- Hi, I'm Sage.
Welcome back to the Addictive Wellness channel.
Today we're gonna be talking about an herb
not many people know about.
It's an amazing herb coming from Southeast Asia
most commonly found in Thailand.
It's Latin name is Clitoria ternatea and it's called that
because it has a very similar appearance
to certain elements of the lady garden.
But its more traditional name is blue butterfly pea flower.
And this is an amazing plant.
It was traditionally used in Southeast Asia
and also incorporated in Ayurvedic medicine as well
and Ayurveda regards it as a sacred healing plant
and there's a lot of mysticism surrounding it.
And so we'll start with the mysticism
and then we'll progress kind of into
the modern knowledge of it.
So traditionally this was,
as I said, considered a sacred healing plant
and it was intended to symbolize
the perfect attachment to the divine.
It was as almost like a godlike plank
the way they revered it.
And it was frequently grown in temples
and was used in Hindu rituals as a part of the worship
of the goddess Durga and the Lord Shiva.
It's got this amazing blue color to it
that is so rare to find intense blues like this in nature.
There's very few things with that kind of color.
And this color blue was known as Krishna light
and it was said that this plant was created
under Krishna consciousness
and even today throughout Southeast Asia,
especially in Thailand,
you find it grown in people's homes
because they say it gives the home
an aura of invincibility. Pretty amazing stuff.
Now in terms of how it grows as I mentioned,
it grows through Southeast Asia.
It's a flower that grows on a vine.
It's vibrant and incredibly blue flower.
And we hear a lot these days about soil being depleted
by all our modern agriculture.
And there, of course,
that's a huge issue.
In theory, we wanna practice something along the lines
of a regenerative agriculture
that leaves the soil better than we found it.
And blue butterfly pea flower actually
works in this way pretty significantly
because it is a nitrogen fixer.
So it puts more nitrogen back into the soil
really leaving it better
than it was before the blue butterfly pea flower came along.
And it's a very robust plant that grows easily in the wild.
It's not something that's been heavily domesticated
and can't grow without lots of help and protection from man
and it can grow perfectly fine
without any synthetic pesticides or fertilizers.
So it's really good just on its own.
It doesn't need much help.
It's really robust and full of vitality
and can fight off pests and things like that on its own.
And what it's gonna do for our human bodies?
So these blue pigments that you see in there
are antioxidants called proanthocyanidin and anthocyanin.
Anthocyanin you may be familiar with.
You also see in things like blueberries,
but blue payments generally are not found
in that many foods in nature.
Things like the yellows and the reds
and the oranges you see and obviously green,
you see so much more often.
Blue is pretty rare
and these antioxidants are part of what makes this
a great beauty food because they're stimulating
synthesis of collagen and elastin.
So for the quality of skin health are amazing,
but that's not all.
Blue butterfly pea flower has actually been shown
in In vitro research
to inhibit glycation which is the main metabolic process
that leads to aging and wrinkling of the skin.
It's where when we have a glucose-based metabolism
and this glucose causes the proteins to become sticky
and it results in the skin cells becoming actually stiff
and kind of brittle over time
and so you get wrinkling and stuff like that.
Blue butterfly pea flower inhibits this process
which is pretty amazing
and then it's also traditionally an Ayurveda
was regarded as a brain tonic
and it's always interesting to look at
how something was used
and regarded traditionally compared to
what now that science is looking
at these natural plant medicines more.
What is supported by the modern science and indeed
when we look at the modern scientific research on this,
you find that it stimulates acetylcholine production.
Acetylcholine is a neurotransmitter that declines as we age.
And so what is acetylcholine doing?
Well, it's involved in a lot of functions.
Some, for example, are muscle movement,
sensation of pain, learning,
and memory formation.
It has involvements in the regulation
of the endocrine system,
which is dealing with your hormone balance
and also in REM,
rapid eye movement sleep cycles,
which are so important for many aspects of
both physical and cognitive mental health.
So on the brain side of things,
it's pretty amazing.
And it also has these phenolic compounds in there
that have antioxidant properties that support liver health.
It's also anti-microbial and it has properties to it
that may turn out to be very beneficial
for folks with diabetes
and blood sugar imbalances
because it reduces postprandial glucose levels.
That means when you eat something
that's gonna be raising your blood sugar
if you're taking Clitoria ternatea, blue butterfly,
it's not gonna rise as much.
So it's keeping you at a more of an equilibrium
when it comes to balancing your blood sugar.
Now there's a lot of ways that you can take blue butterfly
and bring it into your diet.
In Southeast Asia,
it's used in a wide variety of applications.
You see it being used in tea or cold water infusion.
You'll see making all kinds of different drinks with it.
People make rice with it.
So it's like this vibrant blue rice.
Now it's become kind of a favorite thing
amongst bartenders to use,
even in the mainstream world
because it has this interesting property to it
that it's incredibly blue
but if you add a little bit of citrus to it,
like lemon or lime,
it instantly turns purple.
And so they love that as kind of a little
trick to be able to show people and impress people with.
So there's lots you can do with it
and it has a very subtle flavor.
It's almost like a very mild green tea type flavor.
So you can add it to almost anything
to get all these benefits
and to get this incredible blue color
without changing the flavor.
Many of these herbs that we work with are amazing
but you have to be really strategic about how you use them
to combine the flavors properly
to deal with some of the bitters
and the sours and things like that.
But with blue butterfly,
you don't have to worry about flavor combination so much.
Some people put it in smoothies,
put it in their oatmeal.
We've got a recipe on how to make it into an ice cream.
Now, traditionally it was often done that
they would take the actual flowers,
sun dry them,
and infuse them.
And that's certainly one way to do it.
And the most common way you see this today.
Like sometimes you can buy like the whole flowers in a form
that's either sun-dried or oven-dried.
Now it's an interesting way to take it,
but it's slightly suboptimal.
When you're sun drying you're only able to get
the moisture levels down to about 10% moisture.
And this is still kind of high.
So you run the risk of having contamination with things
like yeast and mold and microbial contamination.
So it may not be as pure as you would want it to be.
And also when things are left drying out in the sun
it's not a super controlled environment
unless it's very protected.
It could be a car exhaust getting onto it
could be things just flying through the air.
It's like it's not as protected as one would ideally like.
Another way it's done in the modern world
is that it's oven-dried.
Problem with that
is you're heating it up to such high temperatures
that you could be damaging a lot of these very
heat-sensitive compounds that we find in here.
So ideally you don't want it to get too hot.
You can use it in hot food preparations
but you wanna have the option of keeping it in a raw state
if you really wanna extract
some maximum level of benefits out of it.
So the way ours is processed is in a pretty special way.
First, it goes through a treatment of aqueous ozone
and this is to kill any microbes
that might be left on the flowers
and this is interesting because lots of things
that one would do to kill off microbes say
would have a detrimental effect on the integrity
or the nutrition of whatever the base compound is,
but here it appears to be the opposite.
This is something that definitely needs more research
done on it to understand more,
but so far it appears
that you're not damaging any healthy ingredients,
and what's actually happening is it's enhancing
the antioxidant potential.
That's something that it's gonna be exciting to see
how the research expands in future years
but I'm very optimistic in that department.
And so once it goes through that process,
then it goes through freeze-drying.
And in freeze-drying,
you're able to get down to 3% moisture content.
Much lower than the 10% that you would get with sun drying.
So you've already gotten ready rid of the microbes
through the ozone treatment
and then you brought it down so low in terms of moisture
that you don't have to worry about anything new coming in.
So this gives it great protection
as well as great shelf life.
And this is drying it without exposing it to heat.
So you're maintaining the integrity
of a lot of these sensitive compounds.
Now some people will freeze-dry it and that's done well,
but then they will mechanically grind it into a powder
and that creates a lot of friction.
With friction comes heat,
with heat comes potential damage as we were talking about.
So the way that ours is done is it's made
when it's freeze-dried simultaneously
they have it fly around inside of a chamber in like a vortex
and as it's doing this,
it's freeze drying and it makes it
into a powder while preserving the cellular integrity.
So if you look at it under a microscope
it's not totally broken down
in the way that you would find with something
that has been mechanically ground down.
So it's really the ultimate way.
You get it in a fairly fine powder
and you can consume the whole thing.
It's not just an extraction to water
like you would get with a tea
or cold water extraction.
You get everything that's in there
and you're preserving the optimal cellular integrity.
So you're gonna get absolutely the most of it.
So this is an incredible thing.
And again, I just love
how many different ways you can apply it and incorporate it
because of that very gentle flavor.
So often it's always a little bit of a challenge,
a fun challenge,
but challenge nonetheless to figure out
how we're gonna incorporate some of these different herbs
and make them taste amazing.
With blue butterfly flower,
it's so easy and has so many benefits
for so many of areas of your health
from beauty and anti-aging,
blood sugar, stress, brain performance.
It's just fantastic.
So I hope you'll give it a try if you haven't already.
If you have tried it,
leave us a comment.
I'm curious to know what your experience has been like
and if you do end up ordering it
and give it a try for the first time
you got to keep us posted.
I'm curious to hear how you like it.
Thanks so much for joining us today guys.
I hope to see you again soon and have a wonderful day.