Beetroot juice lowers blood pressure by changing oral microbiome: study • Hacker News Board

Re: Beetroot juice lowers blood pressure by changing oral microbiome: study

#91

Post by boston_clone » Sun, Jul 27, 2025, 6:08 PM UTC

bognition wrote: post #3

Back in school I was often told the lead pipes in Roman aqueducts likely played a key role in the fall of Roman. We know lead is a poison with negative long term effects on cognition. The aqueducts were also responsible for Romes ability to proliferate and grow. Lead was both a blessing and a curse. I wonder what future generations will say about our highly enriched and processed diets. Calories have never been cheap…

Could you provide some evidence to support your assertion that highly enriched foods are degrading health?

Public health experts contend that enriched foods have improved baseline quality of life. Wheat breads with iron, folate, and B vitamins in the US is an easy example.

Re: Beetroot juice lowers blood pressure by changing oral microbiome: study

#92

Post by throawaywpg » Sun, Jul 27, 2025, 6:09 PM UTC

evertedsphere wrote: post #64

cjbgkagh wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lower intelligence would likely surface as hedonistic behavior which is probably hard to distinguish from decadence. Decadence and hedonism were constantly being complained about long before the eventual fall.

> Lower intelligence would likely surface as hedonistic behavior why do you think so

poor decision making

Re: Beetroot juice lowers blood pressure by changing oral microbiome: study

#93

Post by Aurornis » Sun, Jul 27, 2025, 6:10 PM UTC

underlipton wrote: post #59

1970-01-01 wrote: post #22

Comfortable and uninterrupted sleeping, eating mostly plants, and getting your heart rate up and muscles moving for half an hour per day. Anything else is going from 90% healthy to 99%.

Biphasic sleep was probably more common before artificial light, and you really need to be moving every 30-45 minutes. Even just a couple of minutes of walking or doing some chore counts.

> Biphasic sleep was probably more common before artificial light

The last time I looked into this theory it wasn’t nearly as robust as I was led to believe. It got circulated as fact for a few years but the people pushing it didn’t really have as much evidence for it as I assumed.

Re: Beetroot juice lowers blood pressure by changing oral microbiome: study

#94

Post by Aurornis » Sun, Jul 27, 2025, 6:13 PM UTC

christophilus wrote: post #9

djtango wrote: post #4

I can't remember where (maybe here) that you shouldn't use mouthwash after working out because of the effects on your oral microbiome. That fact shocked me just like this article does because it was unintuitive that your oral microbiome could have such an impact on your physiology. The effect may actually be a similar one because nitrates do sound familiar...

You shouldn’t use mouthwash at all ever. It’s a nuke to the microbes in your mouth. There was a long, rambling discussion with a functional dentist on the Primal Podcast[0] that goes into this. [0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jNrm-9sp-RQ

> long, rambling discussion with a functional dentist on the Primal Podcast

I don’t know what a “functional dentist” is, but the term “functional medicine” is used to describe alternative medicine doctors. They traditional misinterpret studies and exaggerate their impacts, focusing on small studies in mice or theoretical in vitro studies and then extrapolating those to treatment decisions.

Re: Beetroot juice lowers blood pressure by changing oral microbiome: study

#95

Post by cpursley » Sun, Jul 27, 2025, 6:14 PM UTC

boston_clone wrote: post #91

bognition wrote: post #3

Back in school I was often told the lead pipes in Roman aqueducts likely played a key role in the fall of Roman. We know lead is a poison with negative long term effects on cognition. The aqueducts were also responsible for Romes ability to proliferate and grow. Lead was both a blessing and a curse. I wonder what future generations will say about our highly enriched and processed diets. Calories have never been cheap…

Could you provide some evidence to support your assertion that highly enriched foods are degrading health? Public health experts contend that enriched foods have improved baseline quality of life. Wheat breads with iron, folate, and B vitamins in the US is an easy example.

Trace those public health experts funding sources...

Hint: it's the farm-bill dependent carb farmers who apparently need our money via farm subsidies and want poor people hooked as they get it from the other end in the form of SNAP.

Re: Beetroot juice lowers blood pressure by changing oral microbiome: study

#96

Post by cpursley » Sun, Jul 27, 2025, 6:18 PM UTC

ulf-77723 wrote: post #32

Some time ago I read the book Complete Guide to Sports Nutrition by Anita Bean, which does also emphasize on not using antibacterial mouthwash since it removes the beneficial bacteria in the mouth which convert nitrate to nitrite. I‘m drinking beetroot juice since 3 years now and asked myself if beetroot capsules might be an alternative.

You could also make Borscht with good quality beef for a balanced, healthy meal. It's the best.

Re: Beetroot juice lowers blood pressure by changing oral microbiome: study

#97

Post by ck2 » Sun, Jul 27, 2025, 6:18 PM UTC

Well no if it changed it then you wouldn't need to keep drinking it for the same effect

It's the nitrates which have a short half-life

And the thing is high quality Beet juice is very expensive because it has to be grown in good soil with lots of nitrates, most of the stuff coming out of China is poor quality with just the name and people don't know any better

Re: Beetroot juice lowers blood pressure by changing oral microbiome: study

#98

Post by cpursley » Sun, Jul 27, 2025, 6:22 PM UTC

mythrwy wrote: post #39

For those who don't like beets, I eat beet regularly by dropping a few chunks in a fruit smoothie. Makes it nice and pink and the earthy flavor is much diluted.

I don't like beets but borscht is amazing.

Re: Beetroot juice lowers blood pressure by changing oral microbiome: study

#99

Post by JumpCrisscross » Sun, Jul 27, 2025, 6:23 PM UTC

boston_clone wrote: post #91

bognition wrote: post #3

Back in school I was often told the lead pipes in Roman aqueducts likely played a key role in the fall of Roman. We know lead is a poison with negative long term effects on cognition. The aqueducts were also responsible for Romes ability to proliferate and grow. Lead was both a blessing and a curse. I wonder what future generations will say about our highly enriched and processed diets. Calories have never been cheap…

Could you provide some evidence to support your assertion that highly enriched foods are degrading health? Public health experts contend that enriched foods have improved baseline quality of life. Wheat breads with iron, folate, and B vitamins in the US is an easy example.

> Could you provide some evidence to support your assertion that highly enriched foods are degrading health?

Getting nutrients from whole foods is generally superior, for absorption and balance and avoiding overdosing, than getting it from supplements, whether taken directly or via enrichment.

That said, getting a nutrient any way is better than running a deficiency. For most of agricultural human history, in most societies, most of the population was nutritionally sufficient [1]. That changed with enrichment. It’s healthier to eat whole over enriched food; it’s better to have enriched food versus a vitamin decency.

It’s ahistoric to claim we’re unhealthier today than we’ve been over most of human history. But we can do better. In that way, Roman pipes brought clean water to its populations in a way that made them healthier than people had been in cities to date. But it also gave them lead poisoning, which while better than cholera, is worse than no lead.

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9460423/

Re: Beetroot juice lowers blood pressure by changing oral microbiome: study

#100

Post by dathinab » Sun, Jul 27, 2025, 6:36 PM UTC

papercrane wrote: post #8

bognition wrote: post #3

Back in school I was often told the lead pipes in Roman aqueducts likely played a key role in the fall of Roman. We know lead is a poison with negative long term effects on cognition. The aqueducts were also responsible for Romes ability to proliferate and grow. Lead was both a blessing and a curse. I wonder what future generations will say about our highly enriched and processed diets. Calories have never been cheap…

The lead pipes theory is mostly just pop-science. Romans were likely getting more lead exposure from using lead cooking vessels and utensils.

also lead flavoring

lead tastes sweet, sugar wasn't cheaply & widely available, honey is expensive etc.

and knowledge about lead poisoning was not really a think AFIK

at the same time lead pipes tend to gain a crust of chalk over time (depending on chalk content of the water) which mostly defuses their danger. Like you will find some very old houses with lead tape water pipes in the EU today but if you test their tape water you won't find (much of) an issue due to 1) the chalk 2) the water not staying long in the pipe if it's e.g. a 4 apartment house.