This is a YouTube video titled "EPISODE #987: Kava: Nature’s Stress-Relieving Nootropic - Cameron George" published in October 2022. It features a podcast-style interview hosted by Dave Asprey with Cameron George, founder of Tru Kava, discussing the benefits, uses, and cultural significance of kava as a natural stress-relieving nootropic and its role in social and mental health contexts. The conversation takes place at the 8th Annual Biohacking Conference and covers topics such as microdosing, trauma, and mental health.
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You're listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey. Hey, guys. I'm at the 8th Annual Biohacking Conference. This is my event that started 10 years ago at a tiny bar in San Francisco and has now blown up to thousands of people every year. And this gives me a chance to do podcasts in person, which makes me really happy. I'm here with kava expert and friend and founder of Tru Kava, Cameron George. If you're a longtime listener, you've already heard us talk about the basics of kava. We're going to go deeper on this. We're going to talk about microdosing. We're going to talk about trauma, mental health, and connections. And there's some really interesting research coming out. When you're thinking of the world of plant medicines, I want you to start including kava in the list of things that are psychoactive but not psychedelic, that can have profound effects on how you feel, how you show up in the world. Because the more I look into Kava, the more interested I am. So you're going to hear things you've never heard about kava and you've never heard on the show before. Cameron, thanks for being here in person, sponsoring the episode and the conference, and being an awesome entrepreneur. I really appreciate being an investor advisor and just watching Trukava get major grocery distribution.
Yes. Yeah, we're super pumped. I am just always pinching myself. I'm so happy to be doing what I'm doing. I love this and I love being here at this conference. This is my favorite.
How many doses of Trucava are you planning on giving out to people here?
Oh, it'll be thousands. Yeah. I mean, it'll be thousands. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. We're well prepared for this event.
So some listeners may not know what kava is. So to get everyone caught up, give me the real quick Cliff notes on kava, and then we're going to talk about why I would want there to be thousands of doses of it at the biohacking conference.
Right. So very simply, kava is a stress relieving, nootropic drink that's prepared. It's a natural elixir that's prepared from the roots of a plant that grows in the South Pacific called Piper methysticum. It means intoxicating pepper. It's in the pepper family and indigenous people have used it for thousands of years and prepared this food grade drink, kind of like coffee, but on the stress relieving side, on the nootropic side. But they've prepared it and used it in almost every context imaginable. Weddings, funerals, spiritual ceremonies, social gatherings. It helps to open up the opportunity for human connection, but it also helps to get people focused, but yet relaxed and calm and in a very safe space neurologically.
So we're talking about human connection. Sort of alcohol does this, but alcohol has all sorts of downsides, and this activates similar receptors and others. I just realized it's a member of the pepper family, but it's the black pepper family, not the green pepper family.
Right, right.
That's important because there are people like me who are nightshade sensitive. And for me, I love my green chilies and jalapenos, but if I eat them, the arthritis I've had since I was a kid comes back the next day. Kava doesn't do any of that stuff. And I can drink kava in a. Doesn't do it.
Right. Yeah.
In fact, my daughter is 15, and I took her to a kava bar for the first time she's ever been any kind of bar. So we did a shot of kava and had a kava mocktail, which was pretty cool. And the idea there is that the idea of sharing beverages goes way back, tribally. Like, this is something that we would always do. And there's no way any teenager should be drinking alcohol because. Not that they don't want to. Not that I didn't when I was a teenager, but just that we know what it does to teenage brains. It's just not worth it. Like, there's other things you can do that make you feel the same way that aren't causing harm. How do you know that kava isn't causing harm?
When examining any new treatment or therapy modality or tool, it's always good to examine multiple types of evidence. I like with my.
