Could beetroot bread help lower heart disease risk?

By Nathan Gray

- Last updated on GMT

Could beetroot bread help lower heart disease risk?

Related tags Hypertension Snack

Enriching bread with nitrate-rich beetroot could help to lower our risk of heart disease by reducing blood pressure and improving blood vessel functioning, according to new research.

The open-label randomised trial suggests that bread could be used as a vehicle to increase intakes of cardioprotective beetroot in the diet - and could offer new options for those who need to manage high blood pressure (hypertension).

Writing in the Journal of Nutrition​, the UK-based research team revealed that consumption of four slices (200 grams) of beetroot bread led to a lowering in diastolic blood pressure of up to 7 mmHg when compared to a control group who consumed normal white bread.

"These exciting and novel findings show for the first time that bread containing beetroot improves blood vessel function,"​ said Professor Julie Lovegrove from the University of Reading - who led the study. "This is an important addition to the increasing body of evidence that suggests beneficial effects of dietary nitrate rich foods on the heart."

Lovegrove added that the research also supports the findings of previous work undertaken by the team - which suggested that beetroot in the form of juice or bread lowers blood pressure​.

"Collectively, these studies suggest a potential role for foods rich in dietary nitrate in the management of high blood pressure," ​she said.

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2 comments

potassium to cure heart disease

Posted by Charles Weber,

Insufficient potassium and vitamin B-1 (thiamin) can not damage the heart significantly when both are deficient. This has important safety implications when supplementing each during heart disease, arrhythmias, rheumatoid arthritis, high blood pressure, gout, beri-beri, or diabetes caused or influenced by the deficiency of one of them. It is extremely important to know which kind of heart disease is involved. You may see this discussed in detail in http://charles_w.tripod.com/kandthiamin.html .

This is probably the primary reason why the medical profession has not been able to prevent heart disease up to date and why potassium supplements cause neutral mortality statistics. Researchers almost across the board think that potassium has little impact on the body or/and is never deficient. This is a mistaken assumption. Most food processing procedures cause losses. Enormous attention is given to a single murder or handful of murders, while at the same time the food industry causing 500 thousand deaths from heart disease alone, gets almost no coverage. This is because a considerable fraction of their profits goes to promulgating these disasters by advertising and bribing politicians. Even the medical profession is responsible by procedures in hospital cafeterias.

Copper is crucial for strength of arteries because of its role as part of lysil oxidase, which cross links elastin tissue. A deficiency is probably the main cause of aneurisms and therefore many strokes, hemorrhoids, and many bleeding problems, as well as high blood cholesterol and is probably involved by a synergistic affect in the cause of diabetes by chili pepper (see http://charles_w.tripod.com/diabetes.html ). You may see how to increase copper from food in http://charles_w.tripod.com/copper3.html and a discussion of copper physiology in http://charles_w.tripod.com/copper.html . Finding ways to repair the heart is useful, but there is no good substitute for not damaging it in the first place.
You also may find a book about potassium nutrition as it relates to heart disease, gout, rheumatoid arthritis, high blood pressure, and diabetes, useful for your library. Its availability is through Paypal along with its introduction, table of contents and first two chapters may be accessed in http://charles_w.tripod.com/book.html .
Sincerely, Charles Weber
PS Dr. Rastmanesh, a nutritionist from Iran, would like to secure a position in an English speaking university. He has an impressive CV. If you know of an opening I will send you his CV. It is a travesty to leave that fine researcher over in that criminal country after he has gotten rid of rheumatoid arthritis for us.

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Processed Meat

Posted by thomas,

like ham contains lots of nitrate too. What gives?

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