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Beetroot juice promotes brain health
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A new study has shown that drinking beet juice
daily can increase blood flow to the brain in older adults.
This finding could hold great potential for combating the progression of
dementia.
"There have been several very high-profile studies showing that drinking beet
juice can lower blood pressure, but we wanted to show that drinking beet juice
also increases perfusion, or blood flow, to the brain," said Daniel Kim-Shapiro,
director of Wake Forest University's Translational Science Center; Fostering
Independence in Aging.
High concentrations of nitrates are found in beets, as well as in celery,
cabbage and other leafy green vegetables like spinach and some lettuce. When you
eat high-nitrate foods, good bacteria in the mouth turn nitrate into nitrite.
Research has found that nitrites can help open up the blood vessels in the body,
increasing blood flow and oxygen specifically to places that are lacking oxygen.
In this study, the first to find a link between consumption of nitrate-rich beet
juice and increased blood flow to the brain, Translational Science Center
researchers looked at how dietary nitrates affected 14 adults age 70 and older
over a period of four days.
On the first day, the study subjects reported to the lab after a 10-hour fast,
completed a health status report, and consumed either a high- or low-nitrate
breakfast. The high-nitrate breakfast included 16 ounces of beet juice. They
were sent home with lunch, dinner and snacks conforming to their assigned diets.
The next day, following another 10-hour fast, the subjects returned to the lab,
where they ate their assigned breakfasts. One hour after breakfast, an MRI
recorded the blood flow in each subject's brain. Blood tests before and after
breakfast confirmed nitrite levels in the body.
For the third and fourth days of the study, the researchers switched the diets
and repeated the process for each subject.
The MRIs showed that after eating a high-nitrate diet, the older adults had
increased blood flow to the white matter of the frontal lobes – the areas of the
brain commonly associated with degeneration that leads to dementia and other
cognitive conditions.
The research findings are available online in Nitric Oxide: Biology and
Chemistry , the peer-reviewed journal of the Nitric Oxide Society and will be
available in print soon.
Courtesy: ANI / The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com