A daily dietary supplement made from beetroot juice given for twelve weekss in people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, it lowered their blood pressure and improved the distance the patients could walk in six minutes.

The results of the research were published in the European Respiratory Journal.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a serious lung condition that affects approximately 400 million people worldwide. It causes breathing difficulties and severely limits people’s ability to be physically active. It also increases the risk of heart attacks and strokes.

The research, conducted by researchers at Imperial College London, looked at the benefits of taking a high-nitrate beetroot juice concentrate supplement (70ml juice concentrate with 400mg nitrates) once a day versus a sham beetroot juice which looked and tasted the same but had the nitrates removed.

To date there is some evidence that beetroot juice could be used by athletes to improve their performancewhile some short-term studies have found that higher blood nitrate levels can increase the availability of nitric oxide, which helps blood vessels relax.

The new study involved 81 people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, whose systolic blood pressure was greater than 130 mmHg.

As it turned out, those who took the nitrate-rich supplement showed a waist a 4.5 mmHg reduction in systolic blood pressure compared to those who received placebo. There was also an average increase of about 30 meters in how far the patients could walk in six minutes.

Study leader Professor Nicholas Hopkinson called the results “very promising but will need to be confirmed in larger, longer-term studies”.