saturated fat, introducting a ‘Mediterranean diet’, aerobic activity, stress management, stoping smoking (if you do). No expert, but getting the basics right may bring the biggest gains.

Don't smoke, don't drink, I get lots of aerobic exercise (far more than the recommended, but suffer from doing so as in my OP). My blood pressure and pulse are normal (good the last nurse said). I'm not diabetic or anything. When I was going through all the cardiac investigations I had my calcium score was zero, that means no calcium/plaque build up in my arteries. My small vessels within the heart muscle are the issue they think.

As for diet. Yeh I could be better and I want to lose excess weight.

I'm looking at beetroot because meds I've been offered and tried don't suit me, I can't tolerate them. NICE state that long acting nitrates should be worth it in my situation, but my GP (new as we moved NHS trust areas) won't prescribe them and I've only ever been able to talk to him briefly on the phone. My wife wants me to press for a referral to another cardiologist for a second opinion and ask about them as I've basically been told just to get on with it and phone 999 if I have more heart issues,but I mentally can't face the hassle of going through all that again at the moment.

I'm currently going through other stuff with a another new consultant regarding OA in my wrists that might be getting fused. There only so much I can handle at a time.

Perhaps given that you clearly seek proper expertise and advice, take a look at a session with a registered cardiac dietician.

In the far east we boil Pandanus leaf with water to drink it. You can buy them from Chinese Supermarket for £2.

A Comparative Study between the Effect of Pandan Wangi Leaves Boiled Water with Medication Therapy on the Blood Pressure Changes of Hypertension Patients.

Well I've just had around 120ml of the Beet It juice and it was quite nice. Would happily have had a good drink of it if not for the warnings of disaster pants, but as it's for 'medicinal' purposes I'll stick with that sort of dose for now twice a day and see how I feel.

Any idea how Beet it juice differs from any other Beetroot juice?

Doesn't watermelon have a similar effect to beetroot? It has to be more pleasant to eat in large quantities than beetroot.

I can get a tad carried away eating watermelon in the summertime and the only side effect I have noticed from eating very large quantities is increased peeing.

The juice is just organic unconcentrated beetroot juice with 10% apple juice to make it more palatable from some farm in Suffolk.

The Sports Beet It is like little shot bottles of concentrated juice (8 beets per bottle iirc) that's supposed to help endurance sports performance like TTs and distance running.

That's interesting. I have ready access to cheap organic beetroot so could just juice it myself.

... but watermelon grows like weeds here and would definitely be better.

I seam top recall reading somewhere that caffeine counteracts the benefits of beetroot from a performance point. Coffee fiends should probably avoid wasting their money. Not sure if that impact also included the heart and health benefits.

caffeine counteracts the benefits of beetroot

I used beet-it shots for long races and felt it had an endurance impact. I now used caffeine tablets for the same and feel it has a greater impact for me also reducing RPE a little. As per MSP, I tried both together and got worse as if they’d nullified each other.

Is it better as a drink rather than just eat it?

Only asking as I get through one of those vacuum packs a week - sandwiches, in a salad or just whole with a plate of food.

I like eating it too, and I'm sure it's good to, but I think you'd need to eat maybe half a dozen a day to get the same dose as you'd get from the juice?