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The Science

Consistency, quality and quantity make Beet It Sport the #1 natural nitrate product used in peer-reviewed research.

Beet It shots have been used in over 300 published medical and sports performance research papers since 2009. The research has focussed on endurance, multi-sprint, strength & power, altitude and health.

Sport and Medical Research

We had the pleasure of interviewing one of the greatest physiologists in the UK, Professor Andy Jones, who is a beetroot expert and pioneered the research into dietary nitrate supplementation at the University of Exeter.

Q & A

Read a transcript of the interview below:
I think my interest probably began as an athlete myself – as a teenager I was reasonably successful as a distance runner and I wanted to learn more about the limits of performance and so I was naturally drawn to Sports Science. I did my first degree in Sports Science and eventually my PhD in Exercise Physiology and as my running career started to fall by the wayside then I was able to put that same energy into studying the limitations to performance and so it was a natural sort of transition.
Nitrate is contained in a variety of different vegetables; green leafy vegetables in particular, and a couple of fruits as well. We chose beetroot simply because it’s quite easy to administer because you can juice beetroot – and it’s very easy to consume in a liquid form – at a certain volume, which contains a certain amount of nitrate – and when you’re doing controlled laboratory experiments, that’s quite a nice capability to have. Whereas with something like lettuce or spinach, you wouldn’t ever quite know how much you were giving and to consume 100g of spinach prior to exercise is not quite so straightforward as consuming say, 70ml of beetroot juice.
Beetroot is available in many forms and of course, if you were to consume say three or four beetroots you’d consume a certain amount of nitrate, which would be effective. But the problem is, you don’t really know exactly how much you’re going to get. So it’s much easier to consume a liquid than a solid – especially if you’re an athlete and you’re due to train or to compete. And of course the smaller the volume of fluid that you consume, the more convenient that is as well so using the concentrated shots we find is more palatable and easier, just logistically both for us and for our subjects than consuming the 500ml of juice that we did in our original experiments.

Discovery of the nitrate-nitrite-nitric oxide pathway

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1998 was awarded jointly to Robert F. Furchgott, Louis J. Ignarro and Ferid Murad “for their discoveries concerning nitric oxide as a signaling molecule in the cardiovascular system”.

It’s the discovery that launched hundreds of clinical studies, and triggered today’s the worldwide health and sports performance interest in Beet It Sport Shots and Bars.

From the New York Times:

Three American pharmacologists were awarded the Nobel Prize yesterday for their surprising discoveries of how natural production of a gas, nitric oxide, can mediate a wide variety of bodily actions. Those include widening blood vessels, helping to regulate blood pressure, initiating erections, battling infections, preventing formation of blood clots and acting as a signal molecule in the nervous system.

Click here for the original, official Nobel Prize announcement.

Placebo Shots

In conjunction with the University of Exeter, we developed the placebo shot, which is an identical version of the Nitrate 400 shot (in appearance and taste), except the nitrate has been removed.

Researchers worldwide use our placebo shots to conduct double-blind, placebo controlled trials, to eliminate the possibility of a ‘placebo effect’ and ultimately increase the robustness of their research.

We are happy to provide our Placebo Beet It Sport shots to teams and institutions worldwide for research. For more information please get in touch!

Research Papers

A summary of research by discipline and activity

When consumed in sufficient doses, the nitrate in Beet It Sport has been shown to positively impact athletic performance and human health in over a dozen different ways.

Athletic Performance

Concentrated beet juice shown to improve cardiorespiratory endurance in athletes, increase time to exhaustion, and may increase maximum oxygen uptake (VO2max)

Domînguez et al (2017) Effects of Beetroot Juice Supplementation on Cardiorespiratory Endurance in Athletes. A Systematic Review.

Concentrated beet juice shown to reduce oxygen consumption during moderate- and high-intensity running and can increase time to exhaustion at high intensity by 14 percent.

Wylie, et al (2013) Beetroot juice and exercise: pharmacodynamic and dose-response relationships.

Beet juice “positively affects performance of swimmers as it reduces the [aerobic energy cost] and increases the workload at anaerobic threshold.”

Pinna et al (2014) Effect of beetroot juice supplementation on aerobic response during swimming.

Beet juice shown to improve 4km and 16.1km cycling time-trial performance by 2.4% and 2.7%, respectively.

Lansley, et al (2011) Acute dietary nitrate supplementation improves cycling time trial performance.

One Beet It Sport Shot per day shown to significantly improve maximal sprint running performance by an average of 2.5%.

Thompson, et al (2017) The effects of dietary nitrate supplementation on the adaptations to sprint interval training in previously untrained males.

Concentrated beet juice shots shown to enhance muscle speed and power by 4% in healthy participants.

Coggan, et al (2015) Effect of acute dietary nitrate on maximal knee extensor speed and power in healthy men and women.

Beet juice may increase the delivery of oxygen to the working muscles during post-workout recovery.

Vanhatalo (2014) Dietary nitrate accelerates post-exercise muscle metabolic recovery and O2 delivery in hypoxia.

Concentrated beet juice shown to improve reaction time of response during latter stages of exercise.

Thompson et al (2015): Dietary nitrate improves sprint performance and cognitive function during prolonged intermittent exercise.

Blood Presure & Medical

A review of 16 research trials found nitrate-rich beet juice significantly lowers systolic blood pressure by -4.5 to -7.4 mmHg among healthy adults.

“The seventh report of the Joint National Committee on BP estimated that a systolic BP reduction of at least 5 mmHg (as observed here) could decrease the risk of mortality due to stroke by 14% and mortality from cardiovascular diseases by 9%.”

Siervo et al (2013) Inorganic nitrate and beetroot juice supplementation reduces blood pressure in adults: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Beet juice shown to lower systolic and diastolic blood pressure by 8.1 and 3.8 mmHg, respectively, in patients with hypertension.

These findings suggest a role for dietary nitrate as an affordable, readily-available, adjunctive treatment in the management of hypertensive patients.

Kapil, et al (2015) Dietary nitrate provides sustained blood pressure lowering in hypertensive patients: a randomized, phase 2, double-blind, placebo-controlled study.

Beet juice shown to improve exercise capacity and decrease systolic and diastolic blood pressure by 6.4 and 5.6 mmHg, respectively, in COPD patients

Berry, et al (2015) Dietary nitrate supplementation improves exercise performance and decreases blood pressure in COPD patients.

Submaximal aerobic endurance improved 24% after 1 week of daily beetroot juice dosing…Consumption of beetroot juice significantly reduced resting systolic blood pressure and increased plasma nitrate and nitrite in both of the dosing schemes.

Eggebeen, et al (2016) One week of daily dosing with beetroot juice improves submaximal endurance and blood pressure in older patients with heart failure and preserved ejection fraction.

Against Animal Testing

James White Drinks Ltd does not conduct, fund or commission any research involving laboratory animals. Beet It shots are used in medical research as a natural source of dietary nitrate, and research ethics committees have approved for Beet It shots to be used for human trials without completing animal trials first. We encourage all third-party scientists who use Beet It shots in their research to avoid using animals in laboratory experiments.

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