You Could Have Had a V8!

Beetroot juice is one of the main components of V8 Juice, a popular vegetable drink in the US. The blood pressure lowering effect of beetroot juice has been explained by recent research:

Fourteen healthy volunteers were recruited for the study and asked to drink either 500 millilitres of beetroot juice or the same quantity of water within 30 minutes.

Their blood pressure was measured every 15 minutes from one hour before taking the drink to three hours afterwards....Thereafter readings were taken every hour for six hours. A final test was conducted 24 hours after the drink was consumed.

Volunteers who drank the juice started to show reductions in blood pressure after just one hour....After two and a half hours, their systolic rate - the pressure with each heartbeat - was around 10 millimetres of mercury (mm Hg) lower than that of participants who had drunk water.

For the diastolic reading - the "resting" pressure between heartbeats - a reduction of 8 mm Hg was seen in the juice drinkers after three hours....At 24 hours, systolic BP was still more than 4 mm Hg lower for volunteers given the beetroot, while there were no differences for diastolic BP.

The study's leader, Prof Amrita Ahluwalia, from the William Harvey Research Institute at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London, said: "Drinking beetroot juice, or consuming other nitrate-rich vegetables, might be a simple way to maintain a healthy cardiovascular system."___Telegraph

A person's saliva converts nitrates in the juice to nitrites, which when converted to nitric oxide causes vasodilation and reduction of blood pressure.

Nitrates are common pharmaceuticals used to treat various medical conditions where vasoconstriction is harmful. A stiff shot or two of beetroot juice--or low sodium V8--should help millions of hypertensives.