According to a recent study, exercising while eating dietary nitrate, the active component present in beetroot juice, greatly boosted muscle force.
Researchers still have much to understand about why this impact occurs and how our bodies transform the dietary nitrate that we intake into nitric oxide that can be utilized by our cells. It is known that dietary nitrate increases exercise, both raising endurance and enhancing high-intensity activity.
Researchers from the University of Exeter and the US National Institutes of Health examined the distribution of ingested nitrate in ten healthy volunteers’ saliva, blood, muscle, and urine before asking them to engage in vigorous leg exercise in an effort to close this knowledge gap. The team sought to identify the bodily regions where dietary nitrate was active in order to shed light on the underlying mechanisms.
Participants were instructed to exercise on a machine for five minutes, performing 60 quadriceps contractions at maximal intensity, while straightening their knee, an hour after taking the nitrate.
This study provides the first direct evidence that muscle nitrate levels are important for exercise performance, presumably by acting as a source of nitric oxide. These results have significant implications not only for the exercise field, but possibly for other medical areas such as those targeting neuromuscular and metabolic diseases related to nitric oxide deficiency.
Dr. Barbora Piknova
The team found a significant increase in the nitrate levels in muscle. In comparison to when individuals received a placebo, researchers discovered that this nitrate boost increased muscle force by 7% during the workouts.
Andy Jones, Professor of Applied Physiology at the University of Exeter, said: “Our research has already provided a large body of evidence on the performance-enhancing properties of dietary nitrate, commonly found in beetroot juice. Excitingly, this latest study provides the best evidence to date on the mechanisms behind why dietary nitrate improves human muscle performance.”
After consuming tagged dietary nitrate, previous research have discovered an increase in nitrate in tissue and bodily fluid. Researchers were able to precisely determine where nitrate levels are elevated and active in the new study’s usage of the tracer, and they also gained fresh insight into how the nitrate we consume is used to improve exercise performance.
“This study provides the first direct evidence that muscle nitrate levels are important for exercise performance, presumably by acting as a source of nitric oxide,” said Dr. Barbora Piknova, research collaborator and staff scientist in the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases at the National Institutes of Health.
“These results have significant implications not only for the exercise field, but possibly for other medical areas such as those targeting neuromuscular and metabolic diseases related to nitric oxide deficiency.”
The research was conducted in collaboration with the University of Queensland, Australia, under the QUEX partnership with Exeter.
