If you're past 50, a nurse has likely said the words to you. Your blood pressure is up. Maybe you left with a pill. Perhaps two. And you've taken them each day since.

Those pills can help. But they can cost you, month after month. And some leave you tired, foggy, or worse. You take them, yet you still don't feel quite right. So here's a fair question to ask. What if a cheap root could lend a hand too?

It costs about a dollar. And it grows in plain dirt. It stains your hands bright red. The beet may be the best-kept trick for your blood pressure...

People have prized the beet for a very long time. The old cooks called it the jewel of the garden. One look at its deep red heart tells you why. The wild kind grew by the sea, tough and salty. Over time, farmers made it round and sweet. Kings and queens grew it for the table. And plain folks grew it for the blood.

Your grandmother likely knew this root well. She may have used it to build the blood. Some juiced it for a tired liver. Others leaned on it for gout or a sour gut. The color was the clue. Red root, red blood — that was the old way of thinking...

The old healers had no lab tests. But they watched close, and they wrote things down. And a lot of what they saw holds up today.

The Romans grew beets for feasts and for cures. Sailors once ate the wild kind at sea. Cooks in old Russia stirred it into a deep red soup. That soup, borscht, still warms tables now. One humble root, so many jobs...

Take a look at what happens when you eat one. The beet is packed with a plain plant salt called nitrate. Your body turns that salt into a gas named nitric oxide. The gas tells your blood vessels to relax. They open up, and the blood flows with more ease. Less push on the walls means a lower reading.

Here's the part I love. The fix is quick. Your body starts the work within hours. And you don't need a lab to make it. All you need is a beet and a little time.

There's a bonus, too. That same gas helps your legs. Runners drink beet juice before a race for this reason. It lets the muscles use air better. You may just take the stairs with more pep...

Old folks felt this long before the science. A beet, they said, gives you real get-up-and-go. Turns out they had a point.

The proof: At Queen Mary University of London, adults with high blood pressure drank one cup of beet juice a day. After four weeks, the top number fell by about 8 points. For some, that was enough to reach a normal range.

That work was led by Amrita Ahluwalia and her team. They gave folks a real beet drink or a fake one. Only the real beet moved the numbers. The plain nitrate in the root did the job.

One thing to keep straight, though. Beets are food, not a cure. Keep taking what your doctor gives you. Food works best beside your care, not in place of it.

A cup a day is a lot of beet, sure. You don't have to drink it. Whole beets count too. Roast them, grate them raw, or drop them in a soup. Small, steady doses win here. The gain builds when you eat them week after week.

Worth knowing: One cup of cooked beets gives you about a third of the folate you need in a day. That B vitamin helps your body build fresh blood.

The beet gives you more than that red-gas trick. It's rich in folate, a B vitamin your blood leans on. It brings potassium, which helps balance salt. And it packs fiber to keep you full and regular. The deep red comes from betalains — plant dyes that may help guard your cells.

A beet also brings a gentle, earthy sweetness. That taste puts off some folks at first. Roasting fixes it fast. Heat pulls out the sugar and softens the bite. Even beet-doubters tend to come around.

Don't toss the leafy tops, either. Those greens cook up much like chard. They're loaded with vitamin K and more. So you get two foods from one plant. Waste less, gain more. Not bad for a buck...

Look for a beet that feels hard, with smooth skin. The leafy tops should be crisp and green, not limp. Fresh tops point to a fresh root. And you can cook those greens too.

Boiling drops some of the good stuff into the water. Roasting keeps more of it and turns the beet sweet. Grating it raw works great in a salad, too. Save a hard boil for last.

Beets can turn your pee pink or red for a day. It looks odd, but it's harmless. The color just means some dye passed through. Your body is doing fine.

So the next time your numbers creep up, don't just reach for the pill bottle. Look in the produce aisle too. A firm red beet sits there for about a dollar.

Your grandmother trusted this root for the blood. Now a team in London has put real numbers behind her hunch.

The beet asks little of you. It's cheap. It keeps for weeks in the fridge. And it turns a dull plate a bold, happy red.

Try it this week. Roast a batch and eat a little each day. See how you feel by Friday.