How Endurance Athletes Benefit From Beet Juice?

Is Beet Juice Really The Powerhouse Athletes Believe?

“I use beet juice in my practice and I have athlete clients who swear by it. They see it’s effective at improving their performance,” says noted sports nutritionist Barbara Lewin, R.D., founder of Sports-nutritionist.com who works with elite and Olympic athletes.

The idea is this: Beetroot juice is packed with nitrates, which your body converts to nitric oxide, a molecule that enhances blood vessel dilation, increasing your blood flow capacity and lowering the amount of oxygen your muscles need. “You’re able to use oxygen more efficiently, so the idea is athletes have more power, are able to run faster, and are able to move more efficiently,” Lewin explains.

What Do The Studies Say?

But in the new Penn State study, participants who drank beetroot juice and then performed forearm exercises did not see a rise in blood flow to their muscles or a widening of their vessels. This is the first study to directly measure the effect of dietary nitrate on blood flow in active muscles, but in order to make very accurate measurements, researchers only looked at a highly specific set of conditions: The study was done on younger males, and only involved a small range of forearm exercises.

“The younger you are, the healthier your vascular function. As you age, your blood vessels aren’t as pliable or healthy, so the effect on a 20-year-old isn’t the same as on a 30- or 40-year-old,” Lewin explains.

And the limited exercises of the study aren’t what people tout the root juice for: “It’s not like they’re looking at cyclists or runners,” Lewin adds. In fact, the study authors contend this themselves: It’s possible that any blood flow enhancement from the dietary nitrate would only be apparent at a higher intensity or fatiguing exercises—conditions within the muscle that favor the conversion of nitrite to nitric oxide, said lead study author David Proctor, professor of kinesiology and physiology at Penn State.

And the study did find other benefits: Juice-drinking participants had reduced “pulse wave velocity,” a reflection of the artery walls “de-stiffening.” This could potentially help reduce the workload necessary for the heart to pump blood, which is especially beneficial for highly-strained hearts like those in people with cardiovascular disease, Proctor adds.

Is It Worth It?

Beetroot juice can improve your time: Runners who loaded up on the red stuff before a 5K shaved 1.5 percent off their time, in a study in the European Journal of Applied Physiology. Cyclists who drank just over two cups of beetroot juice before a time trial were almost 3 percent faster and produced more power with each pedal stroke than when they rode, according to a series of U.K. studies.

While cutting any time off your PR is great, they only saved themselves about 20 to 30 seconds. While that doesn’t matter for amateur athletes, “a difference in seconds can mean the difference between a silver or gold medal for an Olympian,” Lewin adds.

And then there’s the variability of the beets themselves: You can have beets from five different farms and they’re all going to have different nutrient profiles, which means the beets you’re juicing may be more or less effective than the beets your friend has. That’s why there are alternatives like concentrated beet juice powder — like what’s found in BeetBoost — which is made from 6 medium high-quality beets + tart cherries (to help with inflammation) in each packet.

So whether you’re juicing the beets yourself or using a high-quality concentrated powder, taking beet juice can improve your performance and overall health.