The Section of the Blue Zones Beverage Rule

Jimmy Yen here, the acupuncture guy with Achieve Integrative Health, and we’re going to continue biohacking tip number 18. We’re actually going to switch to the book of the Blue Zone Solution, so I randomly flipped open and it was the section of the Blue Zone beverage roll. So from a Chinese medicine perspective, water is always obviously the best beverage to have and coffee is actually not good and tea only to a certain degree because they’re both diuretics. Diuretic means it depletes your body of water, so while you’re drinking it, it’s actually making you lose it just as fast.

However, the research that I like is based on facts and people that are living it. It’s not done in a research lab but by people who are living proof of what they do. That’s the type of data that I like to follow. So, of course, water is the obvious choice, but coffee surprised me.

In addition, they said that research findings associate coffee drinking with lower rates of dementia and Parkinson’s disease. Whether that’s true I have no idea. In addition, coffee tends to be grown in the world’s blue zone. Another example of how blue zone eating practices reflect concern for the big picture, so coffee has some advantages. I don’t know, although they say it may help the cognitive function because coffee is a vasodilator, so some people who have migraines and headaches may find it helpful.

It actually helps you decrease your migraines and headaches. So, coffee could be one and people in all the blue zones drink tea, so that’s consistent. People in all the blue zones—not everybody in the blue zones drinks coffee, but everybody drinks water, everybody drinks tea. The last one is red wine. People who drink red wine in moderation tend to outlive those who don’t. So, let’s all go out and get a bottle of wine and start drinking.

People in most blue zones drink one to three glasses of wine per day, often with a meal and with friends. Wine has actually been found to help the system absorb plant-based antioxidants, so it especially complements a blue zone diet. Maybe I need to start drinking wine. I don’t really like wine, but this is from people who are living at optimal health. They’re living to 90 to 100 years old and they are chopping wood and hiking mountains, so something must be going on, right?

Now you know, people can tend to go overboard with these things to become alcoholics or drink coffee like crazy. That’s not what they’re trying to say. They’re trying to say that these people are drinking in moderation, so if you can do it in moderation, it can improve your quality of life. So that’s what you need to know about the beverage of today, the blue zone beverage rule.

So definitely you need to drink more water because your body’s made of water. It’s not made of tea. It’s not made of coffee. It’s not made of red wine, but coffee, tea, and red wine can help.

It has been shown in these blue zone areas. I don’t need some scientific research to tell me that it works when people are actually doing it. Actually, living and being examples of it, that’s the best type of research. But if you need that extra help, give us a call at Achieve Integrative Health. Let’s get you back to optimal health.

-Jimmy Yen