Still cold feet? Here are 3 nutrients, beyond beets, that help warm blood reach your feet. One is probably sitting in your fruit bowl. And number 1? A lot of people take the wrong version of it.
Take Diane. She’s 62. She ate well and walked most days. And still, every night meant wool socks, a heating pad, and a husband who jumped when her feet touched his legs.
A friend swore by beet juice, so Diane drank it for two months. Her feet? Still ice cold. Then she learned that beets only cover one step, and her body was running short on the others.
Today, the heating pad’s back in the closet. And most of what she changed was already in her kitchen. Let me show you what she found.
I’ll count down 3 nutrients, from good to most important.
Along the way, I’ll show you an everyday habit that quietly drains one of them. You probably did it at lunch.
And one of these nutrients? You’ve likely been peeling it off and throwing it in the trash.
But first, why do feet get cold at all?
Your blood vessels aren’t rigid pipes. They widen and narrow all day long. And the signal that tells them to relax and open up is a tiny molecule called nitric oxide.
Think of your circulation like a garden hose. To get a strong flow all the way to the end, and for you, the end is your feet, three things have to go right.
Water coming from the tap. That’s the raw material your body uses to make nitric oxide.
A hose with no leaks, so it doesn’t get lost on the way.
And a hose that’s soft enough to open up. Not stiff and cracked from years out in the sun.
Beets mainly help with the water. That’s the one step. But they don’t patch the leaks. And they don’t soften the hose.
And it gets harder with age. Researchers in Italy found our blood vessels relax less and less as we get older, partly because the nitric oxide system itself starts to slow down. After 60? All three jobs get harder.
That’s why we’ll cover all three. One nutrient for each.
Quick note before we start. Some of these are easy to get from food. A couple are harder, especially if you don’t eat much seafood. There’s a simple way to cover those, and I’ll show you at the end, or you’ll find the link in the description.
Alright. Let’s start with the one that’s down by more than 80 percent by the time we’re over 60.
Number 3 is taurine.
You’ve probably seen the word on an energy drink can. And no, this is not your excuse to start drinking energy drinks.
Taurine is a natural amino acid. Your body makes a little of it and gets the rest from food. It’s used all over the body, including in the walls of your blood vessels, where it helps keep that hose soft enough to open.
A 2023 study in the journal Science found that people over 60 had more than 80 percent less taurine in their blood than kids and teenagers.
Eighty percent. Right when your blood vessels need it most.
Does adding it back help? It looks that way. In a 12-week trial published in the journal Hypertension, 120 adults with borderline-high blood pressure, average age 57, took taurine or a placebo.
The taurine group? Their blood vessels responded better. And their blood pressure readings came down more than the placebo group’s.
Where do you get it? Seafood. Clams, scallops, mussels, fish. And the dark meat of chicken and turkey. Plants have very little.
Aim for seafood a couple of times a week. And now and then, pick the thigh over the breast.
The next one is probably sitting in your kitchen right now. And you’ve been throwing away the best part of it.
Number 2 is citrus fruit. Oranges, lemons, limes, grapefruit.
Two things inside them matter here. Vitamin C. And a natural plant compound called hesperidin, found mostly in oranges.
And one of those citrus fruits comes with a warning label for a lot of people. I’ll tell you which one in a minute.
Remember the leaky hose? That’s where vitamin C comes in. Nitric oxide is fragile. It breaks down fast, and faster as we age. Vitamin C helps protect it, so more of it sticks around long enough to do its job.
The surprising part? In that Italian research, published in the journal Hypertension, vitamin C improved how blood vessels responded in a lab test. But in people with normal blood pressure, it only made a difference in one group. The oldest one. People over 60.
So if you’re over 60, this is when protecting your nitric oxide really starts to count.
And hesperidin? It has its own study. In a French trial, men in their 50s and early 60s drank orange juice or took hesperidin every day for 4 weeks. Their diastolic blood pressure came down a little, and their small blood vessels worked better after meals.
Here it is. The part you’ve been throwing away.
Most of the hesperidin isn’t in the juice. It’s in that white, spongy stuff under the peel. The pith. The part most of us pick off and toss. One study found far more hesperidin in that white layer than in the juice.
This was the one that surprised Diane the most. She’d been peeling her oranges perfectly clean for years. Every last bit.
You might be wondering, is orange juice enough? Honestly, a whole orange is better. More fiber, less of a sugar rush, and if you leave some pith on, you get the hesperidin too.
An orange a day. Just don’t peel it clean.
That citrus fruit with the warning label? Grapefruit. It interferes with a lot of common prescription drugs. So if you take any, check with your pharmacist first, and stick with oranges.
Before we get to number 1, there’s that everyday habit I mentioned. And it works against the very thing vitamin C is trying to protect.
It’s salt. The lunch habit. A sandwich. A bowl of soup. A few crackers.
Now, don’t get me wrong. You’ve heard “cut the salt” a hundred times, usually about blood pressure. But this study found something most people never hear about. And to be fair, your body does need some salt. The problem is how much most of us get.
Researchers at the University of Colorado worked with adults whose average age was 62, all with mildly high blood pressure. For 4 weeks, they ate their usual amount of sodium, about what the average American eats. For another 4 weeks, they cut their total sodium from all foods roughly in half.
The result? Their blood vessels opened up noticeably better. More nitric oxide was getting through.
The strange part? On their usual salt, giving them vitamin C improved their blood vessels. Once they cut the salt, vitamin C barely added anything.
That suggests the salt was doing damage that vitamin C had to keep cleaning up. It’s like poking new holes in the hose while you’re trying to patch it.
And it’s probably not the salt shaker. Most of it is already in packaged and restaurant food. Bread, soup, deli meat, cheese, frozen meals. A common guideline is under about a teaspoon of salt a day, from everything you eat. Not zero. Just check the sodium on the labels of the foods you eat most.
Okay. Number 1. Remember I said a lot of people take the wrong version? Some of you might have a bottle of it in your cupboard right now.
Number 1 is L-citrulline.
Fun fact first. It was discovered in watermelon back in 1914, and it’s named after it. The Latin name for watermelon is Citrullus.
Your body turns citrulline into arginine. And arginine is the raw material your blood vessels use to make nitric oxide. This is the water from the tap.
So why not just take an arginine supplement? Plenty of people do. L-arginine pills and powders are sold everywhere for circulation. And that’s the wrong version I mentioned at the start.
When you swallow arginine on its own, a lot of it gets broken down in your gut before it ever reaches your blood. Citrulline gets absorbed well, then turns into arginine inside your body. Think of it as the side door when the front door’s blocked.
A German study found citrulline raised blood arginine more effectively than taking arginine itself. And a small Japanese study found that taking citrulline and arginine together raised levels more than either one alone.
What about blood flow? In a small pilot study at Florida State University, adults in their 50s with borderline-high blood pressure took a watermelon extract for 6 weeks. Their arteries worked better, and the pressure in their main artery, near the heart, came down.
You might be wondering, can I just eat more watermelon? To match that study, you’d need several pounds a day. Your bathroom schedule would never be the same.
But watermelon still counts. A couple of cups, including the pale part near the rind, is a great start. Pair it with foods that have arginine, like pumpkin seeds, nuts or turkey. Watermelon with a handful of pumpkin seeds gives you both.
There’s one more thing that helps all three nutrients work. And it costs nothing.
Moving.
Your blood vessels make more nitric oxide when blood rushes through them. Moving turns up the tap.
A 10-minute walk after meals is a great start. If walking is hard, sit and point your toes up and down 20 times, a few times a day.
Before we wrap up, here are the mistakes that keep people stuck. And the last one is the most important, because it’s the only one that can actually hurt you.
One. Peeling your oranges clean.
Two. Taking an arginine supplement on its own.
Three. Getting your taurine from energy drinks. The caffeine and sugar work against you.
Four. Giving up after a week. Look, these are habits. Give them a few weeks.
Five. Ignoring cold feet that come with other signs. If you also have calf pain when you walk, sores that heal slowly, or skin that turns pale or blue, see your doctor. Don’t wait on that.
And six, the one that can hurt you. Stopping your blood pressure medication because you’re eating better. Please don’t. Food supports your circulation. It doesn’t replace your treatment.
And if you take medication for your blood pressure, heart or blood sugar, or you have kidney disease, talk to your doctor before adding any supplement or making big changes to your salt.
Let’s put the hose back together. Taurine keeps it soft. Citrus stops the leaks. And citrulline, paired with arginine, keeps the water coming.
Remember Diane’s heating pad? She didn’t need anything complicated. An orange with the pith on. Seafood a couple of times a week. Watermelon and pumpkin seeds. Less salty bread. And a walk after dinner.
That simple way I mentioned for the hard ones? Citrulline and taurine are tough to get from food every day, especially if seafood isn’t your thing.
There’s a powdered drink with something for all three jobs. It has vitamin C and hesperidin from our number 2, plus an amino blend with citrulline and arginine together, and taurine.
You mix it in water, ideally with a meal.
The link is in the description and the pinned comment. It goes to the official website, and it comes with a 365-day money-back guarantee.
It also contains vitamin K2. So if you take warfarin or another blood thinner, or any heart or blood pressure medication, check with your doctor first.
If this helped, subscribe for more simple health tips for life after 60.
And before you go. Better flow is only half the picture. After 60, something else can quietly stiffen your arteries from the inside, and it may be linked to a vitamin millions of people take every day. I made a whole video on the 3 nutrients that help keep calcium where it belongs. It’s right here.