Your health: Beet juice may help lower blood pressure

Beet juice may help lower blood pressure

Naturally occurring nitrates in beets may help fight high blood pressure, British researchers say.

People with hypertension who drank about a cup of beet juice with nitrates daily for a month saw their blood pressure drop noticeably, compared with that of people who drank beet juice without nitrates (which researchers had removed), reports Men's Health magazine.

Plus, their endothelial function — the ability of blood vessels to expand and contract — improved by about 20 percent.

Nitrates convert into nitric oxide when digested, lowering blood pressure within a few hours, the scientists say.

If you don't want to drink the juice, eat one or two beets a day to produce similar benefits.

Will playing outside save kids' eyesight?

Dr. Steve Schallhorn says there is increasing evidence that growing use of multi-screen technology is risking an “epidemic” of poor vision among youngsters, the Daily Express reports.

According to a recent study, shortsightedness among young people in Britain has doubled over the last 50 years.

The American expert, who works for Scotland-based opticians Optical Express, said the increase was due to youngsters spending more time indoors looking at computer screens.

And he revealed that any sort of outdoors exercise would be a major boost for a child's developing vision.

Schallhorn, who is chairman of the Optical Express International Medical Advisory Board says: “I believe that we are creating an epidemic of shortsightedness which recent studies show is due to the regular use of hand-held devices such as smartphones and tablets.

“The growth and development of a child's eye can be influenced by the type of work that it is required to perform.”

He continued: “This process is called emmetropization, and is part of an intricate, active feedback loop between the brain and the eye to provide sharp, in-focus images.

“On the whole, it is really quite an amazing adaptive process but the downside is that if the predominant visual tasks are close-up work, such as countless hours on a smartphone, the result can be shortsightedness.”