College football teams, including Auburn University, have been using beetroot concentrate as part of their pregame rituals, claiming it improves players’ performance, according to Kansas State University researchers. But the medical investigators also found it benefits heart patients.
 

Lead researcher David Poole, professor of exercise kinesiology and anatomy and physiology at Kansas State, said experiments conducted last year by his team found that nitrate in beetroot concentrate increases blood flow to skeletal muscles during exercise.
 

The latest study, published in the Journal of Nitric Oxide, Biology and Chemistry, determined beetroot juice increases blood flow to fast-twitch muscle fibers — the ones used for explosive running — but may also benefit heart patients.
 

"Remember, for every one football player in the United States, there are many thousands of heart failure patients that would benefit from this therapy," Poole said. "It's a big deal because even if you can only increase oxygen delivery by 10 percent, that can be the difference between a patient being wheelchair-bound versus getting up and walking around and interacting with his or her family."
 

Heart failure reduces the organ’s ability to pump oxygen to vital tissues and muscles, decreasing sufferers’ capacity to move their arms or legs and be physically active, Poole said.
 

"The best therapy for these patients is getting up and moving around,” he added. "However, that is often difficult. Increasing the oxygen delivery to these muscles through beetroot can provide a therapeutic avenue to improve the quality of life for these patients."