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Nitrates May Boost Performance By Helping Cellular Efficiency:

Topic of Study

New Research Demonstrates Nutritional Intake To Help Increase Energy & Endurance

Dietary inorganic nitrates, as found in green leafy vegetables and beet root juice, may enhance muscle endurance by boosting mitochondrial efficiency, according to new research.

The study, published in "Cell Metabolism", reports that short term increases in dietary nitrates can boost muscle efficiency during exercise, and finds that the that the improved performance is linked to increased efficiency of the mitochondria that power our cells.

Mitochondrial efficiency is usually measured as the amount of oxygen consumed per adenosine triphosphate (ATP) produced, the measure is known as the P/O ratio. The new study shows that nitrate "has profound effects on basal human mitochondrial function as well as whole-body oxygen consumption during exercise."

"In the current study we found a 19 percent increase in P/O ratio after nitrate supplementation. To our knowledge, there are no other dietary regimes described that have this effect," said the researchers from the Karolinska Institutet, Sweden.

"Intriguingly, there was a strong correlation between the reduction in whole-body oxygen consumption during cycling and the increase in P/O ratio, which clearly suggests that a large part of the improved exercise efficiency is taking place at the mitochondrial level," they added.

Dietary Sources of Nitrates

Until recently nitrate, which is abundant in green leafy vegetables,was considered merely as an inert end product of nitric oxide (NO) metabolism or as a potentially toxic constituent in our diet.

However, the last decade has brought understanding of its importance in biological processes, including regulation of blood flow, blood pressure, cellular signaling, glucose homeostasis, and tissue responses to low oxygen levels (hypoxia).

Previous research has also linked nitrate rich foods and beverages, like beet root juice, to improvements physiological benefits, including improved endurance. Such benefits have been shown to be, at least in part, due to a reduction in the oxygen cost of exercise for healthy individuals after short-term dietary supplementation with nitrate.

The researchers noted that the findings point toward the mitochondria (the "energy factories" of cells) as a possible target for the effects of nitrate, suggesting that the production of ATP (an important transporter of chemical energy) may become more efficient. However, such mechanisms remain unclear and relatively unknown.

The new study, a double-blind crossover trial, studied the effects of a dietary intervention with inorganic nitrate on mitochondrial function and whole-body oxygen consumption in healthy volunteers.

Improved Efficiency

Skeletal muscle biopsies were in conjunction with bicycle exercise tests were used to study the effects of dietary nitrate on mitochondrial efficiency and biochemical parameters, in addition to the expression of proteins involved in energy transfer.

The researchers reported that after taking a small dose of inorganic nitrate for three days volunteers consumed less oxygen while riding an exercise bike.

They said that skeletal muscle mitochondria after nitrate supplementation showed an improvement in efficiency (P/O ratio), which was strongly correlated to the reduction in oxygen cost during exercise.

These effects were found to accompany a reduction in A.N.T