Beetroot Juice Before Exercise - Not Really Beneficial

Researcher David Proctor of Penn State and his colleagues gave subjects either a placebo drink containing beetroot juice minus the nitrate or a relatively high dose of nitrate-rich beetroot juice and found that the latter did not enhance the natural rise in blood flow to the forearm muscles during graded hand-grip exercise.

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Lead author Jin-Kwang Kim said that beetroot juice also had no effect on the dilation (widening) of the brachial artery in these volunteers.

Proctor added that although several studies have reported indirect evidence of improved muscle oxygenation during exercise after consuming nitrate-rich supplements such as beetroot juice, none of these studies directly measured blood flow to the contracting muscles and their study was the first to directly test this possibility in humans.

Proctor continued that the absence of any direct effect on forearm muscle blood flow or artery dilator function was not due to a lack of absorption of the supplement into the blood stream.

The study is published in the journal Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism.

Source: ANI