Beetroot juice as a pre-workout can help to enhance the benefits of exercise training in post-menopausal women, concluded a study published in the American Journal of Physiology-Regulatory, Integrative, and Comparative Physiology.

Late postmenopausal women, defined as at least six years past their final menstrual period, often find it harder to build strength and improve fitness compared to premenopausal women and men of the same age.

Reduced nitric oxide availability may diminish the responsiveness of skeletal muscles and blood vessels during exercise, and late postmenopausal women may respond differently to exercise training as a result of this change. Beetroot juice is rich in dietary nitrate, which is stored in limited amounts in muscle and is converted to nitric oxide during physical exertion.

In the study, 24 late postmenopausal women completed supervised, circuit-based exercise training three times per week for eight weeks. Half of the participants drank 140 milliliters of beetroot juice two to three hours before each workout. Before and after the training period, all participants underwent physical fitness assessments, including a six-minute walk test and maximal knee extensor strength test.

The participants who drank beetroot juice prior to exercise showed greater improvements in several aspects of physical function, including aerobic capacity and recovery, compared to those who didn’t have beetroot juice. Compared to the control group, those who drank beetroot juice increased their six-minute walk test by 40 meters, while the exercise-only group only improved by eight meters.

Those who took beetroot juice before working out has significantly greater aerobic capacity measurements, as well as heart rate recovery, with a 10-beats-per-minute decrease after the six-minute walk test for the beetroot juice group compared to a one-beat-per-minute decrease in the control group.

The researchers concluded that the study provided preliminary evidence that consuming beetroot juice before exercise could be uniquely beneficial for late postmenopausal women, helping this population to sustain mobility independence and quality of life.