The Beetroot Juice Fertility Trend: What the Science Actually Shows
As a fertility nutritionist, I get asked about it most weeks. Here's what the study behind it actually says, what's happening biologically, and where I land on it clinically.
If you've spent any time in fertility or IVF spaces online, you'll have seen the graphic. Three numbers, two columns, one very persuasive juice: beetroot, watermelon and ginger, said to improve implantation, pregnancy and miscarriage rates during IVF. I've posted about it myself, because the underlying study is genuinely interesting. But "interesting" and "proven" are different things, and I want to walk you through the difference, because that's where the nuance in fertility nutrition always lives.
Where the numbers actually come from
The study behind the trend followed 296 women undergoing ICSI (a form of IVF), randomly assigned to either a control group or a group given a daily beetroot, watermelon and ginger juice from the day of embryo transfer through to their pregnancy test, the window most of us know as the two week wait. It was first presented as a conference abstract at the American Society for Reproductive Medicine in 2019, and has since been published in the journal JBRA Assisted Reproduction.
The headline figures are real: a higher implantation rate, a higher clinical pregnancy rate, and a lower miscarriage rate in the juice group compared with the control group. That's what's on your Instagram feed, usually stripped of everything around it.
What tends not to make the graphic is this: it's one study, of a modest size, and, as the researchers themselves are careful to say, an association, not proof of cause and effect. IVF outcomes are influenced by age, embryo quality, endometrial thickness, protocol, and a dozen other variables that don't fit neatly into a comparison graphic. It's genuinely hard to isolate a juice as the reason someone's transfer worked, however clean the numbers look. That's not a reason to dismiss it, it's a reason to hold it properly.
“It’s an association, not proof of cause and effect - with fertility, there are so many variables at play that it’s hard to know a juice was the only thing that resulted in a pregnancy.”
Why it's not just wellness noise, though
Here's the part I find genuinely useful: there's a plausible mechanism behind it, which is more than you can say for most things that go viral in this space.
Beetroot is naturally rich in nitrates, which the body converts into nitric oxide, a molecule that supports vasodilation, essentially widening blood vessels and improving blood flow. In the context of a transfer, that matters because a well-vascularised, well-supplied endometrial lining is part of what supports implantation.
Ginger adds to that picture. Compounds in ginger, particularly 6-gingerol, have antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, and research suggests ginger can lower the activity of enzymes (ACE and arginase) that would otherwise limit nitric oxide production, so it's working the same pathway from a different angle.
Watermelon does double duty. It contains lycopene, an antioxidant linked to reduced oxidative stress, and L-citrulline, which the body converts to L-arginine and which has been shown to increase the activity of nitric oxide synthase, the enzyme that actually produces nitric oxide in the first place.
So you've got three ingredients working on the same pathway, from three different directions, in a phase of the cycle where blood flow to the endometrium is genuinely relevant. That's why this one had my attention in a way most "fertility hacks" don't.
The caveat nobody's posting
None of that makes it settled science. This is still a single trial, and in fertility research especially, I'd always rather wait for it to be replicated at scale before I call anything proven. The researchers themselves point to exactly that, more robust, larger studies are needed before this becomes a genuine clinical recommendation rather than a promising signal.
What I'd gently push back on is the framing that's spread on social media: that this juice is the variable that got someone pregnant, or that skipping it puts you at a disadvantage. Fertility doesn't work like that. Implantation is the result of embryo quality, endometrial receptivity, hormonal timing and factors we still don't fully understand, not one blended drink.
My take, clinically
If you don't do it, I don't think it's going to stop you from getting pregnant. And if you do, based on what we currently know, I don't think it's going to do any harm, which is a fairly rare thing to be able to say about a fertility trend.
“If you don’t do it, I don’t think it’s going to stop you getting pregnant, there are too many things that have to come into play with implantation for one juice to carry that much weight.”
Given the mechanism is plausible and the ingredients are safe, well-tolerated foods, I don't see a downside to including it around transfer, as long as it isn't replacing anything that actually matters clinically. You don't need to be rigid about the format, either, a ready-made beetroot, watermelon and ginger juice, a beetroot shot with ginger, or simply blending it yourself all achieve broadly the same thing. Even beetroot on its own, added consistently, is likely to be helpful from a nitrate perspective if the full combination feels like too much.
There's also something worth naming that has nothing to do with biochemistry: the two week wait is one of the more powerless-feeling stretches of a fertility journey, and having something concrete and evidence-informed to do with that time has real value. That's not me overselling a juice. It's me acknowledging that "doing something positive" is not nothing, even when the clinical effect size is still uncertain.
The Well Edit view
Treat this one the way you'd treat any single study with clean numbers and a lot of social reach: interesting, mechanistically sound, worth trying if you want to, and not something to build hope or blame around. The beetroot juice isn't going to make or break a cycle. But as far as fertility trends go, this is one of the more defensible ones going around, and that's worth saying too.
Words by Jen Walpole for The Well Edit.
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