mtn said:
SaltyDog said:
In reply to mtn :
I believe you!
We've cut WAY back on the red meat for a several reasons, health, #1, cost, #2 and my wife and I both prefer fish, lean white pork or chicken. No way either of us will every be vegetarian, although I do like grilling veggies, but she is very picky, like trying to get a 5 year old to eat her veggies picky. Corn and green beans are about the only vegetables she'll eat without a fight.
I love to cook (as well as eat) and coming up with new and healthy ways to cook, and trying to get her to eat more vegetables are my current challenges. I love a good challenge!
So, I like beets, have never had beet juice though. You say to take some daily. Do you drink it by the glassful or just a shot or two?
I'll post more later, but its basically nitrates that you're after. Beet juice is the fastest and easiest way to get it. I forget what the studies specifically said as to the magic amount, but I feel like it was about 8 ounces. Shoot it down, do it at a time not near brushing your teeth since it requires bacteria in your saliva that is regularly swallowed to work. I try to get at least a serving of beets (whole beet), or arugula, or cilantro a day (I do it in a smoothie).
Beets are actually relatively low on the list of nitrate rich foods, #10 I think--#1 was Arugula by a large margin. Beet juice would be #2, but the whole vegetable is much healthier. But being realistic, drinking a cup of beet juice is easier than eating a plate full of arugula.
Ok, a little more time now. Let me preface this with the fact that my wife is a Dietitian (actually, she did the clinical portions of her internship at OSF St. Francis and Methodist, and her first job out of college was as a Clinical Dietitian at OSF), and I am a 28 year old who struggles with high blood pressure despite my relative fitness and eating much less animal product than the general population. This is a huge struggle for me as my favorite foods are various forms of sausage and other red meat.
The healthiest diet, period, is one that has little to no animal product. (You don't need the protein--this fallacy was started in the 1950's by a Dr. who spent the latter part of her life debunking the very condition that she first described.) But even going vegetarian is extremely difficult (and I'm no better--especially now that my wife is pregnant and craving meat). So the recommended diet for the general public is the Dash Diet. The thinking was that diets never work unless you actually follow it. So the American Heart Association softened the blow, and compromised. But, if you really want to lower your blood pressure, permanently and effectively, eliminate meat. It works so well that in just 7 days blood pressure is significantly lowered, and most people have to stop their blood pressure medications. The opposite is also true (give vegetarians meat, and BP goes up)
NOW FOR WHAT YOU ACTUALLY ASKED FOR! BEETS!
This study is about the best one that I've seen (there aren't a ton out there, as the beet lobby is, to my knowledge, non-existent so it is hard to get them funded). You can read through it yourself, but here is the juicy bit that you want:
"Our data support the thesis that dietary nitrate is likely to have been a major contributor to the BP lowering effects of the fruit- and vegetable-rich diets in previous studies, and demonstrate that nitrate is likely to underlie the cardioprotective effect of vegetables. In addition, it is also of interest to consider that the BP response to a high fruit and vegetable diet was considerably greater in hypertensives compared to normotensives in the DASH study,1 and therefore it is possible that the BP effect of dietary nitrate, evidenced in our study of normotensives, will be heightened in hypertensives. Therefore, we advocate consumption of a diet high in nitrate (ie, a “natural” strategy) to treat (pre-) hypertension and to protect individuals at risk of adverse vascular events."
There is a whole video series done by Dr. Michael Greger on this. Here is the one where he ranks the vegetables by nitrate. Obviously it is better to eat the whole vegetable, and it is better to eat a plate of arugula than to take a shot of beet juice, but beet juice is the easy button for most folks in this world. Just make sure that you have some OJ too (you need vitamin C to block the toxic properties of nitrates--but literally looking at an orange slice would get you enough). In this video, he explains how beetroot juice has improved athletic performance. Basically what happens is that with 2 cups of beet juice, people could do the same amount of work using 19% less oxygen--or it made their bodies energy production more efficient. Small sample size in this one, so grain of salt (but don't eat said salt). This one gets into the science of why it happens.
Here is some evidence that flax seeds can help cut risk of heart attack and stroke, but not as strong as the beet stuff.