Browse evidence-based analysis of health-related claims and assertions
After gum disease treatment, harmful bacteria decrease in both the gums and the tongue.
Treating gum disease helps increase beneficial bacteria in the gums but doesn't significantly change the bacteria on the tongue.
People with gum disease have fewer mouth bacteria that help convert nitrate to nitrite compared to people with healthy gums.
People with gum disease have more nitrate left in their saliva after drinking beetroot juice, meaning their mouth bacteria aren't converting it as well as healthy people's bacteria.
Treating gum disease helps people with gum problems get the blood pressure-lowering benefits from beetroot juice.
People with gum disease don't get the same blood pressure-lowering effect from beetroot juice as healthy people do.
Drinking beetroot juice in a cool room doesn't change how much nitrate is in your blood compared to drinking it in a warm room.
When you're in a cool room, you produce more saliva than when you're in a warm room, whether or not you drink beetroot juice.
Whether you drink beetroot juice or not, you feel equally cold when you're in a cool room.
Whether you drink beetroot juice or not, your skin temperature goes down about the same amount when you're in a cool room.
Drinking beetroot juice doesn't change how blood flows through your skin when you're in a cool room.
When you're in a cool room, your saliva has more nitrite after drinking beetroot juice than when you're in a warm room.
Drinking beetroot juice in a warm room doesn't make your blood pressure go down compared to drinking a placebo in the same warm room.
When you're in a cool room, you produce more saliva than when you're in a warm room.
When you drink beetroot juice in a cool room, your body produces more nitrite in your blood than when you drink it in a warm room.
Drinking beetroot juice before going into a cool room stops your blood pressure from going up as much as it normally would when you're cold.
Mixing nitrate (from beetroot juice) with vitamin C might help keep blood vessels healthy in young people, but more research is needed because this study was small.
Drinking beetroot juice with or without vitamin C didn't make a difference in blood vessel health measurements for healthy young adults.
When healthy young adults drank beetroot juice with vitamin C, their daily systolic blood pressure went down a bit compared to before they started the treatment.
When people take nitrate (from beetroot juice) and vitamin C together, their bodies produce more nitrite in urine and saliva than when they take just nitrate or no nitrate.
Taking potassium supplements (like KCl) doesn't lower blood pressure, which shows that the blood pressure-lowering effect of nitrate supplements comes from the nitrate part, not the potassium.
Taking nitrate supplements doesn't change your heart rate, which is good because it means the blood pressure-lowering effect isn't coming from changes in how fast your heart beats.
Women naturally have higher nitrite levels in their blood than men, which may help explain why women typically have lower blood pressure than men.
Drinking beetroot juice (about 1 cup) lowers blood pressure, with the biggest drop being about 5 mm Hg, and it works similarly to nitrate supplements.