A daily glass of beetroot juice could reduce harmful inflammation for people with coronary heart disease, according to a new research.
A glass of beetroot juice can reduce inflammation in blood vessels that are known to be increased in patients with coronary heart disease. Coronary heart disease is the most common type of heart disease, in which the heart’s blood supply is blocked or partially interrupted by a build-up of fatty substances in the coronary arteries.
People affected by coronary heart disease have lower levels of nitric oxide, which the body produces to maintain the system healthy. This happens because the enzyme that produces the nitric oxide is less active compared to a person not affected by this pathology. Researchers have found beetroot to be high in inorganic nitrate which can increase the levels of nitric oxide in the body.
The research, conducted by the Queen Mary University of London and funded by the British Heart Foundation (BHF), focused on 114 healthy volunteers. 78 volunteers were given a typhoid vaccine to increase inflammation in their blood vessel and 36 were given a cream to create a small blister which worked as a small inflammation. All 114 volunteers drank 140ml of beetroot juice every morning for seven days. Half of them drank regular beetroot juice, while the other half drank juice that had the nitrate removed.
Findings showed a high level of nitric oxide in the volunteers who had the typhoid vaccine and who drank the regular juice compared to the ones who drank the juice that had the nitrate removed.
The high nitrate juice restored the values of endothelium, which is crucial for the blood vessels to function normally. Researchers also found that blisters healed quicker in the volunteers who drank the nitrate-rich beetroot juice.
The team believe that the increased levels of nitric oxide helped speed up the volunteers’ body response to inflammations by switching key immune cells to become more anti-inflammatory.
Prof James Leiper, BHF associate medical director, said “This research suggests that increasing the level of inorganic nitrate in your diet could help to reduce inflammation in your body. We know that inflammation plays an important role in the development and progression of cardiovascular diseases and therefore interventions that can dampen inflammation have potential as future treatments to tackle this.”
“Inflammation is vital to protect the body from injury and infection,” said Dr Asad Shabbir, leader of the research and and clinical research fellow at Queen Mary University of London. “However, in people with coronary heart disease persistent inflammation can exacerbate the furring of the arteries, making their condition worse and increasing their risk of heart attack.”
“Our research suggests that a daily glass of beetroot juice could be one way to get inorganic nitrate into our diet to help to interrupt harmful inflammation,” he added.
The researchers are now planning clinical trials involving people with coronary disease to see if a high nitrate diet has a similar effect to those seen in the healthy volunteers. These future trials may constitute a stepping stone in the coronary heart disease field that could lead to a possible reduction in the heart attack numbers.
