Drinking beetroot juice may raise certain chemicals in the blood that help your body make nitric oxide, which is good for blood flow — and this seems to happen whether you're young, older, or have Alzheimer's.

Drinking beetroot juice might temporarily make blood vessels in the legs respond better to movement, and this seems to happen in older people with Alzheimer’s, healthy older adults, and even young people.

Drinking beetroot juice once doesn't fully fix the blood vessel function in people with Alzheimer's, even though it works better in healthy older adults or young people.

If you drink a small glass of beetroot juice every day for three months, your body’s nitrate and nitrite levels go up a lot—this means your body might be making more of a helpful molecule that supports blood flow.

If older adults with high blood pressure drink beetroot juice every day for a month, their body shows more of certain chemicals in their blood and saliva that help relax blood vessels — which means their body is using a natural pathway to make nitric oxide.

Even if healthy middle-aged and older adults take the same amount of beetroot juice every day, some people still get more nitrite in their blood than others—so something else, like their mouth bacteria or genes, must be why they respond differently.