Beetroot juice increased grip strength in older women
Dominant-hand grip strength rose 9.6% versus placebo in a randomized crossover trial of nine healthy women aged 70–80.
Our read
Interventions- Studied:
- Randomized trial in 9 people (Double-blind, placebo-controlled)
- What changed:
- Dominant-hand grip strength was 9.6% higher after beetroot juice than after placebo in healthy older women
- The catch:
- Only nine healthy older women were included in the analysis
- In the record:
- The 21st paper on beetroot with results in people; 33 on record in all.
Editor of record: Boris Djordjevic · AgingResearch.News
Nine healthy women aged 70–80 took part in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled crossover trial of a single beetroot juice dose. Each woman drank 70 milliliters of juice containing 6.4 millimoles of nitrate on one visit and a matched placebo containing 0.04 millimoles on another. Visits were one week apart. Physical performance testing began 150 minutes after each drink.
Dominant-hand grip strength was 9.6% higher after beetroot juice than after placebo. The researchers found no statistically significant differences in grip strength in the other hand, walking performance over six meters or six minutes, a test of standing and walking, or leg power when rising from a chair. Blood pressure and heart rate also showed no statistically significant differences between conditions.
Why it matters
Aging brings declines in muscle strength and physical function. The trial addressed whether a single nitrate-rich drink could affect both strength and mobility in older women.
Caveats
The single-dose trial involved only nine healthy women; it did not test lasting benefits or effects in men or people with excluded conditions such as diabetes or heart failure. The abstract does not report the side-effect questionnaire results.
From the paper
- Harms
… four participants (44.4%) following placebo ingestion and by five participants …
- Limitation
Firstly, the small sample size is likely to have caused limited levels of statistical power and generalizability, although the randomized crossover design has helped to reduce inter-individual variability.
Quoted word for word from the full text on PubMed Central.
The paper
Universidad Francisco de Vitoria; Universidad Pontificia Comillas
European Journal of Translational Myology, Jun 16, 2026, Open access
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