Eating a little more nitrate-rich food each day—like spinach or beets—might help your arteries bounce back better from heartbeats, lowering the pressure in your main arteries and making your heart work a bit less hard.

Taking nitrate-rich supplements every day for a month can help people with high blood pressure have healthier blood vessels—making them more flexible and better at opening up to let blood flow smoothly.

Eating a little more nitrate-rich food each day—like beets or spinach—can help your blood vessels work better, making them more flexible, and this happens even if your blood pressure doesn’t drop.

Eating more nitrate-rich vegetables for 16 weeks doesn’t lower blood pressure or make arteries stiffer in people with early high blood pressure—so it doesn’t help these heart health markers in the short term.

If you eat more foods rich in nitrate—like spinach or beets—your blood pressure might drop a little bit each day, and this effect is even stronger if you already have high blood pressure. It could be a natural way to help manage blood pressure without pills.

Eating more nitrate-rich vegetables for 16 weeks didn’t make arteries stiffer or more flexible in people with early high blood pressure—whether they ate a lot or just a little.