Beets and Blood Pressure: What You Need To Know

You may have just received the unpleasant news that your blood pressure is “on the high side” during your regular health exam. Your doctor peppers you with questions about your diet and lifestyle. The final verdict: You need to cut out salt, fats, and alcohol from while eating more fruits and greens. As if that isn’t enough, your doctor hints that you may have to go on medication if you can’t keep your blood pressure under control with these lifestyle changes.

The good news is that there’s one food that may help you bring down your blood pressure without pills. Beets!

This reddish-purple vegetable isn’t just well-known for its blood glucose-regulating properties in diabetics. It’s also scientifically proven to help manage high blood pressure, as you’ll see.

What Is Blood Pressure, and How To Tell if It’s Normal or Not?

Before we go into how beets help lower high blood pressure, let’s understand what blood pressure is.

According to the American Heart Association, blood pressure is “the force of blood pushing against blood pressure walls,” measured in millimeters of mercury (mmHg). Blood pressure is essential to your overall health as it helps propel oxygen and nutrients from the heart to various body parts via the bloodstream. It also shifts carbon dioxide and other waste materials from the rest of the body toward the lungs, kidneys, and liver where they are expelled from your system.

There are two values in a blood pressure reading:

• Systolic blood pressure: This is the top value that measures the force against the arterial walls when the heart contracts and pumps out blood to the rest of the body.
• Diastolic blood pressure: This is the bottom value that measures the force against the arterial walls when the heart relaxes and is filled with blood.

The American Heart Association listed out different ranges to see if you have normal or high blood pressure (hypertension):

If you consistently have multiple readings of higher-than-normal blood pressure, your healthcare professional will likely diagnose you with hypertension.

Beets and Blood Pressure: The No. 1 Health Benefit You Should Know

Besides healthy lifestyle changes and taking medication to manage high blood pressure, you may want to try a natural remedy like beetroot powder or beet juice.

A 2018 review featured in the Journal of Biomolecules explained how beets work to reduce blood pressure:

The vascular endothelium (the inner lining of the blood vessels) produces a substance called nitric oxide. Nitric oxide is revered for its role in maintaining optimal vascular function and heart health in two ways:

• Dilates the blood vessels to regulate blood pressure, and
• Stalls the onset of coronary heart disease by preventing plaque buildup in the arteries

So, how do beets factor into the equation? The answer: Beet products like beetroot powder and beet juice are rich sources of nitrate. When you consume these beet products, nitrate is converted to nitrite in the mouth. The nitrite-rich saliva then travels to the stomach, where it’s further reduced to nitric oxide. Along the way, the beets’ nitrate and nitrite compounds are also absorbed into the stomach and small intestine before entering the bloodstream. They are then reabsorbed from the bloodstream to go through the salivary pathway of being reduced to nitric oxide.

As you can see, this creates a surge of nitrogen and oxygen ions in the blood circulation, providing a potent source of raw materials for the vascular endothelium to produce nitric oxide. In turn, the resulting boost of nitric oxide encourages vasodilation, a process in which the blood vessels widen so that more blood can flow through them and reduce blood pressure.

What Science Says About Beets and Blood Pressure 

Scientific studies are living proof beets actually work in lowering blood pressure as they do per the theoretical concept of vasodilation.

A recent meta-analysis published in March 2022 analyzed seven studies involving 218 patients with high blood pressure. It found that those who drank beetroot juice for a period of time (ranging from three days to two months) had significantly lower systolic blood pressure than those who didn’t.

Even if you don’t have hypertension, you’ll still benefit from adding beets to your diet. In one study, healthy male subjects consumed beet-based products like beetroot juice and beetroot-enriched bread. The results showed that a low dose of beets (roughly 100 grams) was enough to significantly reduce systolic and diastolic blood pressure in these participants. The study’s researchers highlighted that beets have cardioprotective, blood pressure-lowering effects that anyone can take advantage of.

Because the human body’s ability to produce nitric oxide diminishes with age, the risk of high blood pressure and related cardiovascular health issues intensifies as you grow old. That’s why it’s recommended to supplement your body’s nitric oxide reserves with external dietary sources like beets.

For scientific proof, a small-scale study analyzed the effects of beetroot juice concentrate supplementation in older adults that were overweight. After three weeks, the researchers noted lower systolic blood pressure in the test subjects. However, they cautioned that any break in beetroot supplementation will undo the beneficial blood pressure-lowering effects. In other words, consistency is key if you want to reap the advantages of beets.

‘Beet’ Blood Pressure With Zen Principle

Beets clearly have a natural advantage in lowering high blood pressure. It’s worth a try to include these healthy vegetables in your diet as part of a healthier lifestyle. Speak with your primary doctor if beet supplementation alone is enough to manage your blood pressure or if it should be taken with medications for best results.

At Zen Principle, we choose to provide beetroot powder instead of beetroot juice for these reasons:

• Beetroot powder is made by dehydrating whole beets, then grinding them into a fine powder. You get the exact same nutrient profile as the actual vegetable, just without the water content.
• Beetroot juice is made by juicing whole beets and dehydrating the juice into powder. While this type of powder is more concentrated than whole beets, it’s also much higher in sugar. Plus, the juicing process removes the beet pulp, which means you miss out on the fiber and other beneficial nutrients present in whole beets.

If you think beetroot powder fits what you’re looking for, our Zen Principle Organic Beetroot powder is created from whole, organic beets sans the additives. It’s time to ‘beet’ high blood pressure the natural way!

P.S. If you want to learn other health benefits of beetroots, check out our post on “What are beets good for?”