December 15, 2023 • 52 mins
Episode 3 of "The Kava Lounge" podcast features a detailed discussion on the work of Dr. Vincent Lebot, a renowned expert on kava. Hosts Douglas LaRose and Jimmy Price delve into Lebot's paper titled "Recent Advances in the Quality Control of Kava the Traditional Beverage of the Pacific Islands." They explore Lebot's background, his significant contributions to kava research, including genetic studies of the plant, and the implications of his findings for the kava industry. The episode also touches on broader topics like kava's safety, cultivation, and the intricacies of its chemical composition, emphasizing the importance of noble kava cultivars and quality control in the industry. Episode research citation: Lebot, V. 2018. “Recent Advances in the Quality Control of Kava, the Traditional Beverage of the Pacific Islands.” Acta Horticulturae, no. 1205 (June): 483–92. https://doi.org/10.17660/actahortic.2018.1205.59
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Jimmy Price.
How you doing,
man?
I'm doing well.
Just hanging in there.
It was a pretty Standard week a wholelot of answering phones and , listening to
people listening to people who complain.
Yes that's about a standard for me yep.
? Yeah.
For me it was more just sitting in frontof my computer and writing a bunch of
really complicated information aboutcamps for displaced people in South Sudan.
(00:20):
So that was interesting.
But , mostly pretty depressing actually.
. But, , it's good work.
Yeah.
You're making a difference.
That means a lot.
I answer phone.
I listen to people complain abouttheir ice machines breaking, man,
look, people need Ice man.
, especially in Oh no, believe me.
I know.
Especially the winter.
Oh, I know.
I'm I am well aware of howmuch everyone needs ice.
I, yeah.
(00:41):
That's something that I go tosleep thinking about sometimes.
Yep.
So we should start.
Yeah, that's what we'll do.
. Oh yeah.
But a good weekend anyways.
It was it ended fine.
That's all that matters.
It the Friday came around and theend of the week came around and
I, the weekend finally showed up.
So it's all good.
Yeah.
(01:02):
, Well, Jimmy we came here to and met here today to discuss the great,
the legendary, the one and only dr.
Vincent Lebot.
Yes, sir.
The famous kava experts andI think the first name that
I ever associated with Kava.
When I first started learning about kava20 years ago or so, I remember coming
(01:23):
across his book, the Pacific Elixir.
. So he's the MuhammadAli of Kava scientists.
? Yes, I would say so.
His field of expertiseis quite interesting.
And , we'll do a littleintroduction here for Dr.
Vincent Lebot.
The paper we're going tobe looking at from Dr.
Vincent Lebot is called "RecentAdvances in the Quality Control
(01:43):
of Kava, the traditionalbeverage of the Pacific Islands".
He was born in 1958, and hehas a French citizenship.
He was the director ofresearch at the University of
LaPierre in France since 2004.
He's had got his PhD in plant biologyin 1988 at Sam University, and Doug
will talk about his fields . Sure.
Yeah.
He is a plant biologist and hestudies quantitative genetics
(02:05):
and population genetics.
He's well known for his studies onthe agro biodiversity of root crops.
He developed a methodology that integratedtaxonomy, morpho agronomic variation,
molecular genetic diversity, and thechemical analysis of underground organs.
That's a mouthful, huh?
Yeah.
Also breeding genetic improvementof root and tuber crops.
(02:27):
This he's a supervisor of several graduatestudents at any given time, and he does
coordination within scientific networks.
I think that's prettyevident in his research here.
He is also worked for, Economicsdepartments, if I'm not mistaken.
I remember him being associatedwith a ecology of economics
or something, and having to dowith the trade networks of kava.
(02:49):
I remember seeing that somewhere,but it's not mentioned in this little
The Society for
Economic Botany.
Yeah.
Gotcha.
We'll start from 1986 to 1987, andhe was a scientist to the laboratory
for applied Tropical Botany at theFrance University of Mont Pierre.
1988 to 1991, he has postdocat the University of Hawaii,
1992 to 1994 head of the treeimprovement program in Madagascar.
(03:12):
Interesting.
Oh, that is that's a wild one.
From 1995 through 1996 he wasthe scientific coordinator for
genetic resource management.
At ciad, Mont Pire, France,1996 through 1998, head of
the Northern Research Center.
Northern Province of New Caledonia.
Okay, so he spent some timein New Caledonia as well.
And since 1998, he's been the , headof the Root Crops Improvement
(03:32):
Program, Cirad in Vanuatuscientific coordinator of I.N.E.A.
International network for edible areas,adapting clonally, propagated crops
to climatic and commercial changes.
Interesting.
Scientific coordination of 10 TeneoTarot Network for Southeast Asia and
(03:54):
Ocean scientific coordination of S.P.Y.N.
or the "South Pacific Yam Network".
So he's had quite a bit of experiencein the field of agriculture.
In genetics.
Jimmy,.
I had no idea that Dr.
Lebo worked with yams and taro.
That's super interesting.
They are root tuber crops andit makes sense that he would
(04:14):
have been interested in kava.
But yeah.
Is that I did not know thatHe was also a a tuber, expert
tube.
Yeah.
. Yep.
He's very well known for that as well.
The kava root and the othertubers and taro and all that
good stuff that he studies.
He's been a member of the Societyof Economic Botany since 1988, and
he received the David Fairchildfor Plant Exploration Award.
(04:36):
I looked this up.
this actually wasn't written in here.
I had to see what this award was.
And this is an award that recognizesindividuals who have explored remote
areas of the world using innovative.
Travel, itineraries, conveyances, ortechniques to discover new plant species
or cultivars, brought into cultivationsnew and important plants that hold
significant promises, agricultural orhorticultural varieties, or played crucial
(05:01):
roles in the ex exit two cultivationof rare or endangered plant species, or
help preserve threatened and endangeredhabitats and natural communities.
So yes, you could definitely sayhe's been part of every sentence,
every part of that sentence there.
One has to wonder what Dr.
Lebot's first encounterwith kava looked like.
(05:22):
, looking at his history and all theplaces he's been, one has to wonder,
when he went to Vanuatu for the firsttime and heard about Kava and started
researching it, I really wanna know whatthat, that kind of John Lennon meets
Paul McCartney kind of moment was like,
as we're about to see he knows a lotabout kava, probably more than anybody
else in the world in terms of, it'sscientific properties and ways of
(05:45):
investigating it and doing a analysisof it and lab experiments with it.
Yeah.
Jimmy, let's jump right into this.
Complex
Dr.
Lebot suggests that kava likely arosefrom the northern islands of Vanuatu.
Piper wichmannii was brought fromPapua New Guinea and was cultivated
(06:06):
in the northern part of Vanuatu.
And then, we get into sort of theactual nitty gritty of how this
can be essentially proven throughgenetic research, going back through
the islands and doing accessionsbased on location, morphotype and
chemotype and all that good stuff.
We'll get into that information, but inthis document, he goes and makes a really
(06:30):
good case for there being specific typesof kava with specific genetic markers.
The gist is you can take these sortof markers and know the qualities
of your kava , through assayand through chemotypical makeup.
You can actually get in there andyou can know, and this kind of adds
a bit of extra credence to the Codexand where they were trying to ratify
(06:55):
kava as a food when mixed with water.
This gives a sort of a base where theysay "noble kavas", you have to be able
to say, "how is that a noble kava?"
What constitutes a noble kavas definition?
And this paper helps lay that foundationof what can be defined in the different
classifications of wild today and noblekavas and the lineages of these, be they
(07:20):
wild new two-day or noble, and how theyall came from a very small genetic pool.
So we'll get into that as well, butthis is a very interesting eye-opening
paper as to the actual real originsof how kava distributed throughout the
islands of the South Pacific in a waythat represented in numbers, in actual
(07:46):
figures, and you can see it in a graphand you can see where these kavas split
off from other kavas and went differentdirections and things like that.
It's just, very fascinating tosee the lineage of kava and how
a cloned plants one that cannotsexually reproduce that way.
That means the geneticinformation can't mix.
(08:07):
You can't take and makea new hybrid plant.
Kava is propagated through node cuttings,which means you have to take a clip the
kava at a certain spot where a branchwould normally grow and they would
put that in some sort of soil mediumwhere it would start growing roots.
And then that becomes your, theycall 'em seedlings, but I would think
there'd be more apt term would benodelings for these little kava plants.
(08:28):
And that's how kava is propagated.
Kava does not produce seeds.
The only plants related to kavathat produce seeds are Piper,
wichmannii, which is Wild Kava.
The kavas that we know of as cultivatedvariety methysticum are going to be the
ones that do not produce seeds, which willinclude your two-day and your Noble Kavas.
But your wild kavas are theones that can produce seeds.
(08:51):
However, and we'll see that againin the paper, Vanuatu's two-day
or Wild kavas don't produce seeds.
Only Papa New Guinea and the SolomonIsland produce seeds, which is very
interesting, and also says that therewas something going on with the plant
in the northern islands of Vanuatuthat would indicate that you were
having something going on that wouldsay, "Hey, it's being messed with."
(09:15):
It's dna n a is being messed with.
So it's very interesting.
He does say cold water extraction here,. And that's a hot topic these past few.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jimmy, you're bringing up thecontroversial topic of hot
versus cold water preparation.
. I don't know if we, we might get adivided listener base based on that.
You can fight it out in the comments.
Just really quick.
I wanted to say, a seedling,that is the correct term.
(09:36):
A seedling is a young spo file developedout of a plant embryo from a seed.
So any kind of ger germinated seedthat is beginning to grow and coming
out of the ground and producingits first growth is the seedling,
that's the word of the day from the
the kalane.
I propose noding,
, . You're gonna
die on this hill, Jimmy.
(09:56):
No.
No.
Not definitely not.
No.
I'm not making up words here.
I know I'm from Nashville, but I'm gonna,I'm gonna stray away from that this time.
I
Did wanna say, just to connect this toto Nancy Pollock's paper in the universe
of Kava lounge materials that we've readand discussed, this does tie into the
sustainability of kava paper that Dr.
(10:17):
Pollock published in which wediscussed on our debut episode.
Because he talks in the first twopages pretty extensively about the
agriculture of kava and the factthat small holder farmers are mostly
the producers of kava in Fiji andVanuatu, and a few other countries.
And just how much bans on kavaand negative press about kava
(10:41):
how much damage that can causeto these small holder farmers.
Yes, the paper is definitely couchedin that same conversation about how
best to market, to sell kava, how tomake sure that it's safe for people to
consume and , basically also lettingpeople know that it is indeed a safe
beverage from almost every angle.
You look at it, it's a safe beverage.
And the different restrictions thatwere placed on it were based in bad
(11:05):
science that basically blamed kava forwhat was probably what would you say?
Like manufacturing, chemicals.
Manufacturing.
Manufacturing issue, yeah.
Issue.
Yeah, exactly.
So, I just wanted to get thatout there and tie it back to that
first article because certainly Dr.
Lebot is definitely herefighting the good fight for kava.
Yes.
And trying to create a discussion abouthow we can best monitor the quality
(11:29):
of kava that's on the markets and knowwhat should or shouldn't be exported
from the kava growing island nations.
Correct?
Yes.
And that makes a big difference.
Quality of the material must be defined.
It's easy for us tosay, Ooh, high quality.
High quality, but what does that mean?
Can you put a number on that sentence?
(11:50):
This is the attempt to put a numberon that so we can have a standard,
so we can say, this is high quality,this is not, and this must be done.
It is one of those necessary things forkava to move forward as a commodity.
And I know that's not necessarilyeveryone's goal, but if kava is to
be consumed in the United States,there must be quality standards
(12:10):
that are adhered to and agreed upon.
And this is an attempt atnailing down those standards.
This topic stirred up quitea bit of controversy in 2014.
We might talk about that for a little
yeah, I think that's a good idea.
Yeah.
I
think we should talk about it.
2014 was a time when you wouldorder kavas and I truly believe
this is where our words that camefrom this were heavy and heady.
(12:32):
And during this time in 2014, we weregetting kavas that were obscenely
sedative, they would make yourskin turn into alligator scales.
This is if you drank everyday, you just expected this.
And we weren't really allthe much wiser for it.
We didn't realize, what we were doing.
We didn't know, or we had no idea.
(12:52):
We thought that if a vendor took a bagof kava and labeled it noble, we expected
that bag of kava to be noble kava,and that wasn't happening at the time.
A lot of people that wanna put blamein every single spot on that one.
So I won't even touch it.
I'll just say it happened.
It got.
Fixed.
It got remedied.
The exporters got wise to whatpeople were bringing them.
There, there are more tests nowavailable to take care of this,
(13:14):
but there was a lot of controversysurrounding the kava two-day kava,
which is arguably a lower quality.
Yeah, I don't know.
I guess we should define today,and it's spelled T u d e I,
and that's what it's been labeledthat because it has a high proportion
of the kavalactone known asdihydromethysticin, and dihydrokavain.
(13:36):
These are both sedative and possiblynauseating components of kava and
it has a very large proportion ofthat and a low proportion of kavain,
which is the one that you wouldnormally see in our drinking kavas.
And what it does is, it has a verylong effect and nauseating effect.
So you might be feeling it for two days,and that's truly where the name comes
from, and that's why we talk about it.
It's something we don't have our hands onin the standard American kava industry,
(13:59):
Because while that sounds like, oh man,I'm gonna get messed up for two days.
There's more that comes along with that.
It's not a good feeling andit lasts for a long time.
Your skin feels like it's on fire.
, I believe it suffers from the streisandeffect because of some of the controversy
that surrounded it for a little bitback in the 2014 time period because
we still get people that are like," Ooh, Funeral Kava, I wanna try that."
(14:22):
It's, man, we're not tryingto keep a secret from you.
If you tie into one of these kavasthat, that is a two day kava, that
is a cultivar that we can't get,but if you went there to vanuatu
and got it and tried it, you wouldtruly understand what we talk about.
These are not drinking kavas.
These are not cultivars that youwould like even find recreational.
It's, to me, two-day kavais just like an undesirable.
(14:44):
Lower quality kava and , there wasa forbidden fruit kind of aspect to
it back in 2014 and 15 when peoplestarted , like blacklisting it
But I think if you go back a littlebit further, if you go back further
into the early onset of kava on theAmerican kind of market, and, we'll
definitely jump back into the paper here.
I don't wanna think too much time withthis, but it's in 2011 or 2010, , when
(15:09):
I first started ordering Kava, or2009 actually when I first started
ordering Kava online I actually didn'treally know anything about this stuff.
And I'm sure most people in theUnited States who drank kava at that
time, Knew nothing about tudei.
I remember hearing the word medicinal,that medicinal kava was this really
special thing that was highly coveted.
(15:29):
But I just bought whatever kavaI could find, and I was always
interested in trying kava, particularlyfrom different countries because I
didn't really know about cultivarsor Waka or Lawena or anything.
And this 2014, two-day versus noblecontroversy, in my experience
g kind of growing up in the kavacommunity in the United States as
(15:52):
it came outta nowhere to be honest.
Like the whole two dayversus noble controversy.
And it really exploded.
And it's actually a miracle that we havea podcast together because we were on.
like different sides ofthis issue at one point.
It's great.
It shows great maturity within thecommunity that a lot of people that
used to butt heads are now, , verygood friends and on the same page.
(16:13):
And fighting for the same thing.
I think it's been mostly resolved.
And two-Day kava is nolonger really an issue.
It's nothing that you reallyhave to worry about anymore.
Yeah.
Especially with thevendors you see online.
They are aware of those issues as well.
It's a very simple test to see ifyou have kava that may not be noble.
And if they tell you it's noble, if youmix it with acetone, what it does is
(16:36):
it's an easy asay for flavokavain content.
flavokavains are the orange and redpigments in kava, and the cultivars,
that c that have the highest amountof these chemicals are the ones
that you wouldn't want to tearinto if you were making an extract.
The color of the resultingacetone will be yellow for noble,
and orange/red if possible not.
(16:58):
If you are making it traditionally, therehave not been any reported injuries.
It's safe to drink as a kava.
It's not gonna hurt you, but yeah.
it took on a life of its own.
And you're right about the maturity thing.
It's it's been a long road, butthis is , what I had envisioned
at the beginning and just talkingabout these sort of issues together.
There was so many sides people wouldtake and it was just like, guys, I
(17:20):
just, I we're all on the same team.
I don't even wanna fight.
So all this stuff came together in onebig crescendo and We've learned through
the rough road to do and what not todo, and how to conduct ourselves and
, how to handle large groups of people.
And that's, yeah, that's what we do.
And it's taken a while to honethat craft and, , now we don't
(17:41):
get in fights over things.
If we disagree on something,we can disagree on something
and still be excellent friendsand it's never a problem.
Like a disagreement is not theend of the world, and it does
not change anything about theway that I feel towards a person.
That's something I had to come toan understanding within myself.
I've had to come to that understandinglike we can always have those little
things and still move forward andlike even go back and look back and
(18:04):
both of us can be like, Hey, or Ican come back, Hey dude, I messed up.
I'm sorry, . You can belike, Hey, I messed up too.
I'm sorry.
And we both learn from it.
it's not something we want to doubledown on our mistakes it's about the
people who want to know more aboutKava and for us to help continue
bringing that sort of availabilityof that information to those people.
And I don't think you can get anymore, any better than that okay.
(18:27):
Jimmy, I accept your apology.
I
accept your apology . Yeah.
There was a whole lot of stuff, man.
It's not easy learning the hard way.
Yeah.
And just jumping into it.
But we did, we just jumped into thisjust, , let's just walk into the unknown
and it's just, we've learned and weknow how to handle ourselves and other
people and , it's come a long way.
It has.
Yeah.
And topic alone showsthat it's come a long way.
(18:49):
This can cause somecontention between people.
And there are still people outthere today that would love to sell
two-day kava handover fists, andthey are mad because they can't.
And that's just the reality of it.
we have to, like I said in the beginning,we have to lay down the foundation
of what quality means as for kava.
It has to have that definition to continueto be a viable commodity in the market.
(19:14):
And for us not to have that.
It just, it allows anyoneto define the word.
And that's, if you go into anyFacebook group online that's dedicated
to kava except ours, and askwho's got the best quality kava?
And see how many people raise their hands.
You'll get instant messagesfrom, , 15 people saying, I have the
best quality, kava, best quality.
(19:34):
We say, what does that mean?
How do you know that?
. I guarantee you almost noone can answer that question.
Yeah, that's great.
And if you don't have a, someway of quantifying our kava.
Then we lose the ability to control , thequalities that are making it to, to these
other countries that are being consumed.
So from like a 30,000 foot perspective,when you look at this paper and
(19:58):
you look at Nancy Pollock's paperwhat all of this was in response to
was Adverse event reports I don'tknow if that's what they call it in
Germany, but, there was a company inGermany that was processing kava into
a extract or a kind of nutraceutical,
Actually no, it was a pharmaceutical.
A pharmaceutical, butwas still a prescription
(20:19):
pharmaceutical.
They, or a It was over the counter,but it was as pharmaceutical as you're
over the counter Tylenol and okay.
Cold medicine, things like that.
Yes.
So it was
sold at drug stores as , a kind ofcalming sedative type of medicine.
So people were , buying this productand a few of the people, I think it
was like a dozen cases of people hadsome issues with it and liver failure.
(20:43):
So, from a 30,000 foot perspective,it's important to have this background.
Because these isolated incidents uponfurther investigation, even within
the first year of this happening,and what year was this, Jimmy?
1998.
But the German regulatoryboard reversed this in 2014.
To me that says two things.
, one is that, , we don't knowwhether anything in kava is toxic
(21:06):
enough to cause that kind of areaction in one of the consumers.
And number two is, Kava scientistsand kava growing countries and farmers
had to do everything in their power tohelp the world understand that kava is
actually a very safe product to drinkand consume in extract, form or powdered
(21:26):
instant form or whatever it might be.
The response against Kava becamefocused on tudei because people
thought that it was really only twoday that was causing this issue.
And then, as a result, we, the Kavacommunity, the kava market, decided
to really segregate noble kava intwo day kava, which was already
traditionally a segregated way of lookingat it because noble kavas are more
(21:49):
desirable in Pacific Island countries.
People don't wanna be drinking tudei,or Isa, as it's called in Hawaii,
unless they're looking for a veryspecific type of kava for specific
type of ritual or medicinal practice.
That's really the 30,000 foot respective
ISID Kava has not been banned in the US.
The things about it isit was never banned.
(22:10):
It was looked at and an advisory right,was given by the FDA and it was an
advisory , they sent out a request formedical experts to send in any sort of
adverse event reports involving kava.
And this caused a flurry of all thosesort of little things that, , they
definitely had nothing to do with kava.
But because they requested these reports.
Now , , you're getting everything todo with kava and, we had no issues.
(22:34):
We haven't had an issue, a hepatic issue.
And this is why we talk about thisbeing a manufacturing problem, is we
have not had a hepatic adverse eventreport be reported to the F D A in
the last 20 years per the F A E R S or"Federal Adverse Event Report Systems".
There has not been one liverissue with kava in 20 years.
(22:56):
So what it tells us is that theredefinitely was an issue that they
identified and whatever Stepswere taken to solve the problem,
obviously has taken care of it.
We ha we don't see any more liver issues.
We don't see any clustered events.
People still consume kava andthey still consume kava extracts.
They're still in the market.
I see it regularly.
(23:16):
There's our kava extracts on Reddit.
People routinely will consumethe extract form in pills.
The whole liver issue , itjust remains in the past.
And it says here that , the onlyserious Effects due to prolonged use
that they'd ever seen were a conditionknown as kani kani and weight loss.
And the " kani", that refers to theskin ichthyosis sort of condition that
(23:39):
looks like you have scales and littlelines running all over your body.
And those two things, the low weightand the skin were the only two real
issues that were seen until 1998.
Jim, Jimmy,
have you had the the crocodile
skin bef?
Oh yes.
Oh yeah.
Oh yes.
Yeah.
I've suffered from the crocodile skin.
(24:00):
I've, I had to soak my feet and legs andepso salt and then scraped them to get
all the dead skin off cuz it was Wow.
Yeah, it was horrible.
Yeah, it, I was repulsed by itmyself and I was the one doing
it, so it was just like, ah, what
kava were you drinking?
At the,
Noble Borogu.
I'm kidding.
It wasn't, no, I was drinkingI was definitely drinking
micronized two day Isa from Hawaii.
(24:21):
And yeah, I do have myhistory with it so I can qualify
myself for the tudei runnings.
I drank it for abouteight months every day.
About three tablespoonsof this Isa every day.
It got to the point wheremy skin burned on a regular
basis, but I kept drinking it.
And then my , skin split and my legsstarted turning into like alligators,
and I started leaving little bloodstains on my sheets from where my skin
(24:43):
would split and bleed in the night.
It's, yeah it changed a lot of my habits.
And I did not realize what I was doing.
I thought that More for the money.
I thought I was getting a bettermoney's worth out of this stuff.
Cause it was like, oh, , Ican only use two or three
tablespoons and, it does all this.
I can go right to sleep.
No, I paid for that.
You get what you pay for on that one.
It's cheaper.
Yeah, but your skin suffers.
(25:05):
And a lot of other things suffered too.
Like the, I was frosty the skin man.
Everything just flaked off.
I mean my, that is disgusting.
. It was terrible.
Like my friends would be like,"you need to go to the doctor".
, it's so weird to me because I've beendrinking kava for the better of 20
years and I, the only dry skin symptomI've ever had is around my eyes.
(25:28):
I've never had dry skinanywhere else in my body.
I'm just one of those lucky ones thathas I guess a different No genetic Yeah.
Jeans, , so different response , to kava.
I've never had kani, I have had theweight loss, but that's just because
I drink a lot of kava and once I startdrinking kava, I pretty much just snack.
I don't eat a big meal after I'vestarted to drink kava for the day.
(25:50):
So that's, but I do have a kavasseurvideo that listeners can check out where
I talk about some of the other sideeffects that I've experienced from kava.
Like for example, if I drink it everyday for weeks and weeks, which happens
all the time, I can sometimes feel like,eh, I'm feeling a little bit lethargic.
Maybe I should take a break.
But, , I only need a couple days and I'mback to got my spring back in my step.
(26:12):
So one thing that Dr.
Lebot Zeroes in on after thisdiscussion about the unsubstantiated
claims about flavokavain B.
So he talks about flavokavain A andflavokavain B and he talks about
research that was done on flavokavainB that looked at it as a possible cause
(26:33):
for hepatoxicity, but he also clarifiesthat those studies were not conclusive.
Nope.
In the sense that, , if you consumeflavokavain B at the level that it
is present in even tudei kava likethat, you're gonna have liver failure.
Yeah.
There was no conclusive evidencethat actually drew a line
between kava and liver failure.
(26:54):
Yes Dr.
Lebot is very clear.
There is no evidence that any ofthese actions were valid even if
they were responding to tudei kava.
That being said, we're not supportingtudei and or the consumption of tudei,
but if you are to drink Isa and, , havea few shells of Isa here and there,
it's not gonna be bad for your liver.
(27:15):
Yeah.
And in response to these concernsabout flavokavain b and tudei Kava
that were made in the scientificliterature, the government of Vanuatu
passed the Kava Act in 2002 yep.
The Vanuatu legislation 2002,and that the act established that
only noble cultivars should beexported to international markets.
(27:38):
So that was the response that Vanuatuhad because they wanted to make
sure that people were comfortableimporting kava, and it was a, , it
was a reasonable, I think, rationalresponse for Vanuatu to do that.
And Dr.
Lebo t played a big part in helpingVanuatu come up with that legislation.
Yes, he did.
Yes, he certainly did.
And that gets us back aroundto defining what makes a kava
(28:02):
Noble, and what makes a kava wild.
And this kind of rolls us intomaterials and methods section, which
is quite interesting in itself.
And how Dr.
Lebot takes the general descriptorsfor a plant and breaks them down
into specific very specific ways ofdescribing kava based on its morpho
type or its visual appearance.
(28:23):
And he says it gives it a differentthings says A C I L E P S N.
and those will designate generalappearance, stem coloring, inter
node configuration, leaf coloring,lamina edges, leaf pubescence,
inter node shape and node color.
And he used these to classify allthese different kavas down into their
(28:44):
groups that were similar and thentested them with different types of
asay technology to get their sort ofgenetic profiles to find what their
similarities and their differences were.
He uses several differentscientific methods here.
Use isis i fingerprinting psychologicalcounts, D n a fingerprinting H
P L C, which is high pressureliquid chromatography NIRS, which
(29:06):
is near infared spectroscopy.
one that also could drum up somecontroversy on the near infrared spec
spectroscopy systems that are used.
And what it would do is it would beable to tell you if your kava was noble
or non noble based on the reflectantspectra of what came off the kava.
And even though it was avery viable tool, I it never
took off for kava exporters.
(29:27):
One thing just to explain why Lebottalks about all these different
methodologies is because he's lookingfor a simple test that can be developed.
And given to kava exporters, kavaexporting countries so that they can
test the kava prior to exporting it.
And then on our side, like theu the US markets, the European
(29:47):
markets, Australian markets.
Japanese markets, Koreanmarkets, whatever.
There's a way that people can do simpletests to make sure that they know
what kind of kava they're getting.
And so he's going through these differentways of looking at kava and testing it
to be able to find one that is, , likelow cost effective and easy to scale,
(30:09):
and it doesn't involve crazy, intenselaboratory equipment that , you would need
to have millions of dollars to invest in.
That's the purpose of why he didall these different tests with
these different methodologies.
. Absolutely.
And he begins this with kavacultivars in wild forms.
Many cultivars exist under differentvernacular names in Vanuatu,
(30:30):
and there's actually 247 that hecounted at that time morphologically
described and controlled conditions.
However, they only represent82 distinct morpho types.
So that's only 82 different visuallylooking types of kava in Vanuatu, but
247 different names for those 82 Kavas.
(30:50):
That's super interesting.
So that means that when farmers are, we'reselecting for different types of kava,
they identified varieties of kava thatwe're not morphologically identifiable.
Meaning that, you could have afarmer who is cultivating kava
and he or she is planting aspecific type of kava because of.
(31:13):
the effects or the taste or whateverit is about the kava that they like.
But they might not necessarilyknow by looking at the
plants, which variety it is.
So that is like a super impressivelevel of agricultural knowledge.
That these farmers in Vanuatu havethat really, you don't really find that
with any other crop, , where there's nomorphological way of identifying what type
(31:35):
of plant you are reproducing and planting.
That's just, it's, that's just superimpressive that there's 82 distinct.
Looking plants, but 247 differentplants and the majority of them,
like you, you can only identifybasically by asking the farmer.
. That's really cool.
One of the biggest, coolestfacts in this article.
(31:56):
Yeah,
absolutely.
And it goes on to talk aboutmulti-variate analysis, . Multi-variate
analysis is a technique that usesmore than one variable at a time
to analyze and interpret data.
In this case, hierarchal, clustering wasused to analyze the iyes data matrix,
which was made up of 52 differentelectro moph . Are you sure an
Electromorph, isn't likea villain in a comic book?
(32:18):
Yes.
That's electromorph prime, andyou do not want to tie into that.
This is the analysis revealed thatthe genetic distances between that
10, 10 identified zymotypes werevery small, meaning that multiple
different morphotypes had the samezymotype fingerprint, which was
determined by eight enzyme systems.
This is an indication that the cultivarsare likely clones of the same genotype.
(32:42):
The results also showed that the twobinomial variety, wichmannii and
variety methysticum both belong to thesame plant Piper methysticum species.
So there's sub varieties.
And it's very interesting , this paragraphthat what I read was the kind of recap.
. And he talks more about thespecific zymotypes and different
(33:02):
chemotype here in the next one.
And this is where we actually, itwould be good for a lot of people to
follow the link that will be in thedescription to see the paper itself.
Because this portion involves agraph with a total of, 319 sessions.
So he took a total of 319 samples fromdifferent islands, 52 different islands.
And they came up with 117 morphotypes.
(33:25):
So it's 117 different distinctlooking cava plants with only nine
chemotype and only 10 zymotypes.
So it really narrows everythingdown to what it is genetically.
And we'll talk about what a chemotype is.
A chemotype is the ratio expressedin a six digit number of these
(33:47):
six kavalactones that are knownfor their physiological effect.
Number one is desmethoxyyangonin.
Number two is dihydrokavain.
Number three is yangonin.
Number four is kavain.
Number five is dihydromethysticin,and number six is methysticin and what
you'll see a kava described as like a4, 2, 6, 5, 3, 1, and those six digits
(34:09):
represent the ratio in descending orderof kavalactone content and percentage.
So if you had a 4, 6, 2 kavain would bethe highest ratio kavalactone and then
methysticin would be your second highest.
And then dihydrokavainwould be your third.
That is what constitutes what we talkabout when we say chemotypes of kava.
Here he took the chemotype of all thesedifferent kavas, and boiled them down
(34:32):
into different groups where they weresimilar, where they had very unique
markers for their types of what they were.
And He comes up differentclassifications for them.
Here's where they start gettinginto the definition where he says
what constitutes a noble kavaand wild kavas and two-day kavas.
Here they say, wichmanniiis, very rich , in DHM and DHK
(34:56):
with very low kavain content.
it shows these different chemotypeand that's represented as chemotype
C on this these wild kavas.
And you can see where in the tablewhere C comes up in these kavas, when
it's actually only in Papa New Guinea.
But it's very interesting to seewhere these kavas originate on this
graph cells where I highly suggestfollowing the link and seeing this
(35:18):
paper because it's a good one.
A DNA fingerprint is a techniquethat can be used to deter,
determine the genetic composition.
In this case, dna n a fingerprintingwas used to compare the genetic basis
if all the varieties of plant species,and to verify whether two of the
varieties were actually the same species.
Scientists used two differenttechniques one's called SSR and the
other's dart, and they used theseto assess the genetic mapping.
(35:40):
They used this to look at the groupof 103 plants, the same species.
And this result, let's see here.
The results of this showed that only11 distinct genotypes were present, and
that the noble cultivars, which weremorphologically different, clustered
together when analyzed the molecular data.
This indicates that all noblecultivars were formed through
(36:00):
clonal selection as a result.
, they are genetically vulnerable,meaning their natural ability
to adapt changes is limited.
And I think that was a very interestingpart of this paper as well, so that
the genetic information, how at riskthat are noble kavas are because they
are more genetically susceptible todiseases and all that good stuff.
Jimmy maybe for our listeners, whenyou talk about Chemotype and you talk
(36:23):
about those numbers, , the chemotypenumber of a specific type of kava.
Do you know offhand thechemo type for Borogu?
I think it would be helpful forthe listeners to understand, , when
you're looking for a certain typeof kava that feels a certain way.
, people who are really into this stuff,who really nerd out on this stuff.
(36:43):
And, , Jimmy and I arecertainly two of those people.
, they look at the chemotypes you can look at.
There are resources where youcan look at the chemo type for a
type of kava that you're buying.
Oftentimes on the website of thevendor, they will have the testing
certificate with the chemotype.
This is all because of Dr.
Lebot, by the way.
Bula to Dr.
Lebo because without him, none ofthis information really be available
(37:05):
to us this way of talking about kava.
But it's interesting to look at,, Borogu aand Kelai and Bir Kar and
some of these other really popularcultivars and look at the chemo types.
And oftentimes what you're gonnafind is that you like, Kavas that
are high in one thing over another.
Some people like Kavasthat are high in yangonin.
Some people like Kavasthat are high in kavain.
(37:28):
I can pitch in a littlebit on the the, yeah.
The chemo type of Borogoru.
I know that one.
Yeah it's a 423 and that's generallywhat you're gonna see out of a lot
of Vanuatu kavas is that Chemotype2, 4, 3, 4, 2, 3 very common.
The last three digits will be somewherelike 1 5 6, 1 65, 5 generally being
towards the end with four generallybeing towards the the top with
(37:50):
yangonin generally being third.
And that's, that kind ofconstitutes most of the results
that I've seen out of Vanuatu.
Kavas.
Yeah, usually I feel like usuallyyou're gonna wanna see like a four.
You're definitely gonna wannasee a four and a three in
within the first three numbers.
, the truth is we don't really even know that much about
Yangonin and what it might do.
Physiologically And what part itplays in the actual effects of Kava.
(38:13):
In the rat tests, yes, they are rat tests.
So we dosed rats with huge doses of thesethings and we're like, look what it did.
But Lucky Rats maybe depends on who, no,it depends on what they said about it.
But it's true.
What they said about Yagen was thatthe rat's dopamine levels would.
Extremely, like below the testable level.
(38:34):
Didn't detect any dopamine.
Oh, rats.
Rats.
Yeah.
Rats, . And they're like,ah, dang my dopamine.
But yeah they it could be a dopaminereducing chemical or it could
be, , could have a whole bunchof different modulatory effects.
But that generally is gonna be the numberthree that's found on most Vanuatu kavas.
(38:54):
Most cultivated caves will have a highyangonin content with a very high kavain
content with lower proportionallydihydromethysticin in contents.
So that's where you come into this paper.
He talks about K to DHM ratios, andthat's where you take your percentage
of ve divided by your percentageof DHM, and it gives you a number.
These numbers give you a specific ratio.
(39:16):
Numbers that are higher thanthree will generally be ones
that are loaded with kavain.
And they're pretty, , they're up inyour face, , they punch hard and they
probably will be gone for the next day.
And numbers will the cavanyou're talking about.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That will be upfront.
If you have a high K DH M ratio, kava,you will have a a faster effect kava.
(39:37):
One that seems to be, , more, I guessyou could say Slappy, . But it, when you
start seeing kavas that have these numbersthat are lower, say like below 2.5, below
below two, and when you get below oneon this ratio you actually come into a
really good indicator of whether yourkava is a noble kava or a non noble kava.
When you start to approach when they'realmost the same ratio, like you have
(40:00):
1.25% kavain and a 1.25% DHM, thatstarts to move into that territory of
being extremely sedative, long-lasting.
Something that re just not reallycoveted or not looked at positively
especially by the people thatdrank kava for all those times.
A lot of people are, what I find isthat most people who are, , just getting
into kava and trying to find a kava thatthey really like, are basically looking
(40:25):
for something that's high in kavain.
That's really the major takeawaywhen you look at the chemotypes.
Yes.
When you have a four at thefront of the chemotype, it's
probably gonna be something thatyou are going to . Absolutely.
If you're, especially if you'rea newcomer to kava, because that
kavain has that immediate slappyeffect is Jimmy is you nicely
described that sudden relaxing effect.
Yes.
That is enjoyed.
(40:45):
Around the world.
And I think we do need to get away fromthese terms of heavy and heady when it
comes to kava descriptions because it, itgives an unrealistic expectation of what's
coming with an experience for a newcomer.
They expect that a heady kava will causethem to get up and go clean the house.
And that's not whatwe're talking about here.
Heady kavas could possibly put youeven deeper into your couch depending
(41:08):
on what you have going around you.
It is a very subjective experience.
Another part of the paper that I thoughtwas really interesting and it ties into
the studies that he did here is abouthow Different chemicals were used to
improve the quality of the extracts,and by improve the quality of the
extracts, he means they were used to makea stronger solution from the extract.
(41:32):
That, that was one of the issuesthat happened in Germany when
they were making these products.
And also there was evidence thatthese European companies that imported
these cultivars most of them were twoday . They were also using stems and
byproducts of the plant like peelings
.And these materials are dangerous to consume.
You don't, the stem peelings and theleaves are, Like, and you would never
(41:56):
even, you should never even think aboutconsuming those parts of the plant.
True.
Like in Vanuatu, in Fiji, in Hawaii,in Tonga, Samoa, people do not
consume that part of the plant.
It is known to, to havetoxic substances in it.
And, , that's true of potatoes,, that's true of yams and cassava you
don't like, there are parts of theplant that you're not supposed to
consume because they're poisonous.
(42:17):
So I'm,
I'm gonna blow yourmind a little bit here.
Okay.
You could eat.
A kava leaf salad every day andit wouldn't harm your liver.
They have tested pipermethystine, and there was a lot of research
done on whether pipermethystinecould be the culprit.
Because , they thought maybethey were extracting leaves
and stems and all that stuff.
, we're getting everything out of it.
We're extracting these alkaloids aswell, which Piper Methyine is, and
(42:41):
they dosed up rats with Piper Methyineat levels that you would have to,
you would have to really work at,to get to now like 10 milligrams per
kilogram, which , pipermethystine onlyoccurs in like very trace amounts.
What they found was that it actuallyhad a hepatoprotective effect.
Oh these rats their liver scoresactually were better after the treatment.
There's still for real, when they saythere's no link to from kava to any
(43:06):
injury, They mean it, like even in theleaves and the stems and the peels.
It's just maybe we can't even say that, Ipersonally wouldn't consume them because
they just, it's the low grade stuff.
It's gonna make your skin hurt, but there,there really is no actual toxicity link,
even in the aerial portions of the plantto actual injury from kava consumption.
(43:29):
So it's still a big question markwith an exclamation point next to it.
and a w Yeah.
I mean that , yeah.
I think that's one of the piecesof advocacy that I've, , tried to,
and on my YouTube videos and on mywebsite that I've tried to really
emphasize is that kava is so safe.
It is like the safest possible relaxing.
(43:53):
Natural substance that you could consumeand , when you look at the alternatives,
, one of the alternatives just being stress,, just not having a way to deal with stress.
Or you look at alcohol, or youlook at , other substances.
. Kava is so mild.
. It's helping you.
It's good for you.
It's a nourishing plant.
(44:13):
And, , people can lookat that different ways.
, not everybody thinks that kavashould be talked about as a
medicine, as a supplement.
. But for me, personally it's a planthat has helped me in my life.
Yes.
And I know a lot of other peoplethat it has helped immensely.
, like that being said, I could alwaysstop kava and, , live perfectly happy.
I'd have to find some other wayto relieve stress, and I'd be
(44:33):
bummed that I didn't have kava.
But , the main takeaway, and Dr.
Lebot I think would agreewith this, is that there is no
evidence that kava is bad for you.
And leads to any kind of serious illness.
And the side effects arethere, but they're so minor.
And, , you can usually solve itby, , switching up your kava or
(44:55):
, taking a break.
Yeah.
And it breaks are for quitters,but I'll, I'll allow it.
I'll allow it.
, I think we should talk a little bit about the guidelines at the end here,
and I'll let you take that away.
Jimmy, you can run with that ball there.
Lebot talks about practicalguidelines to follow to secure
the future of the kaba industry.
Number one, only noblecultivars should be used.
(45:15):
Those having chemical compositionsadequate for daily drinking and have
a history of safe, traditional use.
This implies to make regulatorykava standardization for the best
noble cultivars mandatory, andto ban all but noble cultivars.
This will require inter aliasfunding to destroy, bad cultivars,
and replace them with noble ones.
(45:35):
Wow.
I did not read that one.
I thought this
was a bit, I thought this, I thoughtthat one was a bit like heavy handed.
I'm not gonna, , I'm not gonna tryto question, the wisdom of Dr.
Lebo, but I did, when I first readthat, I was like, Ban all but noble
cultivars destroy bad cultivars.
I, thought that was a littlebit risky, but hey, but
I don't unders the thing isdo we call the question in?
(45:56):
Do we call question thisperson's understanding of it?
I'll actually have to ask aboutthat because I've never heard
him say that in any other place.
I've just heard 'em say don't export them.
I've never, I've not seenthe whole, , dig 'em up.
version set fire to
the fields, right?
Yeah.
This would require any inner aliasfunding to destroy bad cultivars
(46:16):
and replace them with noble ones.
I have to say why?
I, without an answer to why those noble,non noble cultivars are there without a
good, solid reason for that, I don't thinkwe have enough to say to, to destroy them.
Because, they may have a culturalreason or a ceremonial place
that's very important, that is onlyused in one specific circumstance
(46:37):
that we don't understand.
But then again, I don't live there.
He does.
I'll have to ask about that portion numbertwo, it says only underground roots and
the peeled stump often refer to as rhizomeand basal stems as opposed to leaves.
Stems and basal stems should be usedcalled Waka Lawena, Casa in Fiji.
This necessitates a legislationensuring that only these are
(46:59):
traded locally or for e export.
Wow.
He wants to do it locally as well.
Legislation exists in Vanuatu, butsimilar acts should be passed in
other Pacific Island countries.
It's also necessary to ensure that therequirements for use in the Pacific and
in the international markets are the same.
These legislations will need tobe enforced effectively and this
requires significant resourceson monitoring and analysis.
(47:22):
Yeah and he's very.
Very much wants to , , define thepeeled stump and underground roots.
Yeah, so nothing above groundexcept I think it's to the
first node of the stump.
And that's after that it's consideredyou're actually getting into
the aerial portion of the plant.
But number three, I think, is avery important point as well here.
(47:42):
Number three is appellation of originsshould be developed to strengthen
the traceability of the raw material.
And there's a need to implementa strict enforcement policy, pan
Pacific on a quality control system.
And that is, appellation of originis one of those things where I think.
that would take care of so many issues.
, you wouldn't find somebody say I'llhave Borogu and they're in Hawaii.
(48:03):
It's no.
That's whether the appellationof Origins, you couldn't
call it Borogu in Hawaii.
It would just be I don't know.
It would be something else.
You'd have to call it something else.
You couldn't call it that.
But it would really solidifyVanuatu's Kava if we had to
refer to it as Vanuatu kava.
Yeah.
Also, what stood out to me, and whatthis made me think of is the traceability.
When you use an appellation oforigins the whole point is that you
(48:26):
can trace the product down the valuechain to the local level, and you
can identify where a problem started.
if, in agriculture, when you talk aboutcoffee or maize or other agricultural
products that are on the market,they like to be able to trace them
back to individual farms where theywere produced so that if there's any
(48:47):
kind of contamination or disease, oranything that's, contamination that's
present in the product, you can traceit back to the specific farm and the
town and the area where it was grown.
And also, it's an indicatorof the quality too.
When you think of good coffees, you thinkof specific places like Guatemala, right?
, Jamaican Blue mountains.
(49:08):
When you think of certain types ofwine, , it's a little bit different,
but you think of, , different regionsof France and California where
they grow specific types of grapes.
So it's the same idea.
, you're being able to trace that specificKava product back to where it came from,
and ensure quality and also be ableto address any problems should they
come up.
(49:28):
. And since we only have a few minutes left we're going to go
through these a little quicker.
Number four says, water soluble kavaextract should be preferred over those
of extracted with chemical solvents.
A hundred percent . Yep.
And I believe that too.
. Number five is for new non-ethnicmarkets lacking the cultural background
necessary for the safe use of kava.
There's a need to define andestablish standards for a
(49:49):
recommended daily dosage of kava.
And that may be somethingwe need to look into.
But my daily dosage is 40 grams,whatever that comes out to . But
, simmer six research into kavas safetyissues such as using poorly stored
and manufactured kava raw material orincorrect variety and plant materials
should continue to strengthen thescientific basis of the industry.
(50:10):
And absolutely because poorly storedand manufactured kava raw material
is where I would put my money onthe actual liver issues being.
Like mycotoxins, mold, not storedcorrectly, wet, things like that.
So yeah, that, and then it bringsus to the conclusion of this paper,
which talks about, it says, over thelast three decades, research studies
(50:31):
have shown that the genetic base ofnoble cultivars of kava suitable for
daily consumption is extremely narrow.
These cultivars as demonstrated byisozyme and DNA markers are somatic
mutants of a single genotype.
This genotype is controlling thechemotype and noble cultivars are
characterized by their chemotype whichis rich in kavain, unfortunately, is not
possible to recognize the cultivar oncethe roots and stumps have been dried.
(50:54):
Sophisticated techniques such asDNA and h P c fingerprinting are
powerful and accurate, but difficultto use in Pacific Island countries.
H hp tlc, which is high throughput,appears to be a cost-efficient
technique suitable for routineanalysis for kava samples
. So for traders and exporters, a simple colormetric test can be used to
differentiate noble cultivar from twodays and variety wichmannii raw materials.
(51:18):
And I think he closes it really nicelywith these last couple of sentences.
The EU ban on kava was not supportedscientifically what has unfortunately
damaged the reputation of kava.
Yes, it will be extremely difficultand costly for Pacific Island
countries to repair the damagethat was done by this EU ban.
However, this can be achievedthrough the enforcement of
(51:40):
appropriate quality standards.
So really, Dr.
Lebot , tying this all back to thepurpose of this podcast and, what has
been across the articles we've readso far is that this is an important.
To indigenous people from thePacific Islands and now to
people all over the world.
And Dr.
Lebot, through this research lookingat the chemotype of Kava, looking at
the history of the Kava ban is, hasreally done a lot of great work to
(52:03):
help us , look at the quality withthe cheapest possible methods and
be able to propose solutions for theinternational kava market so that kava
doesn't have to face anything like whatit faced in the late 1990s , in Germany.
Agreed.
Yes.
And he's done a great job andhis work continues to this
very day on this same subject.
(52:24):
So we all have a shell to raise to Dr.
Lebot for this important work andmoving the kava industry forward in a
way that can be put down on paper as.
Quality equals this.
Bula to Dr.
Lebo malok to Dr.
Lebo.
And thanks for listening tonightand we appreciate you tuning
in . Listen to us talk on aboutsome very esoteric kava information.
(52:49):
Yep.
And we hope you, you enjoyed it.
And again Bula , to Vincent the one ofthe, one of the biggest names in Kava.
Amen, and thanks for listening!
Jimmy Price.
How you doing,
man?
I'm doing well.
Just hanging in there.
It was a pretty Standard week a wholelot of answering phones and , listening to
people listening to people who complain.
Yes that's about a standard for me yep.
? Yeah.
For me it was more just sitting in frontof my computer and writing a bunch of
really complicated information aboutcamps for displaced people in South Sudan.
(00:20):
So that was interesting.
But , mostly pretty depressing actually.
. But, , it's good work.
Yeah.
You're making a difference.
That means a lot.
I answer phone.
I listen to people complain abouttheir ice machines breaking, man,
look, people need Ice man.
, especially in Oh no, believe me.
I know.
Especially the winter.
Oh, I know.
I'm I am well aware of howmuch everyone needs ice.
I, yeah.
(00:41):
That's something that I go tosleep thinking about sometimes.
Yep.
So we should start.
Yeah, that's what we'll do.
. Oh yeah.
But a good weekend anyways.
It was it ended fine.
That's all that matters.
It the Friday came around and theend of the week came around and
I, the weekend finally showed up.
So it's all good.
Yeah.
(01:02):
, Well, Jimmy we came here to and met here today to discuss the great,
the legendary, the one and only dr.
Vincent Lebot.
Yes, sir.
The famous kava experts andI think the first name that
I ever associated with Kava.
When I first started learning about kava20 years ago or so, I remember coming
(01:23):
across his book, the Pacific Elixir.
. So he's the MuhammadAli of Kava scientists.
? Yes, I would say so.
His field of expertiseis quite interesting.
And , we'll do a littleintroduction here for Dr.
Vincent Lebot.
The paper we're going tobe looking at from Dr.
Vincent Lebot is called "RecentAdvances in the Quality Control
(01:43):
of Kava, the traditionalbeverage of the Pacific Islands".
He was born in 1958, and hehas a French citizenship.
He was the director ofresearch at the University of
LaPierre in France since 2004.
He's had got his PhD in plant biologyin 1988 at Sam University, and Doug
will talk about his fields . Sure.
Yeah.
He is a plant biologist and hestudies quantitative genetics
(02:05):
and population genetics.
He's well known for his studies onthe agro biodiversity of root crops.
He developed a methodology that integratedtaxonomy, morpho agronomic variation,
molecular genetic diversity, and thechemical analysis of underground organs.
That's a mouthful, huh?
Yeah.
Also breeding genetic improvementof root and tuber crops.
(02:27):
This he's a supervisor of several graduatestudents at any given time, and he does
coordination within scientific networks.
I think that's prettyevident in his research here.
He is also worked for, Economicsdepartments, if I'm not mistaken.
I remember him being associatedwith a ecology of economics
or something, and having to dowith the trade networks of kava.
(02:49):
I remember seeing that somewhere,but it's not mentioned in this little
The Society for
Economic Botany.
Yeah.
Gotcha.
We'll start from 1986 to 1987, andhe was a scientist to the laboratory
for applied Tropical Botany at theFrance University of Mont Pierre.
1988 to 1991, he has postdocat the University of Hawaii,
1992 to 1994 head of the treeimprovement program in Madagascar.
(03:12):
Interesting.
Oh, that is that's a wild one.
From 1995 through 1996 he wasthe scientific coordinator for
genetic resource management.
At ciad, Mont Pire, France,1996 through 1998, head of
the Northern Research Center.
Northern Province of New Caledonia.
Okay, so he spent some timein New Caledonia as well.
And since 1998, he's been the , headof the Root Crops Improvement
(03:32):
Program, Cirad in Vanuatuscientific coordinator of I.N.E.A.
International network for edible areas,adapting clonally, propagated crops
to climatic and commercial changes.
Interesting.
Scientific coordination of 10 TeneoTarot Network for Southeast Asia and
(03:54):
Ocean scientific coordination of S.P.Y.N.
or the "South Pacific Yam Network".
So he's had quite a bit of experiencein the field of agriculture.
In genetics.
Jimmy,.
I had no idea that Dr.
Lebo worked with yams and taro.
That's super interesting.
They are root tuber crops andit makes sense that he would
(04:14):
have been interested in kava.
But yeah.
Is that I did not know thatHe was also a a tuber, expert
tube.
Yeah.
. Yep.
He's very well known for that as well.
The kava root and the othertubers and taro and all that
good stuff that he studies.
He's been a member of the Societyof Economic Botany since 1988, and
he received the David Fairchildfor Plant Exploration Award.
(04:36):
I looked this up.
this actually wasn't written in here.
I had to see what this award was.
And this is an award that recognizesindividuals who have explored remote
areas of the world using innovative.
Travel, itineraries, conveyances, ortechniques to discover new plant species
or cultivars, brought into cultivationsnew and important plants that hold
significant promises, agricultural orhorticultural varieties, or played crucial
(05:01):
roles in the ex exit two cultivationof rare or endangered plant species, or
help preserve threatened and endangeredhabitats and natural communities.
So yes, you could definitely sayhe's been part of every sentence,
every part of that sentence there.
One has to wonder what Dr.
Lebot's first encounterwith kava looked like.
(05:22):
, looking at his history and all theplaces he's been, one has to wonder,
when he went to Vanuatu for the firsttime and heard about Kava and started
researching it, I really wanna know whatthat, that kind of John Lennon meets
Paul McCartney kind of moment was like,
as we're about to see he knows a lotabout kava, probably more than anybody
else in the world in terms of, it'sscientific properties and ways of
(05:45):
investigating it and doing a analysisof it and lab experiments with it.
Yeah.
Jimmy, let's jump right into this.
Complex
Dr.
Lebot suggests that kava likely arosefrom the northern islands of Vanuatu.
Piper wichmannii was brought fromPapua New Guinea and was cultivated
(06:06):
in the northern part of Vanuatu.
And then, we get into sort of theactual nitty gritty of how this
can be essentially proven throughgenetic research, going back through
the islands and doing accessionsbased on location, morphotype and
chemotype and all that good stuff.
We'll get into that information, but inthis document, he goes and makes a really
(06:30):
good case for there being specific typesof kava with specific genetic markers.
The gist is you can take these sortof markers and know the qualities
of your kava , through assayand through chemotypical makeup.
You can actually get in there andyou can know, and this kind of adds
a bit of extra credence to the Codexand where they were trying to ratify
(06:55):
kava as a food when mixed with water.
This gives a sort of a base where theysay "noble kavas", you have to be able
to say, "how is that a noble kava?"
What constitutes a noble kavas definition?
And this paper helps lay that foundationof what can be defined in the different
classifications of wild today and noblekavas and the lineages of these, be they
(07:20):
wild new two-day or noble, and how theyall came from a very small genetic pool.
So we'll get into that as well, butthis is a very interesting eye-opening
paper as to the actual real originsof how kava distributed throughout the
islands of the South Pacific in a waythat represented in numbers, in actual
(07:46):
figures, and you can see it in a graphand you can see where these kavas split
off from other kavas and went differentdirections and things like that.
It's just, very fascinating tosee the lineage of kava and how
a cloned plants one that cannotsexually reproduce that way.
That means the geneticinformation can't mix.
(08:07):
You can't take and makea new hybrid plant.
Kava is propagated through node cuttings,which means you have to take a clip the
kava at a certain spot where a branchwould normally grow and they would
put that in some sort of soil mediumwhere it would start growing roots.
And then that becomes your, theycall 'em seedlings, but I would think
there'd be more apt term would benodelings for these little kava plants.
(08:28):
And that's how kava is propagated.
Kava does not produce seeds.
The only plants related to kavathat produce seeds are Piper,
wichmannii, which is Wild Kava.
The kavas that we know of as cultivatedvariety methysticum are going to be the
ones that do not produce seeds, which willinclude your two-day and your Noble Kavas.
But your wild kavas are theones that can produce seeds.
(08:51):
However, and we'll see that againin the paper, Vanuatu's two-day
or Wild kavas don't produce seeds.
Only Papa New Guinea and the SolomonIsland produce seeds, which is very
interesting, and also says that therewas something going on with the plant
in the northern islands of Vanuatuthat would indicate that you were
having something going on that wouldsay, "Hey, it's being messed with."
(09:15):
It's dna n a is being messed with.
So it's very interesting.
He does say cold water extraction here,. And that's a hot topic these past few.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jimmy, you're bringing up thecontroversial topic of hot
versus cold water preparation.
. I don't know if we, we might get adivided listener base based on that.
You can fight it out in the comments.
Just really quick.
I wanted to say, a seedling,that is the correct term.
(09:36):
A seedling is a young spo file developedout of a plant embryo from a seed.
So any kind of ger germinated seedthat is beginning to grow and coming
out of the ground and producingits first growth is the seedling,
that's the word of the day from the
the kalane.
I propose noding,
, . You're gonna
die on this hill, Jimmy.
(09:56):
No.
No.
Not definitely not.
No.
I'm not making up words here.
I know I'm from Nashville, but I'm gonna,I'm gonna stray away from that this time.
I
Did wanna say, just to connect this toto Nancy Pollock's paper in the universe
of Kava lounge materials that we've readand discussed, this does tie into the
sustainability of kava paper that Dr.
(10:17):
Pollock published in which wediscussed on our debut episode.
Because he talks in the first twopages pretty extensively about the
agriculture of kava and the factthat small holder farmers are mostly
the producers of kava in Fiji andVanuatu, and a few other countries.
And just how much bans on kavaand negative press about kava
(10:41):
how much damage that can causeto these small holder farmers.
Yes, the paper is definitely couchedin that same conversation about how
best to market, to sell kava, how tomake sure that it's safe for people to
consume and , basically also lettingpeople know that it is indeed a safe
beverage from almost every angle.
You look at it, it's a safe beverage.
And the different restrictions thatwere placed on it were based in bad
(11:05):
science that basically blamed kava forwhat was probably what would you say?
Like manufacturing, chemicals.
Manufacturing.
Manufacturing issue, yeah.
Issue.
Yeah, exactly.
So, I just wanted to get thatout there and tie it back to that
first article because certainly Dr.
Lebot is definitely herefighting the good fight for kava.
Yes.
And trying to create a discussion abouthow we can best monitor the quality
(11:29):
of kava that's on the markets and knowwhat should or shouldn't be exported
from the kava growing island nations.
Correct?
Yes.
And that makes a big difference.
Quality of the material must be defined.
It's easy for us tosay, Ooh, high quality.
High quality, but what does that mean?
Can you put a number on that sentence?
(11:50):
This is the attempt to put a numberon that so we can have a standard,
so we can say, this is high quality,this is not, and this must be done.
It is one of those necessary things forkava to move forward as a commodity.
And I know that's not necessarilyeveryone's goal, but if kava is to
be consumed in the United States,there must be quality standards
(12:10):
that are adhered to and agreed upon.
And this is an attempt atnailing down those standards.
This topic stirred up quitea bit of controversy in 2014.
We might talk about that for a little
yeah, I think that's a good idea.
Yeah.
I
think we should talk about it.
2014 was a time when you wouldorder kavas and I truly believe
this is where our words that camefrom this were heavy and heady.
(12:32):
And during this time in 2014, we weregetting kavas that were obscenely
sedative, they would make yourskin turn into alligator scales.
This is if you drank everyday, you just expected this.
And we weren't really allthe much wiser for it.
We didn't realize, what we were doing.
We didn't know, or we had no idea.
(12:52):
We thought that if a vendor took a bagof kava and labeled it noble, we expected
that bag of kava to be noble kava,and that wasn't happening at the time.
A lot of people that wanna put blamein every single spot on that one.
So I won't even touch it.
I'll just say it happened.
It got.
Fixed.
It got remedied.
The exporters got wise to whatpeople were bringing them.
There, there are more tests nowavailable to take care of this,
(13:14):
but there was a lot of controversysurrounding the kava two-day kava,
which is arguably a lower quality.
Yeah, I don't know.
I guess we should define today,and it's spelled T u d e I,
and that's what it's been labeledthat because it has a high proportion
of the kavalactone known asdihydromethysticin, and dihydrokavain.
(13:36):
These are both sedative and possiblynauseating components of kava and
it has a very large proportion ofthat and a low proportion of kavain,
which is the one that you wouldnormally see in our drinking kavas.
And what it does is, it has a verylong effect and nauseating effect.
So you might be feeling it for two days,and that's truly where the name comes
from, and that's why we talk about it.
It's something we don't have our hands onin the standard American kava industry,
(13:59):
Because while that sounds like, oh man,I'm gonna get messed up for two days.
There's more that comes along with that.
It's not a good feeling andit lasts for a long time.
Your skin feels like it's on fire.
, I believe it suffers from the streisandeffect because of some of the controversy
that surrounded it for a little bitback in the 2014 time period because
we still get people that are like," Ooh, Funeral Kava, I wanna try that."
(14:22):
It's, man, we're not tryingto keep a secret from you.
If you tie into one of these kavasthat, that is a two day kava, that
is a cultivar that we can't get,but if you went there to vanuatu
and got it and tried it, you wouldtruly understand what we talk about.
These are not drinking kavas.
These are not cultivars that youwould like even find recreational.
It's, to me, two-day kavais just like an undesirable.
(14:44):
Lower quality kava and , there wasa forbidden fruit kind of aspect to
it back in 2014 and 15 when peoplestarted , like blacklisting it
But I think if you go back a littlebit further, if you go back further
into the early onset of kava on theAmerican kind of market, and, we'll
definitely jump back into the paper here.
I don't wanna think too much time withthis, but it's in 2011 or 2010, , when
(15:09):
I first started ordering Kava, or2009 actually when I first started
ordering Kava online I actually didn'treally know anything about this stuff.
And I'm sure most people in theUnited States who drank kava at that
time, Knew nothing about tudei.
I remember hearing the word medicinal,that medicinal kava was this really
special thing that was highly coveted.
(15:29):
But I just bought whatever kavaI could find, and I was always
interested in trying kava, particularlyfrom different countries because I
didn't really know about cultivarsor Waka or Lawena or anything.
And this 2014, two-day versus noblecontroversy, in my experience
g kind of growing up in the kavacommunity in the United States as
(15:52):
it came outta nowhere to be honest.
Like the whole two dayversus noble controversy.
And it really exploded.
And it's actually a miracle that we havea podcast together because we were on.
like different sides ofthis issue at one point.
It's great.
It shows great maturity within thecommunity that a lot of people that
used to butt heads are now, , verygood friends and on the same page.
(16:13):
And fighting for the same thing.
I think it's been mostly resolved.
And two-Day kava is nolonger really an issue.
It's nothing that you reallyhave to worry about anymore.
Yeah.
Especially with thevendors you see online.
They are aware of those issues as well.
It's a very simple test to see ifyou have kava that may not be noble.
And if they tell you it's noble, if youmix it with acetone, what it does is
(16:36):
it's an easy asay for flavokavain content.
flavokavains are the orange and redpigments in kava, and the cultivars,
that c that have the highest amountof these chemicals are the ones
that you wouldn't want to tearinto if you were making an extract.
The color of the resultingacetone will be yellow for noble,
and orange/red if possible not.
(16:58):
If you are making it traditionally, therehave not been any reported injuries.
It's safe to drink as a kava.
It's not gonna hurt you, but yeah.
it took on a life of its own.
And you're right about the maturity thing.
It's it's been a long road, butthis is , what I had envisioned
at the beginning and just talkingabout these sort of issues together.
There was so many sides people wouldtake and it was just like, guys, I
(17:20):
just, I we're all on the same team.
I don't even wanna fight.
So all this stuff came together in onebig crescendo and We've learned through
the rough road to do and what not todo, and how to conduct ourselves and
, how to handle large groups of people.
And that's, yeah, that's what we do.
And it's taken a while to honethat craft and, , now we don't
(17:41):
get in fights over things.
If we disagree on something,we can disagree on something
and still be excellent friendsand it's never a problem.
Like a disagreement is not theend of the world, and it does
not change anything about theway that I feel towards a person.
That's something I had to come toan understanding within myself.
I've had to come to that understandinglike we can always have those little
things and still move forward andlike even go back and look back and
(18:04):
both of us can be like, Hey, or Ican come back, Hey dude, I messed up.
I'm sorry, . You can belike, Hey, I messed up too.
I'm sorry.
And we both learn from it.
it's not something we want to doubledown on our mistakes it's about the
people who want to know more aboutKava and for us to help continue
bringing that sort of availabilityof that information to those people.
And I don't think you can get anymore, any better than that okay.
(18:27):
Jimmy, I accept your apology.
I
accept your apology . Yeah.
There was a whole lot of stuff, man.
It's not easy learning the hard way.
Yeah.
And just jumping into it.
But we did, we just jumped into thisjust, , let's just walk into the unknown
and it's just, we've learned and weknow how to handle ourselves and other
people and , it's come a long way.
It has.
Yeah.
And topic alone showsthat it's come a long way.
(18:49):
This can cause somecontention between people.
And there are still people outthere today that would love to sell
two-day kava handover fists, andthey are mad because they can't.
And that's just the reality of it.
we have to, like I said in the beginning,we have to lay down the foundation
of what quality means as for kava.
It has to have that definition to continueto be a viable commodity in the market.
(19:14):
And for us not to have that.
It just, it allows anyoneto define the word.
And that's, if you go into anyFacebook group online that's dedicated
to kava except ours, and askwho's got the best quality kava?
And see how many people raise their hands.
You'll get instant messagesfrom, , 15 people saying, I have the
best quality, kava, best quality.
(19:34):
We say, what does that mean?
How do you know that?
. I guarantee you almost noone can answer that question.
Yeah, that's great.
And if you don't have a, someway of quantifying our kava.
Then we lose the ability to control , thequalities that are making it to, to these
other countries that are being consumed.
So from like a 30,000 foot perspective,when you look at this paper and
(19:58):
you look at Nancy Pollock's paperwhat all of this was in response to
was Adverse event reports I don'tknow if that's what they call it in
Germany, but, there was a company inGermany that was processing kava into
a extract or a kind of nutraceutical,
Actually no, it was a pharmaceutical.
A pharmaceutical, butwas still a prescription
(20:19):
pharmaceutical.
They, or a It was over the counter,but it was as pharmaceutical as you're
over the counter Tylenol and okay.
Cold medicine, things like that.
Yes.
So it was
sold at drug stores as , a kind ofcalming sedative type of medicine.
So people were , buying this productand a few of the people, I think it
was like a dozen cases of people hadsome issues with it and liver failure.
(20:43):
So, from a 30,000 foot perspective,it's important to have this background.
Because these isolated incidents uponfurther investigation, even within
the first year of this happening,and what year was this, Jimmy?
1998.
But the German regulatoryboard reversed this in 2014.
To me that says two things.
, one is that, , we don't knowwhether anything in kava is toxic
(21:06):
enough to cause that kind of areaction in one of the consumers.
And number two is, Kava scientistsand kava growing countries and farmers
had to do everything in their power tohelp the world understand that kava is
actually a very safe product to drinkand consume in extract, form or powdered
(21:26):
instant form or whatever it might be.
The response against Kava becamefocused on tudei because people
thought that it was really only twoday that was causing this issue.
And then, as a result, we, the Kavacommunity, the kava market, decided
to really segregate noble kava intwo day kava, which was already
traditionally a segregated way of lookingat it because noble kavas are more
(21:49):
desirable in Pacific Island countries.
People don't wanna be drinking tudei,or Isa, as it's called in Hawaii,
unless they're looking for a veryspecific type of kava for specific
type of ritual or medicinal practice.
That's really the 30,000 foot respective
ISID Kava has not been banned in the US.
The things about it isit was never banned.
(22:10):
It was looked at and an advisory right,was given by the FDA and it was an
advisory , they sent out a request formedical experts to send in any sort of
adverse event reports involving kava.
And this caused a flurry of all thosesort of little things that, , they
definitely had nothing to do with kava.
But because they requested these reports.
Now , , you're getting everything todo with kava and, we had no issues.
(22:34):
We haven't had an issue, a hepatic issue.
And this is why we talk about thisbeing a manufacturing problem, is we
have not had a hepatic adverse eventreport be reported to the F D A in
the last 20 years per the F A E R S or"Federal Adverse Event Report Systems".
There has not been one liverissue with kava in 20 years.
(22:56):
So what it tells us is that theredefinitely was an issue that they
identified and whatever Stepswere taken to solve the problem,
obviously has taken care of it.
We ha we don't see any more liver issues.
We don't see any clustered events.
People still consume kava andthey still consume kava extracts.
They're still in the market.
I see it regularly.
(23:16):
There's our kava extracts on Reddit.
People routinely will consumethe extract form in pills.
The whole liver issue , itjust remains in the past.
And it says here that , the onlyserious Effects due to prolonged use
that they'd ever seen were a conditionknown as kani kani and weight loss.
And the " kani", that refers to theskin ichthyosis sort of condition that
(23:39):
looks like you have scales and littlelines running all over your body.
And those two things, the low weightand the skin were the only two real
issues that were seen until 1998.
Jim, Jimmy,
have you had the the crocodile
skin bef?
Oh yes.
Oh yeah.
Oh yes.
Yeah.
I've suffered from the crocodile skin.
(24:00):
I've, I had to soak my feet and legs andepso salt and then scraped them to get
all the dead skin off cuz it was Wow.
Yeah, it was horrible.
Yeah, it, I was repulsed by itmyself and I was the one doing
it, so it was just like, ah, what
kava were you drinking?
At the,
Noble Borogu.
I'm kidding.
It wasn't, no, I was drinkingI was definitely drinking
micronized two day Isa from Hawaii.
(24:21):
And yeah, I do have myhistory with it so I can qualify
myself for the tudei runnings.
I drank it for abouteight months every day.
About three tablespoonsof this Isa every day.
It got to the point wheremy skin burned on a regular
basis, but I kept drinking it.
And then my , skin split and my legsstarted turning into like alligators,
and I started leaving little bloodstains on my sheets from where my skin
(24:43):
would split and bleed in the night.
It's, yeah it changed a lot of my habits.
And I did not realize what I was doing.
I thought that More for the money.
I thought I was getting a bettermoney's worth out of this stuff.
Cause it was like, oh, , Ican only use two or three
tablespoons and, it does all this.
I can go right to sleep.
No, I paid for that.
You get what you pay for on that one.
It's cheaper.
Yeah, but your skin suffers.
(25:05):
And a lot of other things suffered too.
Like the, I was frosty the skin man.
Everything just flaked off.
I mean my, that is disgusting.
. It was terrible.
Like my friends would be like,"you need to go to the doctor".
, it's so weird to me because I've beendrinking kava for the better of 20
years and I, the only dry skin symptomI've ever had is around my eyes.
(25:28):
I've never had dry skinanywhere else in my body.
I'm just one of those lucky ones thathas I guess a different No genetic Yeah.
Jeans, , so different response , to kava.
I've never had kani, I have had theweight loss, but that's just because
I drink a lot of kava and once I startdrinking kava, I pretty much just snack.
I don't eat a big meal after I'vestarted to drink kava for the day.
(25:50):
So that's, but I do have a kavasseurvideo that listeners can check out where
I talk about some of the other sideeffects that I've experienced from kava.
Like for example, if I drink it everyday for weeks and weeks, which happens
all the time, I can sometimes feel like,eh, I'm feeling a little bit lethargic.
Maybe I should take a break.
But, , I only need a couple days and I'mback to got my spring back in my step.
(26:12):
So one thing that Dr.
Lebot Zeroes in on after thisdiscussion about the unsubstantiated
claims about flavokavain B.
So he talks about flavokavain A andflavokavain B and he talks about
research that was done on flavokavainB that looked at it as a possible cause
(26:33):
for hepatoxicity, but he also clarifiesthat those studies were not conclusive.
Nope.
In the sense that, , if you consumeflavokavain B at the level that it
is present in even tudei kava likethat, you're gonna have liver failure.
Yeah.
There was no conclusive evidencethat actually drew a line
between kava and liver failure.
(26:54):
Yes Dr.
Lebot is very clear.
There is no evidence that any ofthese actions were valid even if
they were responding to tudei kava.
That being said, we're not supportingtudei and or the consumption of tudei,
but if you are to drink Isa and, , havea few shells of Isa here and there,
it's not gonna be bad for your liver.
(27:15):
Yeah.
And in response to these concernsabout flavokavain b and tudei Kava
that were made in the scientificliterature, the government of Vanuatu
passed the Kava Act in 2002 yep.
The Vanuatu legislation 2002,and that the act established that
only noble cultivars should beexported to international markets.
(27:38):
So that was the response that Vanuatuhad because they wanted to make
sure that people were comfortableimporting kava, and it was a, , it
was a reasonable, I think, rationalresponse for Vanuatu to do that.
And Dr.
Lebo t played a big part in helpingVanuatu come up with that legislation.
Yes, he did.
Yes, he certainly did.
And that gets us back aroundto defining what makes a kava
(28:02):
Noble, and what makes a kava wild.
And this kind of rolls us intomaterials and methods section, which
is quite interesting in itself.
And how Dr.
Lebot takes the general descriptorsfor a plant and breaks them down
into specific very specific ways ofdescribing kava based on its morpho
type or its visual appearance.
(28:23):
And he says it gives it a differentthings says A C I L E P S N.
and those will designate generalappearance, stem coloring, inter
node configuration, leaf coloring,lamina edges, leaf pubescence,
inter node shape and node color.
And he used these to classify allthese different kavas down into their
(28:44):
groups that were similar and thentested them with different types of
asay technology to get their sort ofgenetic profiles to find what their
similarities and their differences were.
He uses several differentscientific methods here.
Use isis i fingerprinting psychologicalcounts, D n a fingerprinting H
P L C, which is high pressureliquid chromatography NIRS, which
(29:06):
is near infared spectroscopy.
one that also could drum up somecontroversy on the near infrared spec
spectroscopy systems that are used.
And what it would do is it would beable to tell you if your kava was noble
or non noble based on the reflectantspectra of what came off the kava.
And even though it was avery viable tool, I it never
took off for kava exporters.
(29:27):
One thing just to explain why Lebottalks about all these different
methodologies is because he's lookingfor a simple test that can be developed.
And given to kava exporters, kavaexporting countries so that they can
test the kava prior to exporting it.
And then on our side, like theu the US markets, the European
(29:47):
markets, Australian markets.
Japanese markets, Koreanmarkets, whatever.
There's a way that people can do simpletests to make sure that they know
what kind of kava they're getting.
And so he's going through these differentways of looking at kava and testing it
to be able to find one that is, , likelow cost effective and easy to scale,
(30:09):
and it doesn't involve crazy, intenselaboratory equipment that , you would need
to have millions of dollars to invest in.
That's the purpose of why he didall these different tests with
these different methodologies.
. Absolutely.
And he begins this with kavacultivars in wild forms.
Many cultivars exist under differentvernacular names in Vanuatu,
(30:30):
and there's actually 247 that hecounted at that time morphologically
described and controlled conditions.
However, they only represent82 distinct morpho types.
So that's only 82 different visuallylooking types of kava in Vanuatu, but
247 different names for those 82 Kavas.
(30:50):
That's super interesting.
So that means that when farmers are, we'reselecting for different types of kava,
they identified varieties of kava thatwe're not morphologically identifiable.
Meaning that, you could have afarmer who is cultivating kava
and he or she is planting aspecific type of kava because of.
(31:13):
the effects or the taste or whateverit is about the kava that they like.
But they might not necessarilyknow by looking at the
plants, which variety it is.
So that is like a super impressivelevel of agricultural knowledge.
That these farmers in Vanuatu havethat really, you don't really find that
with any other crop, , where there's nomorphological way of identifying what type
(31:35):
of plant you are reproducing and planting.
That's just, it's, that's just superimpressive that there's 82 distinct.
Looking plants, but 247 differentplants and the majority of them,
like you, you can only identifybasically by asking the farmer.
. That's really cool.
One of the biggest, coolestfacts in this article.
(31:56):
Yeah,
absolutely.
And it goes on to talk aboutmulti-variate analysis, . Multi-variate
analysis is a technique that usesmore than one variable at a time
to analyze and interpret data.
In this case, hierarchal, clustering wasused to analyze the iyes data matrix,
which was made up of 52 differentelectro moph . Are you sure an
Electromorph, isn't likea villain in a comic book?
(32:18):
Yes.
That's electromorph prime, andyou do not want to tie into that.
This is the analysis revealed thatthe genetic distances between that
10, 10 identified zymotypes werevery small, meaning that multiple
different morphotypes had the samezymotype fingerprint, which was
determined by eight enzyme systems.
This is an indication that the cultivarsare likely clones of the same genotype.
(32:42):
The results also showed that the twobinomial variety, wichmannii and
variety methysticum both belong to thesame plant Piper methysticum species.
So there's sub varieties.
And it's very interesting , this paragraphthat what I read was the kind of recap.
. And he talks more about thespecific zymotypes and different
(33:02):
chemotype here in the next one.
And this is where we actually, itwould be good for a lot of people to
follow the link that will be in thedescription to see the paper itself.
Because this portion involves agraph with a total of, 319 sessions.
So he took a total of 319 samples fromdifferent islands, 52 different islands.
And they came up with 117 morphotypes.
(33:25):
So it's 117 different distinctlooking cava plants with only nine
chemotype and only 10 zymotypes.
So it really narrows everythingdown to what it is genetically.
And we'll talk about what a chemotype is.
A chemotype is the ratio expressedin a six digit number of these
(33:47):
six kavalactones that are knownfor their physiological effect.
Number one is desmethoxyyangonin.
Number two is dihydrokavain.
Number three is yangonin.
Number four is kavain.
Number five is dihydromethysticin,and number six is methysticin and what
you'll see a kava described as like a4, 2, 6, 5, 3, 1, and those six digits
(34:09):
represent the ratio in descending orderof kavalactone content and percentage.
So if you had a 4, 6, 2 kavain would bethe highest ratio kavalactone and then
methysticin would be your second highest.
And then dihydrokavainwould be your third.
That is what constitutes what we talkabout when we say chemotypes of kava.
Here he took the chemotype of all thesedifferent kavas, and boiled them down
(34:32):
into different groups where they weresimilar, where they had very unique
markers for their types of what they were.
And He comes up differentclassifications for them.
Here's where they start gettinginto the definition where he says
what constitutes a noble kavaand wild kavas and two-day kavas.
Here they say, wichmanniiis, very rich , in DHM and DHK
(34:56):
with very low kavain content.
it shows these different chemotypeand that's represented as chemotype
C on this these wild kavas.
And you can see where in the tablewhere C comes up in these kavas, when
it's actually only in Papa New Guinea.
But it's very interesting to seewhere these kavas originate on this
graph cells where I highly suggestfollowing the link and seeing this
(35:18):
paper because it's a good one.
A DNA fingerprint is a techniquethat can be used to deter,
determine the genetic composition.
In this case, dna n a fingerprintingwas used to compare the genetic basis
if all the varieties of plant species,and to verify whether two of the
varieties were actually the same species.
Scientists used two differenttechniques one's called SSR and the
other's dart, and they used theseto assess the genetic mapping.
(35:40):
They used this to look at the groupof 103 plants, the same species.
And this result, let's see here.
The results of this showed that only11 distinct genotypes were present, and
that the noble cultivars, which weremorphologically different, clustered
together when analyzed the molecular data.
This indicates that all noblecultivars were formed through
(36:00):
clonal selection as a result.
, they are genetically vulnerable,meaning their natural ability
to adapt changes is limited.
And I think that was a very interestingpart of this paper as well, so that
the genetic information, how at riskthat are noble kavas are because they
are more genetically susceptible todiseases and all that good stuff.
Jimmy maybe for our listeners, whenyou talk about Chemotype and you talk
(36:23):
about those numbers, , the chemotypenumber of a specific type of kava.
Do you know offhand thechemo type for Borogu?
I think it would be helpful forthe listeners to understand, , when
you're looking for a certain typeof kava that feels a certain way.
, people who are really into this stuff,who really nerd out on this stuff.
(36:43):
And, , Jimmy and I arecertainly two of those people.
, they look at the chemotypes you can look at.
There are resources where youcan look at the chemo type for a
type of kava that you're buying.
Oftentimes on the website of thevendor, they will have the testing
certificate with the chemotype.
This is all because of Dr.
Lebot, by the way.
Bula to Dr.
Lebo because without him, none ofthis information really be available
(37:05):
to us this way of talking about kava.
But it's interesting to look at,, Borogu aand Kelai and Bir Kar and
some of these other really popularcultivars and look at the chemo types.
And oftentimes what you're gonnafind is that you like, Kavas that
are high in one thing over another.
Some people like Kavasthat are high in yangonin.
Some people like Kavasthat are high in kavain.
(37:28):
I can pitch in a littlebit on the the, yeah.
The chemo type of Borogoru.
I know that one.
Yeah it's a 423 and that's generallywhat you're gonna see out of a lot
of Vanuatu kavas is that Chemotype2, 4, 3, 4, 2, 3 very common.
The last three digits will be somewherelike 1 5 6, 1 65, 5 generally being
towards the end with four generallybeing towards the the top with
(37:50):
yangonin generally being third.
And that's, that kind ofconstitutes most of the results
that I've seen out of Vanuatu.
Kavas.
Yeah, usually I feel like usuallyyou're gonna wanna see like a four.
You're definitely gonna wannasee a four and a three in
within the first three numbers.
, the truth is we don't really even know that much about
Yangonin and what it might do.
Physiologically And what part itplays in the actual effects of Kava.
(38:13):
In the rat tests, yes, they are rat tests.
So we dosed rats with huge doses of thesethings and we're like, look what it did.
But Lucky Rats maybe depends on who, no,it depends on what they said about it.
But it's true.
What they said about Yagen was thatthe rat's dopamine levels would.
Extremely, like below the testable level.
(38:34):
Didn't detect any dopamine.
Oh, rats.
Rats.
Yeah.
Rats, . And they're like,ah, dang my dopamine.
But yeah they it could be a dopaminereducing chemical or it could
be, , could have a whole bunchof different modulatory effects.
But that generally is gonna be the numberthree that's found on most Vanuatu kavas.
(38:54):
Most cultivated caves will have a highyangonin content with a very high kavain
content with lower proportionallydihydromethysticin in contents.
So that's where you come into this paper.
He talks about K to DHM ratios, andthat's where you take your percentage
of ve divided by your percentageof DHM, and it gives you a number.
These numbers give you a specific ratio.
(39:16):
Numbers that are higher thanthree will generally be ones
that are loaded with kavain.
And they're pretty, , they're up inyour face, , they punch hard and they
probably will be gone for the next day.
And numbers will the cavanyou're talking about.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That will be upfront.
If you have a high K DH M ratio, kava,you will have a a faster effect kava.
(39:37):
One that seems to be, , more, I guessyou could say Slappy, . But it, when you
start seeing kavas that have these numbersthat are lower, say like below 2.5, below
below two, and when you get below oneon this ratio you actually come into a
really good indicator of whether yourkava is a noble kava or a non noble kava.
When you start to approach when they'realmost the same ratio, like you have
(40:00):
1.25% kavain and a 1.25% DHM, thatstarts to move into that territory of
being extremely sedative, long-lasting.
Something that re just not reallycoveted or not looked at positively
especially by the people thatdrank kava for all those times.
A lot of people are, what I find isthat most people who are, , just getting
into kava and trying to find a kava thatthey really like, are basically looking
(40:25):
for something that's high in kavain.
That's really the major takeawaywhen you look at the chemotypes.
Yes.
When you have a four at thefront of the chemotype, it's
probably gonna be something thatyou are going to . Absolutely.
If you're, especially if you'rea newcomer to kava, because that
kavain has that immediate slappyeffect is Jimmy is you nicely
described that sudden relaxing effect.
Yes.
That is enjoyed.
(40:45):
Around the world.
And I think we do need to get away fromthese terms of heavy and heady when it
comes to kava descriptions because it, itgives an unrealistic expectation of what's
coming with an experience for a newcomer.
They expect that a heady kava will causethem to get up and go clean the house.
And that's not whatwe're talking about here.
Heady kavas could possibly put youeven deeper into your couch depending
(41:08):
on what you have going around you.
It is a very subjective experience.
Another part of the paper that I thoughtwas really interesting and it ties into
the studies that he did here is abouthow Different chemicals were used to
improve the quality of the extracts,and by improve the quality of the
extracts, he means they were used to makea stronger solution from the extract.
(41:32):
That, that was one of the issuesthat happened in Germany when
they were making these products.
And also there was evidence thatthese European companies that imported
these cultivars most of them were twoday . They were also using stems and
byproducts of the plant like peelings
.And these materials are dangerous to consume.
You don't, the stem peelings and theleaves are, Like, and you would never
(41:56):
even, you should never even think aboutconsuming those parts of the plant.
True.
Like in Vanuatu, in Fiji, in Hawaii,in Tonga, Samoa, people do not
consume that part of the plant.
It is known to, to havetoxic substances in it.
And, , that's true of potatoes,, that's true of yams and cassava you
don't like, there are parts of theplant that you're not supposed to
consume because they're poisonous.
(42:17):
So I'm,
I'm gonna blow yourmind a little bit here.
Okay.
You could eat.
A kava leaf salad every day andit wouldn't harm your liver.
They have tested pipermethystine, and there was a lot of research
done on whether pipermethystinecould be the culprit.
Because , they thought maybethey were extracting leaves
and stems and all that stuff.
, we're getting everything out of it.
We're extracting these alkaloids aswell, which Piper Methyine is, and
(42:41):
they dosed up rats with Piper Methyineat levels that you would have to,
you would have to really work at,to get to now like 10 milligrams per
kilogram, which , pipermethystine onlyoccurs in like very trace amounts.
What they found was that it actuallyhad a hepatoprotective effect.
Oh these rats their liver scoresactually were better after the treatment.
There's still for real, when they saythere's no link to from kava to any
(43:06):
injury, They mean it, like even in theleaves and the stems and the peels.
It's just maybe we can't even say that, Ipersonally wouldn't consume them because
they just, it's the low grade stuff.
It's gonna make your skin hurt, but there,there really is no actual toxicity link,
even in the aerial portions of the plantto actual injury from kava consumption.
(43:29):
So it's still a big question markwith an exclamation point next to it.
and a w Yeah.
I mean that , yeah.
I think that's one of the piecesof advocacy that I've, , tried to,
and on my YouTube videos and on mywebsite that I've tried to really
emphasize is that kava is so safe.
It is like the safest possible relaxing.
(43:53):
Natural substance that you could consumeand , when you look at the alternatives,
, one of the alternatives just being stress,, just not having a way to deal with stress.
Or you look at alcohol, or youlook at , other substances.
. Kava is so mild.
. It's helping you.
It's good for you.
It's a nourishing plant.
(44:13):
And, , people can lookat that different ways.
, not everybody thinks that kavashould be talked about as a
medicine, as a supplement.
. But for me, personally it's a planthat has helped me in my life.
Yes.
And I know a lot of other peoplethat it has helped immensely.
, like that being said, I could alwaysstop kava and, , live perfectly happy.
I'd have to find some other wayto relieve stress, and I'd be
(44:33):
bummed that I didn't have kava.
But , the main takeaway, and Dr.
Lebot I think would agreewith this, is that there is no
evidence that kava is bad for you.
And leads to any kind of serious illness.
And the side effects arethere, but they're so minor.
And, , you can usually solve itby, , switching up your kava or
(44:55):
, taking a break.
Yeah.
And it breaks are for quitters,but I'll, I'll allow it.
I'll allow it.
, I think we should talk a little bit about the guidelines at the end here,
and I'll let you take that away.
Jimmy, you can run with that ball there.
Lebot talks about practicalguidelines to follow to secure
the future of the kaba industry.
Number one, only noblecultivars should be used.
(45:15):
Those having chemical compositionsadequate for daily drinking and have
a history of safe, traditional use.
This implies to make regulatorykava standardization for the best
noble cultivars mandatory, andto ban all but noble cultivars.
This will require inter aliasfunding to destroy, bad cultivars,
and replace them with noble ones.
(45:35):
Wow.
I did not read that one.
I thought this
was a bit, I thought this, I thoughtthat one was a bit like heavy handed.
I'm not gonna, , I'm not gonna tryto question, the wisdom of Dr.
Lebo, but I did, when I first readthat, I was like, Ban all but noble
cultivars destroy bad cultivars.
I, thought that was a littlebit risky, but hey, but
I don't unders the thing isdo we call the question in?
(45:56):
Do we call question thisperson's understanding of it?
I'll actually have to ask aboutthat because I've never heard
him say that in any other place.
I've just heard 'em say don't export them.
I've never, I've not seenthe whole, , dig 'em up.
version set fire to
the fields, right?
Yeah.
This would require any inner aliasfunding to destroy bad cultivars
(46:16):
and replace them with noble ones.
I have to say why?
I, without an answer to why those noble,non noble cultivars are there without a
good, solid reason for that, I don't thinkwe have enough to say to, to destroy them.
Because, they may have a culturalreason or a ceremonial place
that's very important, that is onlyused in one specific circumstance
(46:37):
that we don't understand.
But then again, I don't live there.
He does.
I'll have to ask about that portion numbertwo, it says only underground roots and
the peeled stump often refer to as rhizomeand basal stems as opposed to leaves.
Stems and basal stems should be usedcalled Waka Lawena, Casa in Fiji.
This necessitates a legislationensuring that only these are
(46:59):
traded locally or for e export.
Wow.
He wants to do it locally as well.
Legislation exists in Vanuatu, butsimilar acts should be passed in
other Pacific Island countries.
It's also necessary to ensure that therequirements for use in the Pacific and
in the international markets are the same.
These legislations will need tobe enforced effectively and this
requires significant resourceson monitoring and analysis.
(47:22):
Yeah and he's very.
Very much wants to , , define thepeeled stump and underground roots.
Yeah, so nothing above groundexcept I think it's to the
first node of the stump.
And that's after that it's consideredyou're actually getting into
the aerial portion of the plant.
But number three, I think, is avery important point as well here.
(47:42):
Number three is appellation of originsshould be developed to strengthen
the traceability of the raw material.
And there's a need to implementa strict enforcement policy, pan
Pacific on a quality control system.
And that is, appellation of originis one of those things where I think.
that would take care of so many issues.
, you wouldn't find somebody say I'llhave Borogu and they're in Hawaii.
(48:03):
It's no.
That's whether the appellationof Origins, you couldn't
call it Borogu in Hawaii.
It would just be I don't know.
It would be something else.
You'd have to call it something else.
You couldn't call it that.
But it would really solidifyVanuatu's Kava if we had to
refer to it as Vanuatu kava.
Yeah.
Also, what stood out to me, and whatthis made me think of is the traceability.
When you use an appellation oforigins the whole point is that you
(48:26):
can trace the product down the valuechain to the local level, and you
can identify where a problem started.
if, in agriculture, when you talk aboutcoffee or maize or other agricultural
products that are on the market,they like to be able to trace them
back to individual farms where theywere produced so that if there's any
(48:47):
kind of contamination or disease, oranything that's, contamination that's
present in the product, you can traceit back to the specific farm and the
town and the area where it was grown.
And also, it's an indicatorof the quality too.
When you think of good coffees, you thinkof specific places like Guatemala, right?
, Jamaican Blue mountains.
(49:08):
When you think of certain types ofwine, , it's a little bit different,
but you think of, , different regionsof France and California where
they grow specific types of grapes.
So it's the same idea.
, you're being able to trace that specificKava product back to where it came from,
and ensure quality and also be ableto address any problems should they
come up.
(49:28):
. And since we only have a few minutes left we're going to go
through these a little quicker.
Number four says, water soluble kavaextract should be preferred over those
of extracted with chemical solvents.
A hundred percent . Yep.
And I believe that too.
. Number five is for new non-ethnicmarkets lacking the cultural background
necessary for the safe use of kava.
There's a need to define andestablish standards for a
(49:49):
recommended daily dosage of kava.
And that may be somethingwe need to look into.
But my daily dosage is 40 grams,whatever that comes out to . But
, simmer six research into kavas safetyissues such as using poorly stored
and manufactured kava raw material orincorrect variety and plant materials
should continue to strengthen thescientific basis of the industry.
(50:10):
And absolutely because poorly storedand manufactured kava raw material
is where I would put my money onthe actual liver issues being.
Like mycotoxins, mold, not storedcorrectly, wet, things like that.
So yeah, that, and then it bringsus to the conclusion of this paper,
which talks about, it says, over thelast three decades, research studies
(50:31):
have shown that the genetic base ofnoble cultivars of kava suitable for
daily consumption is extremely narrow.
These cultivars as demonstrated byisozyme and DNA markers are somatic
mutants of a single genotype.
This genotype is controlling thechemotype and noble cultivars are
characterized by their chemotype whichis rich in kavain, unfortunately, is not
possible to recognize the cultivar oncethe roots and stumps have been dried.
(50:54):
Sophisticated techniques such asDNA and h P c fingerprinting are
powerful and accurate, but difficultto use in Pacific Island countries.
H hp tlc, which is high throughput,appears to be a cost-efficient
technique suitable for routineanalysis for kava samples
. So for traders and exporters, a simple colormetric test can be used to
differentiate noble cultivar from twodays and variety wichmannii raw materials.
(51:18):
And I think he closes it really nicelywith these last couple of sentences.
The EU ban on kava was not supportedscientifically what has unfortunately
damaged the reputation of kava.
Yes, it will be extremely difficultand costly for Pacific Island
countries to repair the damagethat was done by this EU ban.
However, this can be achievedthrough the enforcement of
(51:40):
appropriate quality standards.
So really, Dr.
Lebot , tying this all back to thepurpose of this podcast and, what has
been across the articles we've readso far is that this is an important.
To indigenous people from thePacific Islands and now to
people all over the world.
And Dr.
Lebot, through this research lookingat the chemotype of Kava, looking at
the history of the Kava ban is, hasreally done a lot of great work to
(52:03):
help us , look at the quality withthe cheapest possible methods and
be able to propose solutions for theinternational kava market so that kava
doesn't have to face anything like whatit faced in the late 1990s , in Germany.
Agreed.
Yes.
And he's done a great job andhis work continues to this
very day on this same subject.
(52:24):
So we all have a shell to raise to Dr.
Lebot for this important work andmoving the kava industry forward in a
way that can be put down on paper as.
Quality equals this.
Bula to Dr.
Lebo malok to Dr.
Lebo.
And thanks for listening tonightand we appreciate you tuning
in . Listen to us talk on aboutsome very esoteric kava information.
(52:49):
Yep.
And we hope you, you enjoyed it.
And again Bula , to Vincent the one ofthe, one of the biggest names in Kava.
Amen, and thanks for listening!
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.