Dietary nitrate is the inorganic nitrate found in beetroot, spinach and other leafy greens. The body turns some of it into nitric oxide, which widens blood vessels. It is taken as beetroot juice shots or nitrate salts.
Also known as: nitrate, inorganic nitrate, sodium nitrate, beetroot juice nitrate, NO3.
An umbrella review found larger endurance effects with at least 6 mmol (372 mg) a day taken for more than 3 days (Poon 2025). A COPD trial used 140 mL of beetroot juice with 12.9 mmol of nitrate before each session (Pavitt 2020). These are study protocols, not a recommendation.
Nitrate is mostly taken as beetroot juice or as an added ingredient in sports products.
What studies show: a 2020 meta-analysis of 80 crossover trials in young, healthy adults found nitrate improved exercise performance, but the effect was small (effect size 0.17), was not seen in studies of women only, and was not seen in well-trained endurance athletes (Senefeld 2020). A 2025 umbrella review of 20 meta-analyses found gains in time to exhaustion, distance covered, muscular endurance and peak power, but not in other outcomes, and rated most reviews low quality (Poon 2025). In 165 people with COPD, nitrate-rich beetroot juice before each session of an 8-week rehab program improved walking distance by about 30 m more than placebo juice and lowered systolic blood pressure (Pavitt 2020).
Safety: no serious side effects were reported in the COPD trial (Pavitt 2020). People on blood pressure medicines or nitrate heart drugs should ask their prescriber first. The sources here do not describe drug interactions.
We could not find a single published half-life or time to peak for dietary nitrate that applies to a supplement dose, so we do not list one.
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