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December 3, 2023 45 mins

"The Kava Lounge" podcast presents a special episode on kava safety, featuring an in-depth discussion between Douglas and Jimmy, two experienced kava enthusiasts. This special episode explores the historical context of kava safety concerns, in particular with a focus on the risk of liver damage originating in Europe in the late 1990s. Douglas and Jimmy recount their personal experiences and confront widespread misconceptions about the impact of kava on liver health, highlighting the lack of evidence linking kava to liver damage.

It explores the cultural significance of kava, its long history of safe use in the Pacific Island communities, and addresses the misinformation and hysteria surrounding kava in the early 2000s. The discussion also touches on various health-related aspects of kava, including potential side effects, such as dry skin and changes in cholesterol levels, while emphasizing the overall safety profile.

This event is a treasure trove of information for both kava enthusiasts and those who are new to the plant, providing a comprehensive overview of kava safety, its cultural importance and scientific evidence of its consumption. Douglas and Jimmy’s conversation is not only informative but also serves as a clarion call to dispel outdated myths and embrace kava’s rich heritage and benefits.

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Douglas (00:00):
Hey, Jimmy.
How you doing,

Jimmy (00:02):
Doug?
I'm doing great.
Just hanging out, readingsome cover research as usual.
What else am I doing?

Douglas (00:10):
Oh, excellent.
Yeah, no, that's.
That's incidentally, that's why Ibrought you here today to talk about
some some kava research and some studiesand some evidence on kava safety.
So that's overall kind of the discussionI wanted to have with you tonight.
And are you game?
Are you ready to go?

Jimmy (00:29):
Sure.
Let's talk about kava safety.

Douglas (00:32):
Awesome.
I just wanted to start by givingmy story about my experience
with the kava safety issue.
And this really goes back to when I firststarted drinking kava like 23 years ago.
I remember I was working at a healthfood store in San Diego and kava king.
I have told this story a milliontimes, but kava king was the only

(00:56):
available powder form, , instant kavathat I could, that I had access to.
And the folks that worked in theherbal medicine department of this
health food store in San Diego, they Ihad a lot of anxiety issues and they
recommended kava to me, but they gavethis caveat that we have heard that

(01:17):
this can lead to liver failure and.
And I almost like I know I almost didn'tembark on this journey as a result of
hearing that information from these.
Uninformed, just, wage workers whoworked at this grocery store who like,
really weren't experts in anything.
But I decided to give it a chance anyways.
And I didn't have access to the researchor really know what was going on.

(01:42):
Eventually, as I moved through myexperience with kava, drinking a
kava stress relief yogi tea, andthen eventually getting into the
powders, I was told and reassured bymany people that kava is indeed safe.
And that there was this event thatoccurred in Europe in the late nineties
that led to this negative associationbetween kava and liver damage.

(02:05):
And to this day, I still don't reallyhave that story kind of memorized.
And I wanted to have a.
A video podcast or video cast orwhatever, so that people could learn
about what actually happened, wherethose kind of negative association

(02:25):
started and what the truth is behind.
The live scare.

Jimmy (02:31):
We're going to start off with, you were talking about wanting to have
this record on record of where you firstencountered Kava what was presented to
you in terms of its possible toxicities.
And I have to absolutelyconfirm that same story.
When I first started.
Looking into kava I went into,I think it was whole foods or

(02:55):
whole body or something like that.
And the signs that were up on the shelfsaid, if you consume more than two
alcoholic drinks per day, do not takethis for chances of rare liver disease.
And yeah, I remember thinking,what, like this is causing
liver disease, but you wouldn't.
You have to remember that when youwere talking about this, the timeframe

(03:17):
in which you were speaking of, mostof this research was not out yet.
We were only dealing with adverseevent reports or what we thought were
adverse event reports at the time.
When we both of us were pickingup Kava It was still not a no.
So we actually did walk out on aledge a little bit, with our limited
knowledge of what was available to us.

(03:39):
Of course, you have your empiricaldata that generation after
generation, thousands of years ofsafe consumption in the islands.
But.
And I didn't have any sort of trueidea of that scale and how well deeply
entrenched in safety it really wasand has been for eons in the past.

(03:59):
And it's just we were met with the sameignorance that basically surrounded
us at the time we were we came to us.
in The most filtered way I guess itcould have because at that time it was
still a little bit of hysteria goingaround because it was 2003, 2005, 2006.
This is when all the news articlesand stories were coming on.

(04:22):
Is this a killer or a cure?
Is nature's Xanax really,is nature, is really safe?
Things like that were coming up.
At the time, if you said you drank kava,then about the only reaction you could
get is, have you had your liver checked?
Is it okay?
And that's, I guess it's to be expectedfor what we were dealing with at the time.

(04:42):
But from there, when we got it, it wouldhad already crescendoed all of the.
I guess I won't say misinformation becausethis isn't, I don't believe this is
willful misinformation that was presented.
I think that this was a hysteria wherepeople were requested to turn over all
of the adverse event reports that hadanything to do with kava whatsoever.

(05:04):
Of course, kava was , an approvedpharmaceutical treatment at the
time in Germany and Switzerland, EU.
A bunch of people were taking kavalactoneproducts, their kavalactone extracts.
And the size of the actual issue ahotly debated, but Put to bed issue.
It's no longer what people think it is.

(05:24):
The whole liver issue, itwas concentrated in one area.
It's, it was in Switzerland and Germany.
, that's where these actual issues, ifthere were any, were concentrated,
which also happens to correlate to thesame time when the first few batches
of a different type of kava leftVanuatu for processing in Germany.

(05:49):
The years of it coming, boiling upto The actual start of the issue was
1998 end of it was around 2002 2003.
And this is the only thing in the entirehistory of kava that would connect it
to anything we would consider toxic.
And it's temporal.

(06:10):
It's a temporal association.
If you had a time machine, you could hurtyour liver with kava, but outside of that,
it's just, that's not going to happen.
And it's, but it's easy for us tosit up here and say, Oh, it's safe.
At the same time it's difficult totruly convey that without evidence.
And, I'm a study of one, you're astudy of one, but these studies have

(06:32):
been going on for 2, 500 years now.
So it's it's spoken for itself.
The safety record is there where wesee instances and say there are some
like liver scares in Fiji versuspeople were thinking that Cabo was
causing liver problems in Fiji, butit turned out to be liver abscesses

(06:52):
caused by amoebas in water supply.
It's, and that's notto try to shift blame.
It just truly is not KAVA that'scapable of causing these sort of
issues , people thought it would do.
At the time, this is, we're talkingabout extracts and we're talking about
these pharmaceutical preparations.
In fact, that's all that Germanybanned was , the pharmaceutical

(07:14):
preparations because that's the onlysort of interaction it had with KAVA.
So that's, we've gone fromthat, the Germany banned KAVA.
And didn't necessarily make it illegal,just took it off the market, removed
it from all the market authorizations.

Douglas (07:30):
I was going to jump in with a comment to go ahead.
Yeah, go ahead.
1 thing that the younger generation,maybe the younger viewers of
this of my YouTube channel mightnot realize is that back then.
in 2000, 2001, 2002 it was very difficultto access a lot of information in general.

(07:54):
The internet was alive and like therewere no smartphones, that's for sure.
But to do research on Kava, like you.
You would go to the library, likeyou would have to go and put in the
effort of tracking down, primary sourcedocuments or journals not online like
most of these online services forjournals were not didn't exist back then.

(08:18):
So all that you had was basicallywhat people told you, you had
narratives that were produced and.
And like you said, this 1998 to2003, all of this was happening and.
It was like, oh my God, like this isgoing to destroy our livers or maybe not.

(08:39):
And I, at that time I didn't knowanything about Fiji or Vanuatu.
So I wasn't thinking about the fact thatindigenous people in these countries
have been drinking kava without adverseeffects for thousands of years, simply
because I had no knowledge of those,the existence of these cultures.
So it's.
It's, what's amazing to me is thatit's 2023 now, and yet when you Google

(09:06):
Kava, despite all of this wealth ofinformation and all of this evidence,
this is still a narrative that dominates.

Jimmy (09:15):
Yes.
And why is that?
Why do you think that is?
It's low hanging fruitfor blog authors to pick.
In terms of it's an easy story and itdoesn't take much research other than
going to Google and just typing inkava liver damage and you don't have
to eat . It requires insight into goingto looking into the quality of these

(09:39):
reports and how they were taken andwhat other events were involved in all
these things, but no, they just say100 report 100 cases of liver issue.
It's wait a second.
It's not just.
It's not that simple.
It, just at this time frame, eventhose hundred, they've pared it down
to maybe two or three of those thatwere actually related to kava, in

(10:02):
terms of them being a immunologic.
reaction where they were truly allergicto it and it caused them to have an
adverse reaction with their liver.
But that's, we're talking, this isprobably more, it's probably more
likely to people eating bananas than itwould be to, to people drinking kava.

(10:23):
It's just, it's one of those thingswhere there's some people that just
aren't compatible with some things.
And even kava has a little bitof a, has a bit of an immune.
portion of it as well.
It has that some people can beallergic to it right off the bat
where they have hives and breakoutand rashes and things like that.
That is possible.

(10:44):
It's not common, but it is possible.
But in terms of actual damage andsafety, kava is very safe food.
And I want to, skew away from the worddrug here because I think the word drug
is more the connotation there would belike, it has more of a singular effect
and this , obviously has a pharmacologicaleffect, but it's not singular, , it's

(11:05):
not overpowering, it's, I know it is adrug because it does have a physiological
change from consumption of the substance,but it's also cultural Keystone species.
It's not just.
It's not just one thing andit's not just single dimension.
It's a very deep subject withmany different angles to it.

(11:27):
And the one thing that we do seerepeated over, over history , is
the continued safety of kava.
Even when things go wrong withkava, where someone drinks too much
or, we, we saw recently where Ithink it was an Australian prime
minister drank sakau and Pompeii.
And, what's Sakao?
Sakao is Kava, but not made with water.

(11:49):
Made with , the sap of the hibiscustree the bark and the sap, which
is really slimy and viscous.
They use that instead of water, andmaybe a little bit of water, but it.
It makes a horrendouslystrong kava beverage that is
sipped, it is not chugged.
They pass around a cup and sip a bitat a time where an Australian prime

(12:12):
minister went and chugged the entirecup and ended up in the hospital for
a couple of days just for observation.
There was nothing wrong with him.
He just couldn't walk.
And he said the last timehe slept like that, he was a
teenager, but the guy was fine.
And it's whenever.
It's not a, it's not a commonthing for us to see any real
harm come from kava consumption.

(12:33):
And we've seen, between all, with all theconnections that we have in the avenues
that the information could come to us it.
Really, if this were harmful, I thinkwe would, we'd be hearing about it all
day long, like that's all we would hearabout, that's all we would talk about
is like, how do we make these peoplestop thinking it's harmful when it,
it, it, truly there's no liver problemsI have my liver My liver tests done

(12:56):
annually and have yet to have anythingrelated to kava show up on that.
I've had issues because of myvitamin D levels, but this, the
light that's here now is my son.
So that's probably, I'd say it's probablya lack of outdoor exposure, but I can
do my job and, My hobbies for that.

Douglas (13:15):
Yeah, you need to take your dog for more walks.
This is what I think.

Jimmy (13:18):
Yeah, during the day.

Douglas (13:19):
Yeah, and yeah, it's interesting because one of the, when I was a young
kava drinker in my twenties, one ofthe things I thought about constantly.
I watched, some of my friends fall intolike deep alcoholism and drug abuse and
and I was really stressed out because Iwas a very type A personality with crazy

(13:44):
like work ethic when it came to school.
Like I would, I could studyfor like 12 hours a day.
Day and but , the Kava at the end ofthe day was my reward and it would
calm me down and help me go to sleep.
But, and then I would see my friends likedoing all this really risky behavior,
engaging risky behaviors, whether it'ssex addiction or alcoholism or drug abuse.

(14:06):
And in my mind, I was like I haveheard about these liver issues.
I've also seen, even at that time,I saw some things online that.
The liver issues were not real.
And but compared to the way I sawother people treating their bodies, I
was like this is definitely preferableto, to, to those other, those other

(14:26):
addictions and associations with.
With ways of calming yourself down.
And then, lo and behold, 10, 15years later, it comes out that there
was never any real risk with kava.
So it's Oh, that easily.
One of the best decisions of my life is

Jimmy (14:42):
like drinking kava.
Yes.
Yeah.
I tell everyone, if you have a decision,if you can make a decision to drink
kava over doing the stupid things weused to do as kids, like drink kava,
it's so your life is so much better.
It's so much.
Less complicated, like it's,problems are so much smaller , you
can, handle them better.

(15:03):
But in terms of thekava regulatory stance.
In Germany, in 2014, Germanyactually had overturned , the ban,
the actual reason for the ban.
All of , the adverse eventreports were, marked out.
We technically have nothingto stand on legally.
For a ban for kava in terms of its safety.

(15:26):
It's just not there.
Germany has removed that and that's whatthe, that's basically what the world,
built their, ban of kava on was thefact that, oh, it harmed livers here.
Yeah.
They've thrown that out now.
Really and I, and all ofthese blog articles are wrong.
There are not people out theredying on the streets from jaundice

(15:48):
from drinking kava outsidethe kava bars, turning yellow.
Yeah, it's not it's just not happening.
Kava is being consumed atan ever increasing rate.
From the kava bars that are openingto the amount of people online
that are getting into it, it'sjust becoming a much more consumed
beverage across the United States.

(16:10):
And we still do not see thispredicted increase in liver, failures
and liver problems and all that.
It's not, it's just not there.
This whole thing was abig batch of maybe some.
Some sort of toxins slipping throughthe supply, and it was a manufacturing
issue, and it's not an intrinsic issue.

(16:31):
They have yet to find anything in kavathat would negatively affect your liver,
except when you get into doses whereit would be equal to you draining out a
tanker truck worth of kava at once, inone shot, like into your bloodstream.
And then you don't, we don't workon those scales and it's always.

(16:51):
It's interesting, if you read throughthe research, the older research,
and through the early 2000s, theywere basically looking to elicit
an effect with kava, instead oflooking to see where that threshold
of effects were with the organism.
So they would just load upthese samples with kavalactones

(17:12):
until something toxic happened.
And that's what we saw and that's whatthey based most of the, a lot of the
negative press about kava on with thesestudies that were on concentration
levels that were, astronomical.
We're talking several orders ofmagnitude larger than what we would
consume as, a human in a normal setting.

(17:34):
It's just, you couldn't shoot thisamount of kavalactones in your veins if
had a pressure washer hooked up to you.
It's just it's not going to happen.
We're just, this is in mice, right?
Mice, rats, they've tested dogs,cats pretty, quite a number of
animals have been tinkered onwith cava and tested with cava.

Douglas (17:54):
It's yeah, like caffeine.
Imagine, 50 grams of caffeine beinginjected into your bloodstream, right?
I'm assuming that you're probablygoing to have an adverse event report
that and it's slightly, but it'sjust completely ridiculous To try
to imagine what a real life scenarioof having that much caffeine in your

(18:18):
bloodstream looks like, or kavalactones.

Jimmy (18:21):
You would be, your heart would be pumping just powdered caffeine,
or just thick kavalactone paste.
It's just, yeah, and this,these are all in vitro studies.
So they're all outside of the organism.
They're all in cells and petridishes and all that stuff.
I don't want to discredit sciencebecause, we only move as far as we, , the
smartest person, the latest discoverywhen I weren't, were at that time, things

(18:45):
weren't as advanced as they are today.
And I, I get it, but we do need to as.
As creators online to stop digging upthese old articles and rehashing things
that might get a click for kava whenthey realized that we're actually,
digging into a cultural issue that couldbe construed as, as quite insensitive.

(19:08):
Yeah.
This, number one, itdoesn't cause liver failure.
It doesn't cause that stuff.
That's, that is a lie.
Second, it hurts these smallisland nations that make a good
percentage of their income fromkava cultivation and export.
So it's like you're harmingpeople for basically nothing.
And we need to, yeah,I also we'll come back.

(19:30):
I'll come back to that, but thereis a one more thing I wanted to
talk about in that area were theliver warnings on the packaging
of our kava products that we sell.
I know that the I know thatthe center, what is it?
The CRN, the Center for ResponsibleNutrition recommends the warnings.
However, I would, I challenge that.

(19:51):
There is me.
There is no evidence to suggest thatthose warnings are applicable to
kava, and it even says in the CRNrecommendation that there is no warning,
and then it was made out of due caution.
I think it's time that wecan bury the hatchet here.
I think it's time for usto say, it's been 20 years.

(20:12):
It's been 20 years since thoserash of issues happened in Europe.
And we have not seen anythingin that 20 year span afterwards.
So it's we need to say, let'scall it, let's it yeah, no, I,

Douglas (20:29):
I wanted to comment on that because that, that, that's actually, I
Damage narrative or the liver thecontinued liver scare narrative is the
fact, whenever I introduce somebodyto kava and I show them the packaging
and they look at it and they turn itover in their hands, there's those
bullet points do not consume if you'vehad liver issues use in moderation.

(20:54):
Not just not because of drowsiness,but because of liver issues, and I
feel like when people see that theythink of, cigarette warnings, like
the Surgeon General's warning smokingcauses cancer and which is true.
But with kava, like you get that packageand people like you and I and people
who are really into kava know that.

(21:17):
That advisory is unfounded and based ina 20, 25 year old a 25 year old event
that had an adverse effect on a coupleof people, but the fact that, it's still
being printed on every bag, I think,perpetuates that narrative and that harm.
But I'm not gonna.

(21:38):
Point my finger at vendors yet, becauseI do feel like it's a way of covering
your own, protecting yourself becauseuntil it becomes a common thing for
them not to have those warnings,I think vendors are going to feel
obligated to include some kind of.

Jimmy (21:56):
They feel obligated because the people before them felt obligated.
And that's the only reason,because I have a bag here.
It says, Kava can affectyour motor skills.
If you're using any prescriptionmedication, especially antidepressant
or anti anxiety medication, do not drinkKava before consulting your physician.
That's also not really necessary.

(22:17):
Alcohol and Kava should never be mixed.
Yeah, that's, I agree with that.
Women who are nursing andpregnant should not drink kava.
This is the one where actually I haveto agree with because there are, and
this is only a matter of time before wehave the information, but there are no
studies on kava and being passed through,through Breast milk or and through the

(22:38):
placenta, so we don't really know howthat would affect a Developing child.
So we always say if you have to askquestions in that area, it's best to be
safe and just hold off But I would agreewith that The last one here says do not
drink kava if you've had prior liverproblems such as hepatitis And that one is
just you know I think that is unnecessary.

(23:00):
This is from 2013.
So this isn't this is an old bagof cava, but it's not necessary.
I've actually, this is onceagain, disclaimer, study of one.
I was in the hospital in 2020when COVID came through the
first time, which is really fun.
And when I got out, I had justgotten my new primary care doctor.
So he did a a full panel test,metabolic test and my liver.

(23:25):
Panel was off.
I was out of the range in AST and ALT.
Like I had liver issues from allthe drugs and stuff that I gave,
they gave me in the hospital.
And I actually, and this isagain, disclaimer, one study, me.
This is I drank kava and when I gotout of the hospital, I drank kava the
whole time between that test and mynext test, which was in, I believe

(23:46):
it was three months or two months.
night and it was like, yeah,it was 60 days after that test.
And I drank kava that entiretime and my values went back
to normal during that time.
So not only, I'm not sayingkava , is restorative or healing
to the liver, but it's not harmful.
It doesn't impede any healing processes.
It doesn't seem to causeany, any further insult.

(24:09):
It, yes, all things that weconsume are processed through
the liver and Most things.
There are a couple of things thatdo some weird stuff, but but yeah,
delivers a very resilient organ.
Look how long peopledrink before they die.
It can go for many decades and it isa very, it's a very efficient organ.
It can grow back from just a piece.
It's just a, it's very unique forus to have something useful and

(24:33):
regenerative, but it, yeah, the cob isnot going to cause your liver to fail.
It's not going to causeyour, to turn, yellow.
It's not going to cause you tohave jaundice and all that stuff.
It's just that, that is, that hasall been proven, not only false
By , the wealth of information thatwe have available to us now, but
also through just empirically lookingover , the millennia of consumption.

(24:58):
We don't have tales of, the yellowuncle or this or that, or, in terms
of anything that ties back to anoticeable liver failure issue.
So it's and yeah, you havethat with alcohol, like you've
had that sort of things.
And that's just.
part of it, but that's notpart of the history of kava.
It's just not

Douglas (25:18):
I I'm wondering , if, you can speak a little bit to the
history of the treatment of, I don'tknow if this is a lot to put on.
So this is a kind of a loadedquestion, but , the history of kava
use amongst Australian aborigines.
And some of the legislation that wasthat was created and implemented in

(25:39):
Australia to, to prevent indigenouscommunities, Aboriginal communities
from consuming kava and whetheryou think there is a relationship
between that and the negative.
image of kava as an unhealthy,

Jimmy (25:55):
Yes direct image from that.
And the first studies came out in thelate 1980s by Cought Matthews and a few
other authors, but there's those twospecifically Cought even later admitted.
That his studies were to preventthe harms of kava being bestowed
upon the people that he cared somuch about because he himself did

(26:15):
not understand kava, therefore, itwas a, exotic other that was, going
to do the same thing in his mind asalcohol did to these aboriginal people.
Obviously that is not the case everystudy out of that time said they
were consuming far more than theentire South Pacific would consume,
and that absolutely was not true.

(26:37):
They were doing just the average,they were drinking the average
amount of kava, and for, if you knowof Fijians, that's that's a lot.
It's not a, it's not a little bit, butit's nothing crazy, but it was seen
as an unnecessary risk to peoplealready at high risk of these issues.
And it was they came out of studies onAboriginal people that had preexisting

(27:01):
health issues and can be traced backto the living conditions at the time
and how forgotten these people were.
But it was introduced to curb , theconsumption of alcohol and it worked
so well that they didn't like thatbecause people started liking it
as, a replacement for their alcohol.
Great.
Great.
Of course it's not going to make hityour wife or yell at someone that you

(27:24):
just saw on the side of the street.
Kava's not that sort of confrontationaldoesn't bring on that state.
And I think that it was.
It was a concerted effort in the 1980s tokeep kava out of Australia, which kind of
turned into a little bit of a backbone forthe ban that they had prior to just 2020.

(27:45):
During the start of the, I think 2021 or2020, when they started the kava pilot
in Australia was, kava was illegal and itstill is illegal in Northern Territory.
You cannot ship into Northern Territory.
That's not.
It's off limits, but truthfully, it's amuch better option than consuming alcohol.
Oh, my God.
Yeah.
Not just health wise just mentally.

(28:06):
Oh, yeah, everything.
Society, just, it's a, it's somethingthat brings people together, and
it's not that far removed fromthe people of the South Pacific.
The Austronesians are, Basically,the aboriginal people from Australia
had moved across through the SouthPacific, but yeah, it's not that far of
a stretch for them to drink kava even,looking at the history of their people.

(28:30):
So it really is, a nanny state sort ofthing where they saw it as a threat.
And it still continues.
And that you can see peoplequote those things all the time.
, this is actually where the originalliver failure quote comes from is
the 1988 study from Matthews wherehe says that he observed increases
in GGT, which corresponded toliver failure in these consumers.

(28:54):
And a increase in GGT can mean a lotof different things, but it definitely
does not mean alone liver failure.
It is not the indicator for liver failure.
It's not what's used for that.
I'm not sure if at the time they knew thator not, but that was the first time that
kava was implicated in being something,wrong with the liver as in 1988.

(29:16):
But, again, this was not correct and highalcohol consumption can cause high GGT.
readings as well.
That's a known fact.
But it also, we, it also couldincrease GGT and even that would
not be indicative of liver damage.
It could just be adaptation to some CYPeffect where it's inhibiting something.

(29:38):
But yeah I just, the only thing, Iguess we let's talk about what, and
this is I've been accused of this.
And I under, I, I, I look back at howI talk and what I say online yeah, I
guess you're right, but what are the realactual negative side effects of kava?
Like what are the actual.

(29:58):
Negatives.
We talk about all the positivesall the time, but I can identify
one that's obvious and that'sdefinitely , , the dry skin.
That's, if you drink kava everyday you're eventually going to
find out that your skin's not goingto, it's going to try to run away.
That's just the way, that'sthe best way to put it.
Not everybody.
Not everybody.
Not everybody.
You're right.
You're right.
You're right.
But if you drink it, Thank you.
hard enough and for long enoughand the wrong way enough, you

(30:23):
can make your skin very angry.
And that's a, it's a kind of aninteraction with the, there's
a surface layer on your skinthat stays just slightly moist.
And it's, they're called ceramides andthey make up the matrix between your skin
cells at the very top and kava slightlyinhibits the formation of that layer,

(30:45):
which allows moisture to escape fasterand causes that weird scaling issue.
If you look up itch, itch theosis,which is a skin disorder that is
autosomal and usually congenital.
No, it is congenital, but it's a lifelongcondition, but it very much mirrors
cases of like very bad dermopathy.

(31:08):
It has the same scaling pattern.
It has the same like hyper linearity,which means their hands look like they
have, they're like, like they're 90years old in which I've been there.
But they're, the one that's nottalked about very much is stye.
That, the styes would be abouta kind of lower on the list, but
styes can get to be an issue.
, if the skin problem is aggravatedfor long enough that you,

(31:31):
that's around the eyes, right?
That's when you get like pimpleson your eyelids basically.
And they, yeah.
Oh, man, that's one of themost, it's really annoying.
It's very, Oh

Douglas (31:41):
Yeah.
No joke.
Yeah.

Jimmy (31:43):
But it's, if you drink a lot of kava that's a possibility.
Also cholesterol levels.
We've seen that cholesterol levelsmay increase if you drink kava on a
daily basis and at a high clip, likewe're talking 50, 60 grams a day.
We might see some highercholesterol levels in terms of your.
HDLs will be higher, whichis arguably a good thing.

(32:06):
And your LDLs will be higher,which is arguably a bad thing.
We don't truly know.
We don't truly know what that meansin terms of its physiological effect
because there's no, we don't seeheart problems in kava drinkers.
That's not common.
That's not a common theme.
And that's what we would if we wereto see cardiovascular issues, we'd

(32:26):
be like, okay maybe that, maybethose are connected there, but that's
doesn't seem to be an issue with it.
It could be a change in the size of yourLDL and HDL particles, which are, which
may actually may have no, no effect atall with your cardiovascular health.
So it's, we don't know exactly whatthat is, but that is also a negative

(32:48):
side effect that that is not verymuch, it's not really talked about all
that much because there's not, it'sone of the ones that's spoken about
in literature, and I see it online,and I see it in my own tests, but
it's I think we're still scared to saysomething about it, but I've had, I've
got another Kava vendor get there, geta specific type of cholesterol test

(33:09):
that's unique to lipoproteins and tosee if maybe there is , something there.
And it came back that he had no,no increased risk of cardiovascular
issues, even with that.
increased cholesterol level becausethe lipoproteins weren't elevated
to a certain level it wasn'tindicative of a heart issue state.

(33:31):
So we don't think it has anythingto do with the heart, but it's
just, I think it might be like anafter effect of its cholesterol
metabolism interference, the way it.
Interferes with the metabolism of thecholesterols in your skin, which make
up the ceramide layers could alsobe reflecting in different things.
It's also inhibiting,but it also go ahead.

(33:53):
I

Douglas (33:53):
was just gonna say, I think it's important for people to
remember that Like the comorbidities.
You can know a kava drinkerwho develops a liver condition.
You can know a kava drinkerwho develops a heart failure.
And that correlation with themdrinking kava does not mean that
kava is responsible for that illness.

(34:13):
And I think that's important toremember because, if somebody
in this community gets sick.
If that unfortunate, tragic thingwas to happen to people might jump
to the conclusion that, oh, is thatall that kava they're drinking?
And just a very simple thing to rememberthat correlation is not causation.
And, we're all people die eventuallyand all people get sick, on a

Jimmy (34:34):
consistent basis.
And if you drink kava for yourentire life, you, I guess you
could blame everything on it.
Eventually.
Exactly.
My hair's getting thin.
I think it's the kava.

Douglas (34:45):
For me, I, one thing that I, one reason that I take breaks from kava is if
I drink kava every day, which I normallydo, I normally drink kava every day.
But I like taking breaks from kava fora while just to see how my body reacts.
And one thing I can noticea little bit sometimes.
This is like a little bit likemarginal increase in the quickness

(35:07):
of my thinking, but it, but I thinkit might just be psychological or
like I'm doing something else ratherthan drinking kava in the evening.
It's engaging my, , my cerebralprocesses more, but and also if I'm
like feeling down or depressed aboutsomething, I find that kava can sometimes
make me feel like a little bit morelike maybe a little bit more depressed.

(35:28):
So I avoid kava when I'm feelingdown in the dumps about something.

Jimmy (35:33):
It's funny, it does.
I think kava is one of themost interesting placebo effect
consumables that I've, that we'llever know of because it has such a,
it has such a light effect to it.
When people drink kava, they expect toget plastered and that's just not, you
can get there, but you're more likelyto throw up before you get plastered.

(35:56):
And it's just, it's adifferent experience.
It's very light.
So that allows you to ascribe your owndetails to it and your own little things.
Cause I was talking to someonetoday, I've seen people say that
the kava cured their toenail fungus.
It just, it's incrediblewhat people will think.
And, but that's good.
You, I guess we could be complainingthat people were saying, it's called

(36:17):
making my hair fall out when I'm.
45, something like that, but so Iguess we should pick our battles.
But it's, yeah, it's justan interesting plant.
It doesn't have that predictable everytime, this is what kava feels like.
Like it could be a littledifferent every time.
It'll change on a daily basis basedon how you're feeling based on

(36:39):
what you've eaten, based on your.
Really heavily based on what you've eaten.
But it's yeah it's a unique plantwith very subtle effects that have.
That have just the ability for youto add whatever you want to, to it.
Which makes it awesome.
But it also makes it hard to naildown when someone's What is kava?
It's it is what it's relaxing.

(37:01):
But it's also can take on, forme it's what initiates my sleep.
Like, when I drink kava.
I'm going to sleep.
I'm going to bed.
There is no stopping.
It's like a freight train.
And that's just partof my routine at night.

Douglas (37:13):
Think it's a switch.
Like it's when I make my Kava in theevening, it's that's when I know that
the crappy part of my day is over.
It's okay, now I'm making my Kava.
Now I'm going to get into thathead space where it's I'm not
going to stress out about it.
My job, my, my kids, my, whatever itmight be that I might be worried about

(37:34):
that day, and I'm just going to drinksome kava and I'm going to read a book
or read a comic book or play video gamesor watch a movie or, get online and
talk with my friends and just not stressabout anything and then eventually.
You have like really good sleep,that's what I associate with kava.
The other thing I wanted to mention andyou brought this up earlier about, the

(37:54):
effects of kavalactones if you like had atanker truck full of full of kavalactones
kind of coursing through your bloodstream.
And this, Also, I would connect to theconversation about Australian Aborigines
is, kava has There's a limit to how muchkava you can drink and what I mean by that

(38:20):
is you can only drink so much kava beforeyour body's okay that's enough kava.
Cause you started to feel a littlebit like bloated and full and you
might even feel a little bit nauseousand you just know okay, I've had
enough kava, but then you're fine.
Like then you wake up thenext day and you're fine.
And I think that's I thinkthat's the human universal.
For me, certainly there's a point towhere I'm like, okay, I've had enough kava

Jimmy (38:43):
and yeah, and I, dude I love my, euphoric substances, man
I cannot get enough, like when I.
If I have one, I want 50.
I've I want to know what it feels likewhen I do 20 over that, those things, but
Kava is like, Whoa let's slow down here.
When, if you're drinking it in asession, of course there are other
people that I couldn't, I couldn't hold.
Semblance of matching them to drinktheir kava, but it really is a, it's

(39:07):
just, it like has its own limits for me.
And I've, that's what brought me to it.
That's what made me so interestedin it to begin with was like I,
I want to abuse this stuff, butI don't want to use this stuff.
It's it has its breaks built in.
It doesn't, it doesn't begyou to continue on for 99.
99 percent of people.

(39:27):
Yeah.
There are that 01%, man, that Idon't know if something's wired
differently in their system.
That, but it's just...
They really, there's some there.
I'm think I've met maybe oneor two people that were like,
this is truly addictive for me.
I can't take this.
I'm like, that's okay.
I appreciate you being honest.
And that's, that's rare.

(39:48):
I'm not gonna tell you're wrong.
'cause there's everybody,we all, everything going on
between our two ears is ours.
I can't tell you what it, yeah.
But I mean it's very rare.
The addictiveness of Kaba I think iswrapped up in the when we speak about.
The safety of Cava, will I unload mybank account into Cava and make sure
that my, my basement's full of it,that I have enough when I wake up
in the morning that I can have Cava?

(40:10):
It doesn't...
It doesn't do that I will, even today,having drank kava for almost 20 years, I
will almost run out, just oops, I guessI'll just buy some more, it's not a, it's
not a huge, it's not a huge deal it's,and I'm not, that's not, that's alien to,
to an addict, cause it's you always thinkwhen you're doing a drug, if you do a drug

(40:32):
that you, that's your drug of choice, likeyou're going to do pretty much anything
to get that and maintain that supply.
Kava is almost a takeit or leave it thing.
I love Kaba and I never want to sayanything bad, but it has, it's like,
it's great, but it's not too great.
Like it's not.
I don't know how to, I don't, it's itdemands respect without disrespecting you.

(40:54):
But if you disrespect kava,it will disrespect you.
That's one of the things.
That's very true.
Yeah.
People don't really realizethat if if you put on a.
a three day bender and you try todrink kava for 72 hours straight,
it's not going to feel very good.
You're not going to feel very good.
You might throw up and, a few times.
And

Douglas (41:11):
I've been there before.
I remember I did a little likekava tour of South Florida once.
And I was there for three or four days.
And I drank like 30, 40 shellsper day for three days straight.
And I do remember I hit a limitwhere I got the, like the optic

(41:34):
nerve in my eye, like basically justwent into started protesting and
I just, I could not see straight.
I was a double vision and I was like,okay, I need to go back to the hotel,
drink a lot of water and like sleep.

Jimmy (41:49):
And it

Douglas (41:50):
was like.
I was drinking too much kava.
It was like, because I only had a limitedamount of time and there were all these
kava bars and I was like, this is heaven.
But the consequence of thatwas like, I drink way more kava
than I've ever drank in my life.
And yeah it actually made me respectkava more because I was like, okay, this.
This is something I drink almost everyday with no negative side effects

(42:12):
but drinking in these like copiousamounts for my, for my YouTube channel
is it's punishing me a little bit.

Jimmy (42:20):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And even when I went when I went toHawaii, had a a Talanoa before the big
Talanoa, and there was a joke, therewas a really big shell he had sitting
beside him when he was making kava.
I was like.
How do you get, how do youget to drink from that one?
And it was the punishment shell.
I was like, Oh, what do wehave to do to be punished?

(42:42):
But then it's then I starteddrinking and the the circle and
this got all the shells going.
And I was at that point, I think eitherit was me or my wife of both of us
were like, almost on the verge of puke.
And it was like, all right,I don't want to show anymore.
I'm good.
But I don't.
That's alien to me because I would, ifI did a drug, and of course there are
ghosts saying drug, but if I did anythingthat I felt like was changing my, myself,

(43:06):
I would do it until I, it was gone.
It was like, On or off where kava is.
I look forward to having kava at night,but is it something where if I don't have
it, would that be the end of the world?
Would like cold sweat startbeating up my forehead and get
the shakes and start, worrying,get the goosebumps and everything.
No, it's not a big deal.

(43:27):
And I, and I say that having come fromopioid addiction having quit opioids
several times, unfortunately it hasthat like mental sort of grip on you
that, it's just the withdrawal is onlya portion of it and it just, it's, kava
doesn't latch into you like that it'sjust, it's a safe, it's a safe food.

Douglas (43:50):
Yeah.
Yeah, no, I've skirted with alcoholabuse and I smoked cigarettes
until I was in my early twenties.
And and I remember whataddiction feels like.
And I, like I said before I can gomonths and months without drinking kava.
Like sometimes when I travel, I runoutta kava and I'm just like, oh, okay.
I don't have any more kava.
And then I just do something else.

(44:11):
Yeah yeah.
And then I just do something else.
I might even just in the evening, Imight just read a book and then, as
I'm reading, I fall asleep or whatever.
But I, yeah, kava is not I've never hadany kava withdrawal situation where I was
freaking out and I needed my kava or elseI was going to die and sweating, yep.

(44:33):
But yeah, Jimmy, thanks.
I think this was, I hope thisis an informative discussion
that people get a lot out of.
I really appreciate allthe work you've done to to
socialize this knowledge online.
I think it's invaluable.
My Kavasseur channel ismostly just a fun thing.
And.
me trying different types of kava andletting people know how they affect me.

(44:56):
But you've always been the guy thatI go to with the questions about
kava science and, the actual healthramifications of drinking kava.
And this is a great discussion.
So thanks so

Jimmy (45:06):
much.
Doug, if you didn't have that blog,I don't know if we'd be here, because
that's where we all came from.
This is all this is whatyou've put together.
Like we've we came aroundthis, like this is.
We saw something here that you saw, andit was just like, this is interesting.
We had nothing else tosee on the internet.
And here comes Douglas.

(45:26):
And, it was just history from there.
I'm glad that we're still doing this.
This is awesome.
Yeah, thanks for having me, andthanks for talking about this,
because we need to talk more about,about kava and the safety, because
Obviously, some people are stillworried, but you know what, it's okay.
And questions are encouraged.
So if you have a question about it don'thesitate, pick a platform and ask away.

(45:48):
Yeah, absolutely.

Douglas (45:49):
All right.
Thanks, Jimmy.
All right, man.
Yes, sir.
Bula.
Bula.
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