In medieval England, beetroot juice or broth was recommended as an easily digested food for the aged, weak, or infirm. Even in mythology, Aphrodite is said to have eaten beets to retain her beauty. In folk magic, if a woman and man eat from the same beet, they will fall in love. In Africa, beets are used as an antidote to cyanide poisoning. In the present times, beetroot is extensively cultivated on the coasts of Europe, North Africa and Asia, as far as India, and is found in muddy maritime marshes in many parts of England.

Reference: News.BBC.UK
Professor Amrita Ahluwalia
Barts and The London School of Medicine

University of Exeter and the Peninsula Medical School

The Magic of Beetroot Juice
• An intake of one glass of beetroot juice daily can assuringly tame high blood pressure.
• Beetroot juice is very potent, and it's recommended that you drink the raw juice diluted at least 4 times with other milder juices such as carrot, cucumber, or celery.
• It is claimed that beetroot juice has the ability to clean and build the blood, improve circulation and calm the nerves.
• It also improves the health of the liver, kidneys, and bladder.
• The juice is claimed to be beneficial in the treatment of gallstones and kidney stones.
• It cleans the intestines and fights cancer.
• For women, it improves the menstrual problems as well as cures anemia.
• It is traditionally used for curing eye fatigue & tiredness.
• Along with treating skin problems, the juice is effective in dealing with weight loss problems.

What is Blood Pressure?
Blood pressure is the pressure of blood within the arteries of the body. Blood pressure is the driving force that causes blood to flow through the body from the arteries (where the pressure is high), through organs, and into the veins (where the pressure is low). Blood pressure is generated by the pumping of blood by the heart into the arteries as well as by the resistance to the flow of blood by the arteries.

The systolic blood pressure (the top number) represents the pressure in the arteries as the muscle of the heart contracts and pumps blood into the arteries. And the diastolic blood pressure (the bottom number) represents the pressure in the arteries as the muscle of the heart relaxes after it contracts.

Beetroot and Blood Pressure
News.BBC.UK Reference

Drinking 500ml of beetroot juice a day can significantly reduce blood pressure, UK research suggests. The key beneficial ingredient appears to be nitrate, which is also found in green, leafy vegetables. The researchers found that in healthy volunteers blood pressure was reduced within an hour of drinking the juice.

The study, by Barts and the London School of Medicine and the Peninsula Medical School, could suggest a low-cost way to treat hypertension. Previously the protective effects of vegetable-rich diets have been attributed to their antioxidant vitamin content.
While it took less than an hour to note a reduction in blood pressure in the beetroot juice tests, it was more pronounced after three to four hours and a degree of reduction continued to be observed for up to 24 hours, the report published on the online journal Hypertension said.

Research Studies

As per the research studies, hypertension causes around 50 percent of the coronary heart disease and it is also the prime responsible factor for causing approximately 75 percent of strokes. However, the daily consumption of miraculous beetroot juice which can reduce this danger to a great extent. It is due to the chemical formation of nitrite from the dietary nitrate (a definite functional mediator of the beetroot juice) that reduces blood pressure. Thus, it is believed that beetroot juice is one of the most inexpensive and easy ways to combat hypertension.

More than 25% of the world's adult population are hypertensive, and it has been estimated that this figure will increase to 29% by 2025. (In the United States it is indicated that 1 in 3 adults experience hypertension of HBP, High Blood Pressure.)

Hypertension causes around 50% of coronary heart disease, and approximately 75% of strokes. In total, cardiovascular disease kills over 110,000 people in England every year.
Researcher Professor Amrita Ahluwalia said: "Our research suggests that drinking beetroot juice, or consuming other nitrate-rich vegetables, might be a simple way to maintain a healthy cardiovascular system, and might also be an additional approach that one could take in the modern day battle against rising blood pressure."

Cyclists Volunteer for Beet Root Research on High Blood Pressure

The researchers, from the University of Exeter and the Peninsula Medical School, in the same city, recruited eight healthy young men to complete a series of cycling tests.
They took them twice - after drinking beetroot juice once a day for six days and after drinking blackcurrant cordial.

When tasked with cycling at an easy pace, the men used less oxygen after drinking beetroot juice, the Journal of Applied Physiology reports.

This indicates that their muscles were able to do the same amount of work while spending less energy. When they were asked to cycle for as long as they could before stopping, the beetroot juice allowed them to pedal an extra minute-and-a-half before running out of energy.

This 16 per cent increase in endurance means that someone who normally runs out of steam after jogging for hour would be able to keep going for an extra ten minutes.
Alternatively, they could cover the same distance but more quickly.

Researcher Andy Jones said: 'We were amazed by the effects of beetroot juice on oxygen uptake because these effects cannot be achieved by any other known means, including training.

'Obviously you get fitter with training but your oxygen uptake stays fixed.

'You could take a Tour de France cyclist and a man in the street and their oxygen uptake at the same work rate would be exactly the same.'

The benefits are likely to be due to the high levels of nitrate in beetroot juice, which costs around £2 a pint in health food shops.

The chemical is also found in green leafy vegetables such as lettuce and spinach but is especially concentrated in juices.

It is thought that it undergoes a series of changes in the body which lead to the blood vessels widening, improving oxygen supply to the muscles.

Red Body Elimination

But drinking beetroot juice is likely to have another unexpected consequence - red or purple urine, or 'beeturia' as it is known to scientists.

Europe & Beets

In Germany BeetRoot Juice is used as a restorative tonic for convalescing.

In France, there have been many experiments on the use of very large quantities of beet-juice to aid recovery in cases of malignancy.

pHBB Recipe

Fresh Beet Juice: Puree Beets and Cucumber (optional: add lemon and touch of concentrated stevia, and/or ginger) Most of the alterntaive medicine sites indicate beets should be mixed 4:1 with other veges, cucumber is very alkalizing has a lot of water, so great choice. Other choices and research is up to you. Always be sure to drink water before and after.