Hello! I have been a doctor for 21 years. My name is Georgy Olegovich Sapego. In this article, I will talk about doping from beet juice. It is not joke.
When we eat beets, we get a lot of nitrates with them, and the microbes in our mouths help to make these nitrates dope for muscles and heart. If you use an antibacterial mouthwash, this trick does not work.
Everyone has heard about how vegetables are good for health, about the heart, blood pressure and all that. They used to think that it was some mysterious herbal antioxidants that made everything better. Then it turned out that the secret was in nitric oxide.
Nitric oxide as a dope
This nitric oxide is a very volatile and mobile thing that is involved in many different processes in our body. Cardiologists, pulmonologists and anesthesiologists are constantly talking about her.
Nitric oxide dilates blood vessels, affects blood clotting, immunity, blood sugar, regulates the release of various hormones, and even stimulates mitochondria.
Our body produces nitric oxide in a clever way using special enzymes, but it turned out that there is an alternative way. These are nitrates and microbes.
We get nitrates from food. Vegetables are the main source of nitrate in the diet. And that's okay. Nitrates themselves have almost no effect. If it were not for the microbes in the mouth, then we would not have noticed the nitrates.
Microbes in the mouth make us nitrite
Microbes complicate things. When we eat vegetables, nitrates float in the blood for a while. Our body captures these nitrates and sends them to the salivary glands. It is said that approximately 25% of all nitrates from the blood are excreted in saliva.
Around the teeth, under the tongue and on the tongue, we have microbes that feed on nitrates from saliva. We can say that nitrates are prebiotics for our microbes.
Microbes make nitrites from nitrates. This thing is already not harmless. We discussed nitrites in the sausage story. You can read it at the link below.
Carcinogens can be produced from nitrites. And the nitrites themselves act like a poison on the blood.
So it turned out that our body is able to make nitrogen oxide useful for health from these nitrites. This focus is obtained in an acidic environment. For example in the stomach.
See what happens. We eat beets. Nitrates from beets float in the blood and are captured by the salivary glands. Microbes in the mouth make nitrites from nitrates. We swallow saliva with nitrites. The whole thing is digested in the acidic environment of the stomach, and a wonderful nitric oxide is formed, which lowers our pressure, protects the heart and increases efficiency.
Athletes
It is even more interesting further. An acidic environment can be found not only in the stomach. When we do some hard physical work, acid builds up in the muscles. If at this moment nitrites are thrown into the muscles like into the firebox, then they will make a magical nitric oxide, which helps the muscles to cope with the load.
Now guess what athletes drink to improve performance? They drink beet juice.
If we drink beetroot juice, then in a couple of hours there will be a lot of nitrites in the blood, which will remain floating there for a day. All the while, our muscles will work better.
Mouthwash
Now about the bad. If you rinse your mouth with an antibacterial mouthwash, the germs in your mouth will die, and the concentration of nitrite in the blood will drop. All magic will disappear.
This is for lovers
Oddly enough, all these microbial and beetroot tricks don't work for professional athletes. That is, if you play sports for pleasure, if this is such a load that lasts 4 - 8 minutes, then you can experiment with beet juice. You can knock over a glass of beet juice 2 - 3 hours before the load, and fatigue from the load will not appear so quickly.
Professional athletes were upset that they were missing out on such useful tricks. The athletes decided not to bother with beets, but stupidly gorged on chemicals with nitrites. Many were poisoned at the same time.
The fact is that nitrites can spoil the hemoglobin in our blood. In this sense, they are similar to poisonous cyanides. So nature cannot be deceived. You can safely experiment only with regular vegetables. And already our body itself will decide what to take useful from these vegetables.
How do you like the story? After this, you will never look at beets as before.
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