Beetroot juice lowers blood pressure

Scientists in the UK claim that drinking a glass of beetroot juice each day can help reduce high blood pressure.

The scientists at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London, and the London School of Medicine, say they found 500 millilitres of the juice led to significant reductions in blood pressure within hours.

Professor Amrita Ahluwalia and Professor Ben Benjamin from the Peninsula Medical School say their research revealed that it is the nitrate contained within beetroot juice, also found in green, leafy vegetables, which affected the blood pressure.

The research involved fourteen healthy volunteers who were asked to drink either 500 millilitres of beetroot juice or the same quantity of water within 30 minutes.

Every 15 minutes from one hour before taking the drink to three hours afterwards, their blood pressure was measured and readings were taken every hour for six hours and a final test conducted 24 hours after the drink was consumed.

The researchers found that the volunteers who drank the juice started to show reductions in blood pressure after just one hour and after two and a half hours, their systolic rate, the heartbeats, was around 10 millimetres lower than that of participants who had drunk water.

The diastolic reading, the "resting" pressure between heartbeats, was 8 millimetres lower in the juice drinkers after three hours.

After 24 hours, the systolic BP was still more than 4 mm Hg lower for volunteers given the beetroot, while there were no differences for diastolic BP.

Experts say more than 25 per cent of the world’s adult population are hypertensive, and it has been estimated that this figure will increase to 29 per cent by 2025.

Hypertension causes around 50 per cent of coronary heart disease, and approximately 75 per cent of strokes.

The research by Professor Ahluwalia and her colleagues highlights the potential for a natural, low cost approach for the treatment of cardiovascular disease.

Professor Ahluwalia says drinking beetroot juice, or consuming other nitrate-rich vegetables, might be a simple way to maintain a healthy cardiovascular system, and might also be an additional approach in the battle against rising blood pressure.

The study is published in the American Heart Association journal Hypertension.