Eat Your Greens, Reboot Your Nitric Oxide: How a Backup Chemistry System Keeps Ageing Blood Vessels Alive (opens in new tab)

As we age, the body’s primary enzyme for making nitric oxide — the molecule that keeps blood vessels supple — begins to fail. This review argues that nitrate-rich vegetables like beetroot and spinach feed a microbe-dependent “backup” pathway that becomes more important precisely when the main system breaks down. For decades, dietary nitrate carried a bad reputation, lumped in with the nitrosamines of cured meats and the spectre of cancer. This review, assembled by a Polish-Ukrainian team, is ...