Scientists have evidence that Popeye was right: Spinach makes you stronger. But it\u2019s the high nitrate content in the leafy greens \u2014 not the iron \u2014 that creates the effect.\u00a0Building on a growing body of work that suggests dietary nitrate improves muscle performance in many elite athletes, researchers at\u00a0Washington University School of Medicine\u00a0in St. Louis found that drinking concentrated beet juice \u2014 also high in nitrates \u2014 increases muscle power in patients with heart failure.\u201cIt\u2019s a small study, but we see robust changes in muscle power about two hours after patients drink the beet juice,\u201d said senior author\u00a0Linda R. Peterson, MD, associate professor of medicine. \u201cA lot of the activities of daily living are power-based \u2014 getting out of a chair, lifting groceries, climbing stairs. And they have a major impact on quality of life. We want to help make people more powerful because power is such an important predictor of how well people do, whether they have heart failure, cancer or other conditions. In general, physically more powerful people live longer.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"class_list":["post-1016635","news","type-news","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n