Performance Nutrition: Can Nitrate Supplementation Give You an Edge?

Ever feel like you’re training hard but not quite getting the performance return you expect?

For busy leaders, parents, creatives and professionals juggling long workdays with early-morning HIIT sessions or weekend races, marginal gains matter. The question is: can something as simple as beetroot juice genuinely improve stamina, power and recovery, or is it just another wellness trend?

What’s going on?

Over the past decade, dietary nitrate supplementation, particularly via beetroot juice, has moved from sports science labs into elite team environments and mainstream gyms. It’s now one of the most researched legal performance supplements available.

Controlled trials show nitrate supplementation can increase exercise time to exhaustion by 4–25% in laboratory settings and improve performance in high-intensity efforts lasting 12–40 minutes by around 3–5% (Jones et al., 2018; McMahon et al., 2017). That’s significant in sport, and meaningful for recreational athletes looking to push harder with less fatigue.

Beetroot juice is currently the most convenient source. An effective dose is around 6–8 mmol of nitrate, equivalent to approximately 500 ml of beetroot juice or 70 ml of a concentrated shot (Jones et al., 2018).

Beyond performance, nitrate has been shown to modestly reduce blood pressure — an important consideration for high-performing adults under chronic stress (Kapil et al., 2015).

In a culture of early starts, packed schedules and “always-on” digital demands, anything that improves energy efficiency and cardiovascular resilience attracts attention. But why does it work?

Why is this happening?

Dietary nitrate works through a fascinating biological pathway.

When you consume nitrate-rich foods (like beetroot, spinach, rocket or celery), bacteria in your mouth convert nitrate into nitrite. This is then further converted into nitric oxide (NO) in the body, particularly under low-oxygen conditions during exercise (Lundberg et al., 2008).

Nitric oxide plays several key roles:

• Dilates blood vessels (improving blood flow)
  

• Enhances oxygen delivery to muscles
  

• Improves mitochondrial efficiency (reducing the oxygen cost of exercise)
  

• Supports function of fast-twitch (Type II) muscle fibres (Jones et al., 2018)
  

In simple terms: your body does the same work using slightly less oxygen. That means improved efficiency, especially valuable during sustained or high-intensity efforts.

Interestingly, excessive use of antibacterial mouthwash can blunt this effect by disrupting oral bacteria needed for nitrate conversion (Kapil et al., 2013). A reminder that sometimes “over-optimising” hygiene can unintentionally undermine physiology.

Why doesn’t everyone use it successfully? Because supplementation is context-dependent. Benefits are more pronounced in recreationally active individuals than highly trained endurance athletes, whose nitric oxide systems may already be optimised (McMahon et al., 2017).

What can we do about it?

For busy, health-conscious adults, here’s how to apply the evidence:

1. Get the Dose Right

The performance benefit from nitrate supplementation is dose-dependent. Too little and you’ll see no effect. Too much and you risk digestive distress without added upside.

Evidence-based target:
 

Aim for 6–8 mmol of nitrate (Jones et al., 2018), which typically equates to:

• ~70ml concentrated beetroot shot

• ~400–500ml standard beetroot juice

• ~300–600g nitrate-rich vegetables (leafy greens, celery, fennel - however this is harder to standardise) 

2. Time It Strategically

Peak effect occurs 2–3 hours after ingestion (Jones et al., 2018). For events or tough sessions, plan accordingly. Multi-day loading (3–5 days prior) may also enhance benefits.

3. Protect the Oral Microbiome

Avoid strong antibacterial mouthwash in the hours before supplementation (Kapil et al., 2013).

4. Use It Where It Counts

Best evidence supports:

• High-intensity interval training
  

• 5–10 km runs
  

• Team sports
  

• Cycling or rowing time trials
  

• Hybrid training sessions
  

Less impact for ultra-endurance events.

5. Remember the Foundations

Supplements amplify, they don’t replace, sleep, fuelling, hydration and progressive training. Without those foundations, performance gains plateau.

The Bottom Line

Nitrate supplementation isn’t hype, it’s one of the most robustly supported ergogenic aids available. For leaders and professionals balancing cognitive load with physical ambition, improved efficiency and blood flow can translate into better training quality and cardiovascular health.

Smart, strategic, science-led use, not random wellness stacking, is what drives results.

References:

Jones, A. M., Thompson, C., Wylie, L. J., & Vanhatalo, A. (2018). Dietary nitrate and physical performance. Annual Review of Nutrition, 38, 303–328. 

Kapil, V., Khambata, R. S., Robertson, A., Caulfield, M. J., & Ahluwalia, A. (2015). Dietary nitrate provides sustained blood pressure lowering in hypertensive patients. Hypertension, 65(2), 320–327.

Kapil, V., Haydar, S. M. A., Pearl, V., Lundberg, J. O., Weitzberg, E., & Ahluwalia, A. (2013). Physiological role for nitrate-reducing oral bacteria in blood pressure control. Free Radical Biology and Medicine, 55, 93–100. 

Lundberg, J. O., Weitzberg, E., & Gladwin, M. T. (2008). The nitrate–nitrite–nitric oxide pathway in physiology and therapeutics. Nature Reviews Drug Discovery, 7(2), 156–167. 

McMahon, N. F., Leveritt, M. D., & Pavey, T. G. (2017). The effect of dietary nitrate supplementation on endurance exercise performance in healthy adults: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Sports Medicine, 47(4), 735–756.