The Heart Health Tribune Facebook ad: “Most Common Questions About Lisnopril”

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If you've been Googling beetroot for blood pressure and getting 17 different answers, here's what I actually tell my patients in the exam room. I'm a cardiologist of 24 years. My name is Dr. Marcus Whitfield. I've been a practicing cardiologist for 24 years. In that time, the question my patients ask me has changed. For the first 18 years it was the same conversation. "What pill do I take?" Now, almost every patient walking into my exam room with a Stage 1 or borderline blood pressure reading asks me a different one. "Doctor, does beetroot actually work?" The honest answer is more complicated than yes or no. I've watched dozens of patients spend hundreds of dollars on beetroot powders, gummies, juices, and capsules that did nothing for their numbers. I've also watched a handful drop their systolic pressure by 20 points in 90 days on a different brand. The difference between those two outcomes comes down to a few specific facts most people don't know. I sat down and wrote out every question I've answered in the exam room about beetroot and blood pressure. Ten questions. Honest answers. The kind I'd give my own brother if he asked. If you've been thinking about beetroot as a way to get off the prescription path, or you've already tried it and it didn't work, here's what you need to know. ### Q1: Does beetroot actually lower blood pressure? Yes. The mechanism is well established and the research is solid. Beetroot is high in dietary nitrates. Your body converts those nitrates into nitric oxide. Nitric oxide signals the smooth muscle in your blood vessel walls to relax. When the vessels relax and open up, blood flows easier and pressure drops. This is the same pathway your body uses naturally to regulate blood pressure, just amplified. A study from the University of Exeter, published in Free Radical Biology and Medicine, gave older adults with elevated blood pressure a daily dose of dietary nitrates. After 14 days, average systolic pressure dropped by 7 points. After 4 weeks, the drop deepened. That's a real, measurable effect. In clinical terms, a 7-point systolic drop is enough to reduce stroke risk by roughly 27%. So yes, beetroot works. With a caveat that takes the next nine questions to explain. ### Q2: How much do I actually need to take? This is where most patients go wrong before they even start. The clinical studies that have shown beetroot lowering blood pressure used between 300 and 500 milligrams of dietary nitrates per day. That's the active range. Now go pick up a beetroot powder from any pharmacy or Amazon listing. Read the back of the bottle. Almost every one I've examined contains between 40 and 100 milligrams of nitrates per serving. That's a tenth of the dose used in the research. I've had patients bring in bottles of beetroot gummies from CVS that contained 50 milligrams of nitrates per serving. They were eating them daily for 8 weeks and getting nothing on their morning readings. The dose wasn't high enough to do what the research says beetroot does. If you're taking less than 300 milligrams of dietary nitrates per day, you're not running the experiment. You're spending money. ### Q3: Can I just eat fresh beetroot instead? In theory, yes. In practice, it's complicated. Two raw beetroots a day will get you in the clinical range for nitrates, on paper. The problem is that nitrate content in actual produce is wildly inconsistent. A beetroot grown in nitrogen-rich Oregon soil can have 6 times the nitrates of one grown in depleted soil somewhere else. There's no label on a beetroot at the grocery store telling you which one you got. Most of my patients also can't stomach two raw beetroots a day for 90 days. The taste, the staining, the digestive effects when you suddenly add that much fiber. Beetroot juice is closer, but a 16-ounce glass of fresh-pressed beetroot juice runs about 800 calories of sugar a day. Not ideal for someone trying to lower their cardiovascular risk. A clinical-dose supplement is the only reliable way to hit the active range without rearranging your kitchen. ### Q4: I tried beetroot and it didn't work. What did I do wrong? You almost certainly did two things wrong, and neither one was your fault. The first I already covered. Your dose was too low. The second is bigger and almost nobody talks about it. Most beetroot supplements are made by spray drying beetroot juice at temperatures above 200 degrees Fahrenheit. That's how the industry turns juice into powder cheaply and at scale. Dietary nitrates do not survive that process. They break down under heat. So when you buy a beetroot powder advertising "1,000 milligrams of beetroot per serving," you're getting 1,000 milligrams of mostly inactive plant matter. The nitrates were cooked off before the powder ever got bottled. I tell my patients to imagine boiling a pot of broccoli for an hour, then draining the water, then complaining that the broccoli has no vitamin C left. The heat destroyed it. This is why the vast majority of beetroot supplements on the market don't work, even when the dose looks high on the label. The only way around this is cold extraction, which preserves the nitrates but takes about 4 times longer than spray drying. ### Q5: What should I look for in a beetroot supplement that actually works? Three things, in this order. First, the dietary nitrate content per serving must be listed on the label, not just "beetroot extract." If a brand doesn't tell you how many milligrams of actual nitrates you're getting, they probably don't know themselves. Walk away. Second, the supplement must be cold extracted, not spray dried. Look for this language on the bottle or the company's site. If they don't say it explicitly, assume the answer is spray dried. Third, the brand must publish a Certificate of Analysis from a third-party lab. That's an outside lab confirming what's actually in the bottle. Any supplement company can print whatever they want on a label. A third-party COA is the only way to know the label is honest. If a brand has all three of those things, you've eliminated about 95% of what's on the shelf at CVS and on Amazon. ### Q6: How fast will I see my numbers move? If you're taking a clinical-dose, cold-extracted supplement, the timeline most of my patients report is consistent. Week 1: nothing measurable. Your body is building up nitric oxide reserves. Week 2: the first 5-to-7-point drop. The Exeter study saw this same window. Week 4: drops of 10 to 12 points are common in patients with starting numbers above 140 systolic. Week 8: most responding patients are in or near the normal range. Week 12: the full effect, with morning readings stabilizing. These are observations from my own practice, not promises. Some patients respond faster, others slower. A small percentage don't respond at all, which I'll address in Q9. ### Q7: Can I take beetroot with my current blood pressure medication? Yes, with one important condition. Tell your prescribing doctor. Dietary nitrates work through the same general pathway as ACE inhibitors and calcium channel blockers, just from a different angle. That means they can potentiate the effect of medications like lisinopril, amlodipine, and HCTZ. For most of my patients, this is a benefit. Their numbers come down further than the meds alone could get them. For a small number of patients on aggressive medication regimens, the combined effect can push their pressure too low. That's why monitoring matters. I've had several patients reduce their lisinopril dose from 20 milligrams to 10, and a few drop a second medication entirely, after 90 days on a clinical-dose beetroot supplement. Always under monitoring. Never on their own. ### Q8: Are there side effects I should worry about? The two real ones are minor. Beeturia. Your urine and stool can turn pink or red for a day or two when you start. It's harmless and goes away as your body adjusts. It does not mean anything is wrong. Mild digestive changes. Some patients report softer stools or a small uptick in gas in the first week. This resolves for most patients by week two. Beyond those, I have not seen a clinically significant side effect in any of my patients on a clean, third-party-tested beetroot supplement. The biggest complaint I've heard is having to retake the morning reading three times because they can't believe the number. Compare that to the dry cough from lisinopril that wakes my patients up every night, the ankle swelling from amlodipine that turns their shoes into vises by 3 PM, and the bathroom trips from HCTZ that leave them exhausted. The side effect profile here is not in the same universe. ### Q9: What if it doesn't work for me? A small percentage of patients don't respond to dietary nitrates the way the average patient does. The reason has to do with the bacteria in your mouth. Your saliva contains specific bacteria that convert dietary nitrates into the intermediate form your body then turns into nitric oxide. If you use a lot of antibacterial mouthwash, brush aggressively with antibacterial toothpaste, or have low oral bacterial diversity for any reason, the conversion can be impaired. The fix is usually as simple as stopping antibacterial mouthwash for 30 days and rerunning the experiment. If after 90 days at a clinical dose your numbers haven't moved at all, this isn't the right intervention for you, and you should look at other root causes with your doctor. But that's the small minority. The vast majority of my patients who follow the protocol see meaningful drops. ### Q10: Which brand do you actually recommend? I get asked this in the exam room more than any other question, and for years I avoided answering it directly. I didn't want to look like I was selling anything. I changed my mind after watching too many patients waste money on the wrong brands. I started checking the bottles my patients brought in. Most didn't list a nitrate dose. Almost none had a published third-party COA. A handful were cold extracted. The brand that consistently shows up in the charts of my patients who actually see results is BeetWise. 400 milligrams of dietary nitrates per serving, at the top of the clinical range. Cold extracted, with the process documented on the company's site. Third-party Certificate of Analysis published openly. The current batch numbers and the testing lab are both listed. 400 milligrams of magnesium glycinate stacked in, which supports the same vasodilation pathway from a complementary angle. It's not the cheapest beetroot supplement on the market. It's the only one I've checked that meets all three of my criteria and that I've seen produce consistent results in my own patient population. I don't get paid for saying this. After watching too many patients buy $24 powders that don't work and then conclude beetroot is a scam, I've stopped staying quiet about it. If you're reading this and you've been told your blood pressure is creeping up, here's the version I'd give my own brother. The prescription path works, and for some patients it's the right call. But the side effects are real, and once you start lisinopril or amlodipine, most patients are on it for life. For patients with Stage 1 or borderline numbers, a 90-day trial on a clinical-dose, cold-extracted beetroot supplement is reasonable before you commit to medication. Talk to your own doctor about it first. If your numbers are already in Stage 2 territory, don't stop your medication. Add beetroot to what you're doing, monitor closely with your prescribing physician, and see if you can earn a lower dose under supervision. The mechanism works. You have to take enough of it, in a form that's still active when it hits your stomach. If you want to skip the trial and error I watched my patients go through, here's where you can find the one I trust: 👉 https://zenther.co/pages/listicle — Dr. Marcus Whitfield P.S. Two things worth knowing before you order. BeetWise runs a 90-day money-back guarantee. If your numbers don't move in 3 months, you send the bottles back and they refund the full amount. I've never seen a pharmacy take back unused lisinopril. They also run a discount when you order 3 bottles at once. Several of my patients have grabbed 3 months at the reduced rate to give the protocol a full trial. The one catch is cold extraction takes about 4 times longer than spray drying, and they source from a single third-party verified supplier. They sell out fairly often. If you click and they're out of stock, the email signup will tell you the second the next batch ships. If you've been on the fence about whether to try beetroot or fill the prescription your doctor wrote, this is the cleanest version of the experiment you can run. 👉 Check stock here: https://zenther.co/pages/listicle

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zenther.co

Most Common Questions About Lisnopril

Zenther Beetwise, 400mg verified nitrates per serving not 5mg like most brands. Cold-extracted beetroot supplement with published lab results. 90-day guarantee. Try BeetWise today.