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 Peripheral artery disease (PAD) develops over time with hardening of
the arteries and reduced blood and oxygen flow to the tissues and
muscles in the legs. When people have PAD, walking can cause severe
pain that requires them to stop and rest after very short distances
because the legs don't get enough oxygen to handle the demands of
even this gentle form of exercise.
Some previous research suggests that inorganic nitrate, an
ingredient in beet juice, can help increase delivery of blood and
oxygen to working muscles and enable muscles to use oxygen more
efficiently, particularly in people who are less fit or who do
high-intensity exercise.
"This makes it an attractive potential therapeutic approach for
individuals with PAD who have severely limited blood/oxygen supply
to the lower limbs which severely reduces their function and makes
everyday tasks require a vigorous effort," said senior study author
Jason David Allen of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.
"Our early work in patients with PAD showed that a single dose of
beetroot juice increased pain free walking by 18 percent when
compared to a placebo juice with no inorganic nitrate," Allen said
by email.
For the experiment, researchers provided 35 patients with PAD a
total of 36 supervised exercise sessions over 12 weeks. For each
session, participants walked on a treadmill for 30 minutes, with the
speed and incline tailored to their individual abilities.
Half of the participants were randomly chosen to drink beet juice
three hours prior to each workout, while the other half of the
patients got a placebo drink.
By the end of the experiment, both groups could walk further in
timed six minute treadmill tests than they could at the beginning.
With beet juice, people increased walking distance by an average of
about 53 meters. Without it, participants increased walking distance
by almost 25 meters on average.
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Cramps are a common side effect of walking and other exercise in
people with PAD, and this also improved for both groups. With beet
juice, the time it took people to feel cramping increased by an
average of 180 seconds, while without it, the time it took
participants to feel leg cramps increased by an average of 59
seconds.
Even though these results suggest that beet juice might reduce pain
related to exercise, it's not clear how much of the improvements in
the study were due to the beet juice or because of the supervised
exercise sessions, the study authors note in Circulation Research.
The study was also too small to determine if beet juice might
benefit all patients with PAD.
Beet juice also isn't something doctors typically prescribe for
reducing pain from walking with PAD, noted Dr. Joseph Ladapo of the
David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California Los
Angeles.
"The potential benefits of beets are not yet established in
mainstream medical literature," Ladapo, who wasn't involved in the
study, said by email.
But there's very little downside to trying it, Ladapo said.
"The biggest downside is that a person could ingest too much sugar,
which we are increasingly recognizing as being bad for your health
and particularly bad for children, because it contributes to
obesity, but that's about it," Ladapo said. "Otherwise, beets are a
healthy, nutritious food."
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2NoJqdY Circulation Research, online August 7,
2018.
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