December 21/Islamabad, Pakistan/Right Vision News -- Beetroots are packed with blood pressure-reducing, heart disease-preventing nutrients that help maintain healthy active function and boost overall endurance levels in those that consume them.

A new study has found that not only do beets benefit athletes by boosting their performance, but they also help the elderly and people with heart or lung diseases to live more active, physically functional lives.

The beetroot juice increases exercise capacity by 16% in athletes that drink it. Except this time, these same benefits were found to apply to non-athletes as well, including those that have trouble performing everyday physical activities, says the study appearing in Applied Physiology.

"As you get older, or if you have conditions which affect your cardiovascular system, the amount of oxygen you can take in to use during exercise drops considerably," explained the study. "What we've seen in this study is that beetroot juice can actually reduce the amount of oxygen you need to perform even low-intensity exercise."

Beet juice not only dilates blood vessels to improve blood flow and lower blood pressure, but it also reduces the amount of oxygen muscles need during physical activity. This muscle effect makes it significantly easier for people of all ages, no matter what their health condition, to perform both low- and high-intensity physical activities. In fact, researchers noted that those who drank beet juice required 12% less effort to walk than those who did not drink it.

From the January 10, 2011, Prepared Foods E-dition