Ground Ginger to Reduce Muscle Pain
There have been at least eight randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trials of ginger for pain.
All Videos for Sports Medicine
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Foods to Improve Athletic Performance and Recovery
What are the effects of spinach and berries on oxidative stress, inflammation, and muscle soreness in athletes?
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Are Sports Drinks Safe and Effective?
Commercial influences may have corrupted the American College of Sports Medicine’s hydration guidelines.
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Coconut Water for Athletic Performance vs. Sports Drinks
Coconut water is tested head-to-head against plain water and sports drinks in athletes.
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Preserving Athlete Immunity with Chlorella
The green algae, chlorella, may help attenuate the drop in immune function antibodies associated with over-strenuous exercise.
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“Veg-Table” Dietary Nitrate Scoring Method
What is the optimal timing and dose of nitrate-containing vegetables, such as beets and spinach, for improving athletic performance?
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Whole Beets vs. Juice for Improving Athletic Performance
What is the latest science on the performance-enhancing qualities of nitrate-rich vegetables?
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Music as Medicine
Music can beat out anti-anxiety drugs, Mozart can reduce allergic reactions, and how listening to your favorite tunes can significantly affect your testosterone levels.
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Nutritional Yeast to Prevent the Common Cold
Beta glucan fiber in nutritional yeast may improve immune function, but there is a concern about lead contamination in some brands.
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What Causes Insulin Resistance? (Older Version)
Prediabetes and type 2 diabetes are caused by a drop in insulin sensitivity blamed on “intramyocellular lipid,” the buildup of fat inside our muscle cells.
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Enhancing Athletic Performance with Peppermint
Study finds remarkable improvements in exercise performance drinking homemade peppermint water, but there may be side effects.
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Caloric Restriction vs. Plant-Based Diets
What is the best strategy to lower the level of the cancer-promoting growth hormone IGF-1?
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Hibiscus Tea vs. Plant-Based Diets for Hypertension
How do the blood-pressure lowering effects of hibiscus tea compare to the DASH diet, a plant-based diet, and a long-distance endurance exercise?
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Telomeres: Cap It All Off with Diet
Is the reversal of cellular aging Dr. Dean Ornish demonstrated with lifestyle changes due to the plant-based diet, the exercise or just to the associated weight loss?
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Barriers to Heart Disease Prevention
According to the Director of the famous Framingham Heart Study, the best way to manage cholesterol and heart disease risk is with a more plant-based diet. Why then, don’t more doctors advise their patients to change their diets?
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Treating Hepatitis C with Chlorella
Improvements in natural killer cell immune function may explain both the anti-cancer benefits of exercise as well as the apparent anti-virus effects of the green algae chlorella.
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Preventing Exercise-Induced Oxidative Stress with Watercress
Those eating a more plant-based diet may naturally have an enhanced antioxidant defense system to counter the DNA damage caused by free radicals produced by high-intensity exercise.
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Reducing Muscle Soreness with Berries
Anti-inflammatory phytonutrients in berries may explain why cherries can speed recovery after a marathon—by reducing muscle pain in long-distance runners.
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Reducing Muscle Fatigue with Citrus
Daily citrus fruit consumption during athletic training may reduce muscle fatigue, as evidenced by lower blood lactate concentrations.
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Heavy Metals in Protein Powder Supplements
A Consumer Reports investigation into the safety of protein supplements found that more than half exceed the California Prop 65 Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act action levels.
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Creatine Brain Fuel Supplementation
Vegetarians appear to get more of a cognitive boost than meat-eaters from creatine supplementation.
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So Should We Drink Beet Juice, or Not?
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.
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Vegetables Rate by Nitrate
If nitrates can boost athletic performance and protect against heart disease, which vegetables have the most—beans, bulb vegetables (like garlic and onions), fruiting vegetables (like eggplant and squash), greens (such as arugula), mushrooms, root vegetables (such as carrots and beets), or stem vegetables (such as celery and rhubarb)?
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Hearts Shouldn’t Skip a Beet
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.
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Asparagus Pee
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.
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Out of the Lab Onto the Track
Randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover studies convinced the scientific establishment that nitrate-rich vegetables (such as beets) could noticeably improve athletic performance.
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Don’t Use Antiseptic Mouthwash
The natural flora on our tongue (lingual bacteria) are essential for the athletic performance-enhancing effect of the nitrates in vegetables such as beetroot.
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Priming the Proton Pump
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.
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Doping with Beet Juice
Beets found to significantly improve athletic performance while reducing oxygen needs—upsetting a fundamental tenet of sports physiology.
