Beetroot (Nitrates)
Best-in-class: Beetroot Nitrate
A dietary-nitrate source that the body converts to nitric oxide, improving blood flow, blood pressure and exercise efficiency.
Beetroot (Nitrates) quick facts
| Suggested dose | ~400–800 mg nitrate (or a concentrated beet shot) ~2–3 hrs pre-exercise. |
| How often | Per session, on days you train or compete |
| Who it's for | Endurance, blood pressure and cardiovascular/blood-flow support. |
One of very few ergogenic aids with consistently replicated field results, reducing the oxygen cost of submaximal exercise by around 5% and lowering systolic blood pressure by 4 to 5 mmHg. The detail that matters: antibacterial mouthwash abolishes the effect entirely, because oral bacteria perform the first conversion. Timing is roughly two to three hours before the effort.
How Beetroot (Nitrates) actually works
Dietary nitrate is reduced to nitrite by bacteria on the tongue, then to nitric oxide in the acidic and hypoxic conditions of hard-working tissue — a pathway completely independent of nitric oxide synthase, which is why it works when the enzymatic route is impaired. Beyond vasodilation it improves mitochondrial efficiency, producing more ATP per unit of oxygen consumed.
Where to get Beetroot (Nitrates)
Find Beetroot (Nitrates) on iHerb →The evidence for Beetroot (Nitrates)
Graded by what exists behind each claim.
✅ Clinically validated
- Meta-analyses show reduced blood pressure and improved endurance/exercise efficiency (lower oxygen cost).
- Nitrate→nitrite→NO pathway is well-characterized.
📊 Correlative data
- Higher dietary-nitrate (leafy greens/beets) intake is associated with better cardiovascular markers.
🧪 Theoretical / extrapolated benefits
- Cognitive blood-flow benefits are emerging.
How to read these tiers: they say how much human evidence exists, not how well something works — and ✗ flags harm, never a disappointing trial. How the evidence tiers work →
What Beetroot (Nitrates) actually does
Beetroot is a nitrate delivery vehicle, and the pathway that makes the nitrate useful runs through bacteria living on the tongue. Dietary nitrate is absorbed, and roughly a quarter of it is actively concentrated by the sialin transporter into saliva. Facultative anaerobes in the crypts of the posterior tongue — Veillonella, Actinomyces, Rothia — reduce nitrate to nitrite, which is swallowed. Humans have no functional nitrate reductase of their own; without those bacteria the pathway does not run.
The second reduction, nitrite to nitric oxide, happens where the classical pathway fails. Acidic gastric conditions, deoxygenated hemoglobin and myoglobin, xanthine oxidoreductase and several other systems reduce nitrite to nitric oxide, and all of them work better as oxygen tension and pH fall. That is the opposite dependence from endothelial nitric oxide synthase, which needs oxygen as a substrate. The nitrate route is therefore a backup that switches on in exercising or ischemic tissue.
What nitric oxide then does in muscle is two things, and the second is the surprising one. It relaxes vascular smooth muscle through soluble guanylate cyclase and cyclic GMP. And it improves the efficiency of the muscle itself — lower oxygen cost for the same work — apparently through effects on mitochondrial proton leak and on the calcium handling and cross-bridge cost of contraction. The efficiency effect is the one that makes this interesting rather than just another vasodilator.
Type 2 fibers are the preferential target and that predicts who responds. Nitrate accumulates in and acts more strongly on fast-twitch fibers, which are the ones recruited in high-intensity and intermittent work. That fiber selectivity is why the effect shows up in repeated sprints and much less in steady-state endurance Tan 2024.
And the betalains are a separate chemistry with a separate claim. Betanin and related pigments are antioxidant and anti-inflammatory in vitro and are proposed to explain the muscle damage and recovery findings, which do not obviously follow from vasodilation Jones 2022. A nitrate salt and a beetroot concentrate are therefore not the same intervention.
Cell, rodent, human — and where it stops
The marker on this page is plasma nitrite, it moves reliably in everybody, and the performance effect it is supposed to predict is conditional on population, effort duration and dose.
The biochemistry transfers completely. A single 6 to 8 mmol nitrate dose raises plasma nitrate within an hour and plasma nitrite within 2 to 3 hours, in essentially everybody, and the rise is abolished by antibacterial mouthwash. That is one of the cleanest cause-and-effect demonstrations in sports nutrition.
In sprint and repeated-effort work the outcome follows. A systematic review and meta-analysis of dietary nitrate on high-intensity cycling sprint performance in recreationally active adults found a measurable benefit Tan 2024, and a dose-response investigation extended the question to resistance exercise Tan 2025.
In aerobic capacity the picture is smaller and noisier. A systematic review and meta-analysis of beetroot juice on maximal oxygen uptake summarizes an effect that is modest at best Qin 2026. And a physiological study in sedentary men found that nitrate-rich beetroot juice reduced skeletal muscle oxygen uptake and blood flow during exercise Nyberg 2021, which is a mechanistically important and slightly uncomfortable result: less oxygen used and less delivered.
The obstacle to transfer is training status and it is consistent. Highly trained athletes have higher baseline endothelial nitric oxide synthase activity, higher muscle nitrate reductase capacity and less headroom, and the effect shrinks toward zero in them. Acute beetroot juice did not improve match-play activity in professional tennis players Fernandez-Elias 2022, which is the population most likely to buy it.
The recovery claim belongs to a different fraction and a different literature. A systematic review and meta-analysis of nitrate-rich beetroot juice on markers of exercise-induced muscle damage reports effects that would have to come from the betalains rather than from nitric oxide Jones 2022. Those two claims are routinely presented as one product benefit and they have different evidence and different actives.
Beetroot (Nitrates) — which form, and does it matter
The only number that matters is millimoles of nitrate, and most labels do not print it. The effective acute dose in the trial literature is 6 to 8 mmol, which is roughly 400 to 500 mg of nitrate. A 70 mL concentrated shot typically supplies that; a glass of supermarket beetroot juice may supply a fifth of it; and a beetroot powder capsule frequently supplies almost none, because nitrate content depends on soil nitrogen, cultivar and processing.
Nitrate-depleted beetroot juice is the placebo in these trials and it is also, accidentally, what some products are. The standard control is the same juice with nitrate removed by ion exchange, which keeps the betalains and the sugar. A product that has been heat-treated or that uses a low-nitrate cultivar is closer to that control than to the active arm.
The exposure clock is why timing instructions are specific. Plasma nitrate peaks at roughly 1 to 2 hours and plasma nitrite at roughly 2 to 3 hours, which is why trials dose 2 to 3 hours before exercise. The plasma half-life of nitrate is about 5 to 8 hours and renal clearance is the main disposal route, so a single dose is gone within a day; chronic dosing for 3 to 6 days raises the baseline and outperforms an acute dose in some protocols Tan 2025. There is no cytochrome metabolism and no first-pass hepatic step of consequence.
Antibacterial mouthwash abolishes the entire effect, and that is the most testable statement on this page. Chlorhexidine rinsing eliminates the oral nitrate-reducing bacteria, and with them the rise in plasma nitrite and the blood pressure and performance effects. So does spitting rather than swallowing saliva. No other supplement in this catalog can be switched off by a mouthwash.
Two form questions with no answer on the label. Whether the product declares nitrate content by assay or by assumption, and whether the processing preserved the betalains. Those two decide which of the two claims on the front of the bottle the contents can support Jones 2022.
What would have to be true, and how you would know it was not
1. Predict the effect is abolished by mouthwash, and treat that as the mechanism test. Predict that plasma nitrite does not rise, and any blood pressure or performance effect disappears, if an antibacterial mouthwash is used in the hours before the dose. This is a cheap, decisive, at-home falsification of the whole pathway.
2. Predict a small blood pressure fall in someone who has room for one. Predict systolic blood pressure down a few millimeters of mercury within 2 to 3 hours of 6 to 8 mmol nitrate in a normotensive or mildly hypertensive adult, and predict less in a trained athlete.
3. The prediction that cuts against the product. In a highly trained endurance athlete, predict no measurable improvement in a time trial or in match-play activity, because that is what the trials in trained populations return Fernandez-Elias 2022 Qin 2026. A well-powered trial in elite athletes showing a performance benefit would falsify this page's central caution.
4. Predict the effect that does survive is in short repeated efforts. Predict measurable improvement in repeated 30-second sprints or in the last repetitions of a resistance set in a recreationally active person Tan 2024 Tan 2025, and predict nothing in a steady-state hour of running. The duration boundary is the falsifiable claim.
5. Predict beeturia and predict it means nothing about efficacy. Red or pink urine and stool occur in a substantial minority and reflect betalain excretion rather than nitrate delivery. Predict that people who get it and people who do not respond similarly, because the two chemistries are independent Jones 2022.
What nobody has tested yet
Nobody has separated the nitrate from the betalains clinically. The standard nitrate-depleted placebo controls for everything except nitrate, so no trial has isolated the betalain contribution to the recovery findings Jones 2022. A three-arm trial — whole juice, depleted juice, and a nitrate salt — would settle it in one study.
The oral microbiome question has been posed and not answered. Nitrate-reducing capacity varies severalfold between people, and no accessible test predicts it. Whether the non-responders in the performance trials are microbiome non-responders is the obvious hypothesis and nobody has stratified on it.
The oxygen paradox is unresolved. Reduced muscle oxygen uptake AND reduced blood flow during exercise Nyberg 2021 is not the simple vasodilator story, and whether that combination is efficient or merely a reduced demand has not been settled.
And the long-term safety question has no data. Chronic high-nitrate intake is a supplement pattern nobody has followed for years, and the nitrosamine question below is unresolved rather than resolved reassuringly Qin 2026.
Beetroot (Nitrates) — its own safety story, not its category's
Beeturia is the effect that frightens people and is harmless. Red urine and stool from betalain excretion, occurring in perhaps 10 to 15 percent of people and more often in iron deficiency and in low gastric acidity. It is not hematuria and it is not melena, but it is worth knowing before an emergency department visit.
The mouthwash interaction is a genuine loss of effect rather than a hazard. Anyone using an antibacterial rinse, and anyone on a proton pump inhibitor that raises gastric pH and reduces the acid-driven reduction step, is likely getting less from this product than the trials describe.
The blood pressure effect is additive with medication. A few millimeters of mercury matters little on its own and matters more on top of an antihypertensive. Anyone on nitrates for angina, or on a phosphodiesterase-5 inhibitor, is in a different category and should not be adding a nitric oxide donor without medical input.
The nitrosamine question is the one that will not close. Nitrite can react with secondary amines under acidic conditions to form N-nitroso compounds, and processed meat nitrate carries an epidemiological association with colorectal cancer that vegetable nitrate does not. The likeliest explanation is that vegetables supply ascorbate and polyphenols that block nitrosation, and that is a hypothesis rather than a demonstration for a concentrated supplement.
Who should be careful. Anyone with a history of calcium oxalate kidney stones, because beetroot is high in oxalate. Infants, in whom high nitrate loads cause methemoglobinemia. Anyone on a nitrate medication. And anyone expecting it to work while using mouthwash, who will get the placebo arm by accident. Nothing here is medical advice or diagnosis, and these statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.
Sources read for this page
- Tan R. Effects of Dietary Nitrate Supplementation on High-Intensity Cycling Sprint Performance in Recreationally Active Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Nutrients 2024 · PMID 39203900
- Qin G. Effects of beetroot juice supplementation on maximal oxygen uptake during aerobic exercise: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Front Nutr 2026 · PMID 42523624
- Nyberg M. Nitrate-rich beetroot juice ingestion reduces skeletal muscle O2 uptake and blood flow during exercise in sedentary men. J Physiol 2021 · PMID 34587650
- Tan R. The effect of dietary nitrate supplementation on resistance exercise performance: A dose-response investigation. Eur J Appl Physiol 2025 · PMID 40274664
- Fernandez-Elias V. Acute Beetroot Juice Supplementation Does Not Improve Match-Play Activity in Professional Tennis Players. J Am Nutr Assoc 2022 · PMID 33180007
- Jones L. The Effect of Nitrate-Rich Beetroot Juice on Markers of Exercise-Induced Muscle Damage: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Human Intervention Trials. J Diet Suppl 2022 · PMID 34151694
How you would know if it worked
Cam's own ADMA page prescribes this product by name — beetroot extract alongside L-citrulline, with folate and B12 to lower the homocysteine that raises ADMA — so this read-out is his recommendation inverted rather than a new claim. ADMA is the endogenous brake on nitric oxide synthase, which makes it the closest thing to a blood read-out that a nitrate product has; the endurance half is a stopwatch on a repeatable effort 2-3 hours after dosing, not a draw. One detail decides whether any of it means anything: antibacterial mouthwash kills the oral bacteria that reduce nitrate to nitrite, so a null result in anyone using it is a result about their mouthwash rather than about beets.
- ADMA & SDMA — L-citrulline 6–8 g (more effective than arginine because it survives first-pass metabolism), beetroot extract, and folate/B12 to lower homocysteine (which raises ADMA) Retest: 6 months after intervention.
- Homocysteine Retest: 8–12 weeks after starting B vitamins.
Draw before you start, not after. A result with nothing to compare it to answers nothing.
Beetroot (Nitrates) — safety & side effects
- Red or pink urine and stool (beeturia) is harmless and startles people into thinking they are bleeding.
- Lowers blood pressure — the mechanism, and additive with antihypertensives, nitrates and PDE5 inhibitors.
- High in oxalate — a real consideration if you form kidney stones. Do not use antibacterial mouthwash alongside it; the oral bacteria that convert nitrate to nitrite are what make it work.
Not medical advice. If you take prescription medication or have a diagnosed condition, check this against it with a pharmacist or doctor — pharmacists are underused and free.
- When to take it, and what to take it with
- Which form actually absorbs
- Who it's worth it for
- Best-in-class brand pick
- Coach Cam's stacks and notes
- Fasted or with food, and when in the day
- Morning or night, and why that window
- Around training, or deliberately away from it
- What it must not share a window with
Everything above is free and stays free. Skool is where it becomes a plan — Beetroot (Nitrates) in an order, with the rest of what you're running.
Unlock in Skool — $10/mo →Bloodwork to run alongside Beetroot (Nitrates)
Baseline first, then again at 8–12 weeks.
| Marker | What it’s watching for |
|---|---|
| ApoB (Apolipoprotein B) | Counts the particles that cause plaque — a normal LDL-C can hide risk |
| Lipoprotein(a) — Lp(a) | Genetic, largely unmodifiable, and worth knowing once in your life |
| hs-CRP (High-Sensitivity C-Reactive Protein) | The inflammatory half of cardiovascular risk |
| Lipid Panel (Cholesterol, HDL, LDL, Triglycerides) | The standard baseline these are usually aimed at |
The Real Cardiovascular Risk panel covers these in one order — 9 markers, $187.60 with the discount applied.
Check results you already have → · All 103 markers A–Z
Beetroot (Nitrates) — frequently asked questions
What is Beetroot (Nitrates)?
A dietary-nitrate source that the body converts to nitric oxide, improving blood flow, blood pressure and exercise efficiency.
What is the suggested dose of Beetroot (Nitrates)?
~400–800 mg nitrate (or a concentrated beet shot) ~2–3 hrs pre-exercise. This is a general reference for education only — statements have not been evaluated by the FDA and this is not medical advice.
Where can I find Beetroot (Nitrates) dosing and the full breakdown?
The suggested dose and the full evidence — clinical, correlative and theoretical — are on this page. What's inside Skool is when to take it, which form actually absorbs, the brand worth buying and Coach Cam's stacks.
Where can I buy Beetroot (Nitrates)?
Coach Cam sources Beetroot (Nitrates) from vetted, top-rated brands on iHerb — use the buy link on this page.
Beetroot (Nitrates) inside a finished plan
One arm of 3 Protocol Blueprints, free to read in full.
What Beetroot (Nitrates) is used for
Beetroot (Nitrates) appears under 3 goals in the goal router.
Related Cardiovascular supplements
Where this goes next
Beetroot (Nitrates) is the endothelial arm of this plan. The page above is the free breakdown of one compound; the plan it belongs to — the dosing, the order to correct things in, the week-by-week schedule and what to retest — is a lesson inside Skool.