Definition: "An ergogenic aid is any substance or phenomenon that enhances performance "
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04.05.2017 |
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Your mental arithmetic improves after a bottle of beet root
Supplementation with beetroot juice - and probably also other sources of nitrate and nitrite - makes you a little cleverer. Ninety minutes after intake, if you're repeatedly given sums to do in your head, you'll make significantly fewer mistakes. That's because, nutritionists at Northumbria University discovered, beetroot juice boosts the blood supply to the brain during mental gymnastics.
Study
The other half of the participants were given a placebo.
Results
The participants in the beetroot group [black bar] made fewer mistakes with the more complex sums than the participants in the control group.
Near-infrared spectroscopy revealed that as a result of the beetroot juice the blood supply to the brain started to fluctuate more. When the participants were doing the easier sums the researchers saw there was less haemoglobin in the brain, but when the participants did the more difficult sums the haemoglobin concentration rose.
Conclusion
"The findings here suggest that supplementation with dietary nitrate can directly modulate important physiological aspects of brain function and improve performance on a cognitive task that is intrinsically related to prefrontal cortex function."
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