 in 2008 reinforced the obligatory role of saliva in humans to generate nitric oxide.Here, they showed ingestion of beet juice, a nitrate-rich food, by healthy volunteers markedly reduced blood pressure and by disrupting saliva, either by spitting or interrupting the bioconversion of dietary nitrate to nitrite in the mouth with anti-bacterial mouthwash, the chemical reduction of nitrate to nitrite to nitric oxide with an associated decease in blood pressure was abated.By blocking saliva from recirculating or preventing salivary nitrate from being chemically reduced to nitrite, it prevented a rise in plasma nitrite levels, and blocked a decrease in blood pressure as well as abolished nitric oxide-mediated inhibition of platelets aggregation confirming the cardio-protective effects were attributable to nitric oxide via the conversion of nitrate to nitrite in saliva.