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According to a preliminary study in rats, adding small amounts of dietetic beet or nitrate to salty foods could help prevent high blood pressure.
Although discoveries in animals do not necessarily translate into humans, the researchers of the new study – published in the journal of the American Heart Association Hypertension – hopes to find a new tool to combat the epidemic of salt-rich diets, a major risk factor for hypertension.
Benefits of potbadium
According to the World Health Organization, most people consume about double the recommended salt in the world. High sodium intake and insufficient potbadium can contribute to hypertension and increase the risk of heart disease and stroke.
Medical experts have long been encouraging not only people to eat less salt, but also to eat more potbadium-rich fruits and vegetables, which reduces the effects of sodium on cardiovascular health. But people do not always follow this advice.
"We have been running awareness campaigns for years, but people are not eating more potbadium and the average salt intake in hypertensive Americans has actually increased," said Dr. Theodore W. Kurtz, lead author of the 39; study and professor of laboratory medicine at the University of California at San Francisco. "We must find new ways to prevent salt-induced hypertension."
For the study, salt-sensitive rats received salt as well as small amounts of beet or food nitrate juice, present in root vegetables and leafy vegetables such as spinach, lettuce and celery. The researchers found that juice and nitrate supplement were more than 100 times potent than potbadium to protect rats against salt-induced blood pressure increases.
If these results could be replicated in humans, this could provide a method of reducing salt-induced hypertension by simply adding a nitrate concentrate to certain salty foods, Kurtz said.
"We suggest that salt-laden product manufacturers – soy sauce, spicy sauce and barbecue sauce – add a very small amount of extract of a nitrate-rich vegetable, which would protect against high blood pressure induced by salt without reducing salt or changing the taste of the product, "said Kurtz, advisor, board member and shareholder of a company holding patents on plant extracts rich in nitrates.
A sodium epidemic
Knowledge about the effects of nitrates on health in the diet has grown considerably since 1998, the year of the Nobel Prize for the discovery that nitric oxide was a signaling molecule in the cardiovascular system and could reduce blood pressure. Since then, scientists have learned that dietary nitrates act as a precursor to nitric oxide.
"This is an important study that could be helpful in tackling a sodium epidemic that is contributing to a staggering increase in cardiovascular disease and stroke worldwide," said Dr. Stephen Juraschek, Beth's internal medicine specialist. Israel Deaconess Medical Center Boston. hospital of the Harvard Medical School.
Juraschek, who did not participate in the research, said the results were limited by the short-term nature of the study and needed to be followed by rigorous clinical trials on humans.
He also added that regardless of their benefits, nitrate-based dietary supplements will probably never capture all the benefits of a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, such as the Mediterranean diet or DASH, meaning dietary approaches to stop l & # 39; hypertension. Recent guidelines from the AHA and the American College of Cardiology aim to prevent heart disease and stroke. Root and green leafy vegetables are features of the DASH diet.
"Innovation is important, but on the other hand, it is difficult to summarize a healthy diet in one element – we all need to increase our consumption of fruits and vegetables, which have advantages that will beyond blood pressure and cardiovascular disease, "says Juraschek.
"We all want to know:" What is the miracle solution that could regulate blood pressure? "But I think that a holistic approach and eating nutritious food is always the best answer."
Image credit: iStock
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