Nov. 05--Most people don't find beet juice to be particularly palatable.
Indeed, its taste is often compared to dirt.
But like a lot of food that doesn't taste very good, it packs a healthy punch, including lowering blood pressure.
And researchers at Wake Forest University say that they have found another benefit-- increasing blood flow to the brains of older people.
That's an important discovery because poor blood flow to the brain has been associated with dementia.
The findings from the Wake Forest study, which were financed in part by a grant from the National Institutes of Health, can be found online in Nitric Oxide: Biology and Chemistry, a peer-reviewed journal of the Nitric Oxide Society. It will soon be available in print.
Daniel Kim-Shapiro, a physics professor and the director of Wake's Translational Science Center, said that the findings open the way for more research on whether beet juice can slow the progression of dementia.
News of the research has been greeted with cautious optimism by people who study dementia, Kim-Shapiro said.
"People do think, 'Oh yeah, this is really interesting. It seems theoretically it could work.' But like so many other things, we won't know until we do more research," he said.
Beets, as well as spinach, celery and other leafy greens, are packed with nitrates. Once eaten, these nitrates circulate through the body and wind up in the salivary glands where they are eventually converted into nitric oxide, which has been shown to open up blood vessels and increase blood flow, particularly in areas of the body that need more oxygen.
For the study, 14 people with an average age of 70 followed a prescribed diet that included 16 ounces of beet juice. Some days, they ate a diet high in nitrates, while other days they ate a low-nitrate diet.
Magnetic-resonance images showed that the high-nitrate diet produced an increased blood flow to an area of the brain that is often linked with degeneration that leads to dementia.
The research also has potential to help people with other diseases and conditions, said Gary Miller, an associate professor in the health and exercise science department and one of the researchers. For example, improved cerebral blood flow might help people recover from certain types of strokes.
"We're all excited about the results from it," Miller said. "There's a lot of potential to make changes in a lot of diseases."
The next step involves developing a diet that delivers an abundance of nitrates over a longer period of time in a tastier way than beet juice. "Beet juice is just not peoples' favorite thing," Kim-Shapiro said. "Everything's a matter of taste. I actually like it."
lo'donnell@wsjournal.com
727-7420
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