Beet Root Red = Olympic Gold

Since Valentine’s Day is on the way, the color red surely stands out.  What else is red that may just be a sweet treat for athletes: How about some Beet Root Juice?  This highly nutritious food is being researched heavily and has currently been all over the news.  Most recently, I was reading an article in the NYTimes on the Olympic Women’s Hockey team’s nutritionist in Sochi.  Amongst all the information on the highly nutritious, calorie dense meals and snacks strategically portioned out for the athlete’s around their practices and games, there was one small caption in the article that caught my attention.  The hockey team’s nutritionist mentioned that many of the athlete’s were ingesting beet root juice before the game.  This stuff may just be giving the women’s hockey team an extra boost for performance that they need to win Gold.  I decided to look deeper into the physiological changes occurring, and the performance benefits that may be gained as a result of them chugging this red drink with hopes and dreams of Olympic glory!

Just a small amount of beet juice may help you as an athlete or exerciser to gain a natural edge over the competition, according to a recent scientific study in the American Journal of Physiology.  8 healthy male and female volunteers were divided into 2 groups: some taking beet root juice 2.5 hours prior to exercise and the other drinking a placebo, or fake beet root juice.  The exercisers who took the 0.5 L/day of beet root juice significantly reduced their total blood pressure, and improved the efficiency in which they carried oxygen to their muscles during moderate exercise.  This made the exercise easier to do, and they became more fit because of it.

That red juice from the beets made me question just what was it in the little bulbous vegetables that made such a difference?  Luckily I found my answer in yet another article from the University of Exeter, all the way across the pond in the UK.  And it just so happened that my former teacher, Fred Dimenna, was part of the research team!  They believed it to be the nitrate in these vegetables that play the crucial part in improving blood pressure and oxygen utilization to improve sports performance.  To make sure that nitrate was the key player, they gave half of the group 0.5L/day of beet root juice with full nitrate, and the other subjects consumed beet root juice with the nitrate taken out.  As a result, the only athletes that improved their performance, including their time to exhaustion most significantly were the groups who ingested the beet root juice WITH the nitrate.

So how exactly does nitrate do its magic?  Well it turns out that the salivary bacteria in your mouth help turn the nitrate to nitrite (with an “I”) and then eventually to nitric oxide at your muscles and vessels.  The more nitric oxide, the more dilated, or opened up, your vessels will be to allow for more oxygen saturated blood to flow to the muscles to promote healthy, robust muscle contractions.  But, as with anything nutrition, you don’t want to consume too much of the liquid because the time spent tearing it up on the field or track might be spent in the bathroom peeing red.  Yes, I said “peeing red.”  However, do not be alarmed this is a normal side effect. Whew!

Now that we have the science down, how can we apply this in our diet?  Well to start, we can eat beets (and their greens which have MORE nitrate than the beet juice itself!)  500ml of the beet root juice seems to be the perfect amount, 2-3 hours before training, racing or exercising.  However, I am not a huge fan of beets, and I know that many others may not be either.  So to get those performance enhancing nitrates, I recommend as usual to turn to whole, all natural food products as a substitute.  In other words, other vegetable sources!  What are other sources you ask?  Here’s a list of vegetables with high nitrate content, even more so than beets:  

-          Leafy green vegetables like Kale, spinach, arugula, swiss chard, and beet greens.

-          Herbs like cilantro

-          Beans

-          Stem vegetables like rhubarb and asparagus

Just remember to consume nitrates in the vegetables and NOT so much in the processed deli meats. It turns out that the nitrates are harmless in the vegetables because of the high amount of Vitamin C.  So if you do end up eating deli meat, include a good portion of vitamin C packed vegetables as a side dish to counteract the nitrates in the carcinogenic processed meats.  

Also please check out this video to recap!

Anyway, it looks like the women’s USA Hockey team and their nutritionist are on to something with this beet root juice supplementation, and maybe they will be able to turn the red juice into GOLD!

-Anthony