Want to beat hypertension? Forget medication. Start having a glass of beetroot juice daily.

A team of researchers at Barts and the London [Images] School of Medicine in Britain has carried out a study and found that drinking just half a litre of the juice everyday can help in significantly reducing high blood pressure.

According to the researchers, the key beneficial ingredient in beetroot is nitrate, also found in green leafy vegetables. "Our study suggests that drinking beetroot juice, or consuming other nitrate-rich vegetables, might be a simple way to maintain a healthy cardiovascular system," lead researcher Professor Amrita Ahluwalia was quoted by The Daily Telegraph.

Fourteen healthy volunteers were recruited for the study and asked to drink either 500 millilitres of beetroot juice or the same quantity of water within 30 minutes. Their blood pressure was measured every 15 minutes from one hour before taking the drink to three hours afterwards.

Thereafter readings were taken every hour for six hours. A final test was conducted 24 hours after the drink was taken. The researchers found that the volunteers who drank the juice started to show reductions in blood pressure after just one hour. After two-and-a-half hours, their systolic rate -- the pressure with each heartbeat -- was around 10 ml of mercury lower than that of participants who had drunk water. For the diastolic reading -- the "resting" pressure between heartbeats -- a reduction of 8 mm Hg was seen in the juice drinkers after three hours.

At 24 hours, systolic BP was still more than 4 mm Hg lower for volunteers given beetroot while there were no differences for diastolic BP. The results of the study have been published in the latest edition of the Hypertension journal.