¿El triclosán en la pasta de dientes Colgate Total es seguro en relación a las bacterias reductoras de nitrato en nuestra lengua y sus potenciales efectos perturbadores endocrinos en la función tiroidea y obesidad?
¿Cuáles son el momento y la dosis óptimos para consumir verduras que contienen nitratos, como la remolacha y la espinaca, para mejorar el rendimiento atlético?
Los vegetales como la remolacha y la rúcula pueden mejorar el desempeño atlético al mejorar el transporte y la utilización del oxígeno, pero ¿qué hay acerca de aquellos que realmente lo necesitan – como los que tienen enfisema, hipertensión y enfermedad arterial periférica?
¿Cuál es la última ciencia sobre las cualidades que aumentan el rendimiento de las hortalizas ricas en nitratos?
In the context of a healthy, plant-based diet, the nitrates in vegetables can safely be converted into nitric oxide, which can boost athletic performance, and may help prevent heart disease.
Phytonutrients, such as vitamin C, prevent the formation of nitrosamines from nitrites—which explains why adding nitrite preservatives to processed meat can be harmful, but adding more vegetables, with their nitrite-forming nitrates, to our diet can be helpful.
The nitrate in vegetables, which the body can turn into the vasodilator nitric oxide, may help explain the role dark green leafy vegetables play in the prevention and treatment of hypertension (high blood pressure) and heart disease.
Beeturia, the passage of pink urine after beetroot consumption, is a reminder that phytonutrients circulate throughout our bloodstream—explaining the connection between “garlic breath,” and the use of garlic as an adjunct treatment for pneumonia.
Young infants, and perhaps those with recurrent oxalate kidney stones, should avoid beets. But most commonly, the chief side effect is beeturia, the harmless passage of pink urine, though not all are affected—akin to the malodorous urine (“stinky pee”) that sometimes results from asparagus consumption.
Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover studies convinced the scientific establishment that nitrate-rich vegetables (such as beets) could noticeably improve athletic performance.
The natural flora on our tongue (lingual bacteria) are essential for the athletic performance-enhancing effect of the nitrates in vegetables such as beetroot.
To understand how beets could reduce the oxygen cost of exercise while improving athletic performance, one must review the biochemistry of energy production (ATP synthase), and the body’s conversion of nitrates to nitrites into nitric oxide.
Beets found to significantly improve athletic performance while reducing oxygen needs—upsetting a fundamental tenet of sports physiology.
