The Natural Drug And Alcohol Alternative That May Transform The Future Of Mental Health: Everything You Need To Know About Kava With Cameron George

On this episode of the Ben Greenfield.

Fitness Podcast, there's some of the most addictive substances that you can take. And we hear a lot about, like, the opiate epidemic. There's a benzodiazepine epidemic, too. That's. That's really proliferative. Trying to basically, you know, medicate my symptoms downstream and not get to what's going on with me, and taking the pharmaceutical route. That's where I ended up. Kava has this amazing balance that it captures a lot of the effects of a lot of these things while not knocking you off your center or compromising your faculties, your functionality, health, performance, nutrition.

Longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and much more. My name is Ben Greenfield. Welcome to the show. All right, folks, I know nootropics are a big thing these days. How can you get more focus and maybe better mood and social ability and, you know, often better creativity? And at the same time, I'm seeing kind of like, especially in the health industry, taking the world by storm are all these ways that one could kind of get some of the. Some of the stress relieving, social lubricating, even mildly like, you know, entheogenic or psychedelic effects that one might get from, let's say, like, alcohol without the debilitating effects or potential toxicity of said substance. You know, just like anybody else. I like me a good margarita every now and again, but let's face it, if there are other alternatives, then great. Now I have one compound that I've been familiar with for quite some time. I used to go and race Ironman triathlons down on the island of Kona in Hawaii. And then after about 10 years of racing Ironmans down there, I started bow hunting in Hawaii. And every time I go to Hawaii, there's a little bar back behind the sand volleyball courts in Kailua, Kona, where I would go. It's called a kanaka kava. And kanaka kava is this place that not only serves you up, like this wonderful Hawaiian beverage called kava, that's almost like this halfwaysy thing between, like, alcohol and weed that a lot of Hawaiians will use at night to relax. Got this really, really cool, earthy taste. And they walk you through at this particular place, this special ceremony where you drink it out of a coconut like an old coconut shell. It's got this earthy flavor to it. Like, clap your hands and say some certain things. I forget. It's been a couple years since I did it. And then you toss a little bit of it back behind you for good luck. And anyways, a Whole ceremony behind this stuff because it's actually an integral part of a South Pacific Islander type of diet or medicine protocol. And they also, of course, serve up wonderful squid and pork and sweet potato and taro. And the place is pretty cool. If anybody gets a chance and you're in Kailu, you got to go hit up kanaka kava. But anyways, every time I've been in Hawaii, I have actually used cava. I love it to help me get to sleep at night, to help me relax. Kind of turns the mouth just a little bit numb, which is pretty interesting. And my wife and I once drove all the way across the island in Hawaii to another little town outside of Kailua called Hilo, and we went to, like, three different kava bars in Hilo because we were just like, oh, let's go try all the kava out here. And I remember both of us driving home, we were just chilled. It was like we'd been smoking weed all morning. But honestly, without a lot of, like, the. The couch lock, the appetite craving some of the other stuff that goes along with weed. So, anyways, I've been familiar with kava for quite some time. I've also been familiar with some of the issues people talk about regarding its potential for liver toxicity and some other things that get brought up a lot. And so a couple years ago, I met today's podcast guest, Cameron George. We were at a party at some kind of a health event, and he was there, and he was actually behind the bar serving up these little kava tinctures and kava drinks that he was making, and they were actually really interesting. It was kind of cool. It was like kava instead of alcohol. And since then, Cameron, I have gone back and forth because he keeps coming up with these. These cool, like, shots and cans and tinctures that he makes using kava. And about, like, three months ago, he sent me a batch of some of his latest stuff, and it just clicked with me. It was like, holy cow. This. This is actually really, really cool product that. That, you know, that. That I, like, use at night as a cocktail alternative or even during the day if I'm a little bit amped up or even if I, like, take too much of a substance like caffeine or some kind of other nootropic seems to kind of take the edge off of it, almost like something like. Like l. Theanine might. And so Cameron has a really cool story. I love his passion about this stuff, and it's actually super interesting. I think more people should know about this, this really interesting research root, you know, plant based elixir. So. So Cameron, what do you think? Should we geek out on kava for a little while?

Yeah, always down for that. Sweet.

And you're. You're in, you're in Arkansas right now, right?

Yep.

Yeah.

Only one that I know of.

I was going to say freaking. Yeah, you. You and what, the Clintons. That's of course, of course. Me living up in Spokane. I don't run into a lot of like, you know, people in our industry appearance. Spokane. It's probably how I, how I'm so productive as I just don't have a lot of people to hang out with up here and don't get invited out to many parties or, you know, people who want to pick my brain and do coffee meetings so, you know, sit at home and chat with folks like you and write books so it works out.

No, I mean, yeah, Yeah, I think we're pretty much in the same boat because, you know, I'm kind of in a, you know, a mountainous region locked here in the, in the Ozark mountains. It's beautiful. There's lots of amazing, you know, things to do out here. You know, there's fishing and hiking and the Ozarks are mountain range that a lot of people don't really know about as being this beautiful sort of landscape that's hidden down here in the, in the south, in Arkansas and Missouri. But it's a really amazing place. It's amazing place to live. But I definitely get my privacy down here and a lot of people ask me, wait, kava, Arkansas? What's the connection? It's totally serendipitous.

It's the secret to health in the fitness industry is move to a boring place that not many people know about, that slightly rednecky where nobody's going to ask you weird questions about health and you'll get a whole lot done versus like, you know, living in Venice beach and having to go to Erewhon every day or you know, going to wherever else. Everybody is moving right now. Austin, so you have an interesting story because from, from what I understand, you've told me a little bit about this, like you were like hooked on, on benzodiazepine and drugs and, and alcohol and like, I would love to hear a little bit more about, about your backstory because I know it wound up with you actually kind of, kind of getting into kava as a way to save your ass. And it's kind of funny because I, because I recently interviewed another guy who, who makes like he Makes a drink that's like a combination of kava and kratom. His one's called Feel Free. Same thing with him. It was like the thing that saved his ass from drugs and alcohol was basically kava to a certain extent, kratom. And so it's kind of a story that I see repeatedly popping up. Someone kind of screws themselves over with pharmaceuticals and then winds up finding this natural plant based alternative to rescue them from that. But what happened in your case?

Oh, totally, man. Yeah. And you know, I think we're really kind of in the middle of what I call kind of a plant renaissance. And it's been going on for probably the last eight to 10 years. You know, I mean, obviously all, all your listeners are really familiar with, you know, compounds like CBD and you know, hemp, cannabis, all that. And that's sort of gotten its sort of second wind as sort of like all of this research has come out and it's sort of become like the, the darling of the industry. And there's, there's some issues with that, but you know, that's exploding now. We're seeing research come out, you know, with, with psilocybin and moving towards, you know, medical legalization in multiple states and even, you know, recreational, eventually possibly. And obviously, you know, there's ketamine therapy. So we're, you know, we're really kind of having this sort of rediscovery of some of these ancient principles and strategies in these plant medicines and understanding that they have a broad spectrum of intelligence as a living organism that is not present in some of these isolated synthetic compounds that have their use in acute circumstances, but have their problems with addiction driving the body out of balance. And, and benzodiazepines are certainly in that category of something that has its place. But I mean, pretty much any psychiatrist knows, anyone who has worked with these medications substantially knows that there's some of the most addictive substances that you can take. And we hear a lot about the opiate epidemic. There's a benzodiazepine epidemic too that's really proliferative.

Yeah. And for people not familiar, that'll be like, well, like Valium.

Right.

Or diazepam. I mean, I used to, honestly, I used to have a prescription for Valium back when. Speaking of Ironman Triathlon, when I'd race Ironman for two reasons. A, a lot of times have like super long haul flights. And this was before I adopted the trick that I use now which is just like basically take a 40 to 50 milligram edible bomb of THC and pass out in the plane. You wake up feeling a lot better than you do after Valium or benzodiazepines. But I would use it for long haul flights, tell me to sleep when I was like going to a race. And then I would also use it like the night after. I've had like these, these big competitions where you're sucking down glucose and caffeine and energy drinks and stimulants all day racing for like 10 hours in the hot sun and you finish up and you're just like, you'd think you'd pass out and, and be in like a coma after something like that and your body's just completely wired up. And so I'd always have like a Valium on hand just so I could, I could sleep and be able to get on the plane the next day or whatever, but miss so many side effects like, you know, constipation and like drowsiness, the addictive potential. But yeah, there was a time in my life where I kind of screwed around with benzos a little bit. I was never addicted to them, but I definitely got to experience some of some of the deleterious side effects.

Oh, totally. Anything that ends with an AM is a benzodiazepine like Diazepam, Clonazepam, Alprazolam, Lorazepam, that's Ativan, Xanax, Klonopin, Valium, any of those. They're these anxiolytic substances that their main mechanistic sort of target are the GABA receptors. The GABA A receptors specifically, which is like elicits, you know, this, you know, obviously the GABA pathway, which is the main breaks of the nervous system from a biochemical standpoint. And so that's why it has this huge sort of influx in the activity of that particular pathway which, which calms down the cortisol. It calms down, you know, you have the glutamate response and all these excitatory neurotransmitters and stuff. So those drugs are highly, they call to a lot of people because we live in a very stressed, traumatic time, obviously from every standpoint that you could possibly look at it. And so a lot of people just fall in love with them pretty quickly because it's sort of like an easy shortcut with any easy shortcut like that or alcohol. There's a very fine line between acute therapeutic app that has now sort of taken hold of you in a really negative way and the side effects, you know, the cognitive dysfunction that you can get. It muddles up your brain chemistry at the same time. Right. Whenever you take high doses of benzos, it kind of suppresses your personality, and it can also lead to drowsiness the next day. And of course, like you said, like the constipation and a bunch of stuff. So, you know, they're very problematic for a lot of people, and there's a lot of people very addicted to them. And, you know, just like with, with my story, which I'll, I'll get into, the withdrawal symptoms from benzodiazepines can be so severe when you've been on them for an extended period of time that you can actually die from the withdrawals. I mean, they are some of the hardest drugs to get off of. You can have everything from seizures, you know, to even heart attacks and strokes during the, you know, during the withdrawal process. On the severe end, it takes a lot of times, like a year and a half to even do a slow, like, you know, taper, you know, from the drug. So it's really bad. Those drugs are so.

Okay, cool. So. So you. Well, not cool, sad and scary, but you. You were actually. Help me to wrap my head around this. Like, you were. You were addicted to benzos or what was going on with you.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So with me, I mean, you know, I always give people kind of a truncated version of my story because the. It. It literally unfolded how I got into this over about 15 years. I kind of call it like a pain to purpose journey. A lot of us that end up in this industry have, you know, sort of this, you know, I guess you. Some people call it like a wounded healer journey, or you get into it from. From a standpoint of like, really having your back up against the wall. Right. And really being in a pretty deleterious situation. I can't imagine any normal scenario in which I would have just dove headfirst and niched out on this highly specified route from the South Pacific and dove as deeply as I have over the past decade had I not been forced into it from some sort of desperation. Right. From my standpoint, there's two primary ways that people grow and progress in their life. There's. There's the inspiration path and there's the desperation path. The inspiration path's a lot more fun because you witness something that inspires you, like the death of a loved one or something, and it can inspire you to go down a certain path to learn and grow. And the desperation is like you have your back up against the wall, someone is dying, and it Forced you to go down it. But for me, my situation, I became like horrifically sick with one of these sort of. It's starting to become more explainable, but at the time, completely unexplainable sort of neurotoxic autoimmune syndrome illnesses where I just had a complete collapse of my health that I couldn't pinpoint to any one isolated diagnosis. Right, because. And it started with. It's always, you know, whenever you have these situations, especially in a young guy, because this happened to me when I was like 21 and I was a very high functioning person at the time. You know, I mean, you and I have some stuff in common because I was. My life at that period totally revolved around endurance sports. I was an endurance athlete. I mean, that was basically I was, I. I was track cross country athlete at the University of Arkansas. And Arkansas is like a track dynasty, so they've got like 42 national titles there. And it's. And so it was that that consumed my whole life at that period of time, and that played into my process. But I was really high functioning. You know, I was working multiple jobs. You know, I was a senior in college at the time and I was running, I was racing. So I was running, you know, cross country in the fall. I was running indoors, you know, from January to March and then outdoors, you know, from March to June. And then during the summer I was racing marathons, you know, triathlons, and then even got into ultras. And you know, you know, during that period of time, I kind of had this. I came to this point where I started to get really fatigued and I wasn't recovering. And just like anyone in that world, you think, okay, I'm over training, I back off, I backed off, you know, nothing got better. And I ended up in the situation where I started becoming like overwhelmingly fatigued. It started to affect obviously my training. I had to kind of step back. I was kind of unable to even focus in class. I was just losing a lot of these basic functions. Was starting to get very depressed and anxious and ended up on the couch and ended up being incredibly. Have these ridiculous cravings for sugar and stuff just to keep me going and was living on stimulants. So I ended up in the situation not knowing much outside of. From a biological standpoint, outside of what could give me acute performance boosts at the time. I mean, I thought I knew a fair amount about the human body and how to get it to run faster, but I definitely didn't know anything from a longevity standpoint basically I ended up in a psychiatrist's office and I was prescribed a plethora of different drugs and medications, the primary one being an amphetamine based drug called Adderall that most everyone is familiar with. And that took me, my situation from, you know, chronically fatigued and I was in a bad situation that was headed to something worse and it, it obliterated me. So I apparently had this perfect storm going on that we know now. And you know, the perfect storm meaning it was a bunch of things that came together and just kind of exploded. I probably had susceptible genetics to you know, not, not, you know, having, you know, some poor, you know, detoxification function and stuff, got exposed to a few toxins. I was in an apartment at the time that had black mold. I found out later some, you know, some stachybotrys. I obviously got on the drugs. I was exposed to a lot of other things. I was eating like Taco Bell like four times a day, you know, as a college kid. So, you know, there was a lot of things that probably came together, but whenever I threw the drugs in them, the Adderall and you know, even some of the benzodiazepines and some different things, it just totally changed my personality and it completely wrecked me. Right. You know, the idea of like using Adderall to try to supplement your energy, that's not there. It's sort of like, you know, writing hot checks with your body. It's not creating any more energy as a psycho stimulus, just stealing from your deep stores. It's borrowing from tomorrow to pay for today. And I learned that lesson the hard way. Basically when I got on this, not only did it make me deteriorate physiologically, but mentally, it changed my personality. And I went on this crazy. I basically went into like a psychosis for like almost a year where my personality changed and my life changed. Went from being a high functioning person, that was an athlete thing and, you know, working three jobs to I was living the life of a meth addict where I started doing all these crazy impulsive things and charging hundreds of thousands of dollars of like, of money and credit. And I had, you know, businesses where I was flipping electronics, I worked in an electronic store, and I was doing really obsessive crazy things and I ended up doing impulsive things. Like, you know, people always kind of laugh at this part of the story, but I like bought a bunch of exotic animals. I had an apartment full of exotic animals like monkeys and parrots and you know, like a bunch of crazy stuff. And this Was like something that was totally like a manifestation of like this, this amphetamine binge that I was on. Like I was, I was like delusional from it. So anyways, long story short, my life deteriorated completely. I had. I was connecting with all kinds of unhealthy people as well and ended up in some situations where I got all my money stolen from me by like drug addicts. I like, you know, it was like a total disaster and my health completely collapsed because as I had all these animals, I was using a bunch of cleaning products and the animal feces was building up in my environment. It was like a complete nightmare. It was kind of like a crossover between Ace Ventura and Breaking Bad, this apartment that I was living in. And so it was truly stranger than fiction. Obviously my life completely got obliterated. Not was I only hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt by the end of this, but I completely lost my. It completely crashed like, like at one point where the drugs weren't even working anymore and I had to get off them because my like family basically did an intervention on me. Right. Once I got off the drugs, I became me again. I spent like two years being somebody else in this sort of amphetamine fueled psychosis. And so it was literally like probably one of the worst outcomes a person could have with a drug like Adderall. Yeah, I tell that to kind of depict where my core philosophy of not only giving up my health to a third party totally, which was like the psychiatrist and not sort of doing my own due diligence, getting multiple opinions, but trying to basically medicate my symptoms downstream and not get to what's going on with me and taking the pharmaceutical route. That's where I ended up. And so that gave me the framework that then I had all this healing to do. I basically was handicapped after all this. I had severe cognitive deficits that from all the neurotoxins and the Adderall. I ended up getting a spec brain scan at one point like they do at like the Amen clinic.

Right, right. That's like a blood flow scan for the brain.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I got one of those. And the radiologist, this was post Adderall, post all this. They were totally flabbergasted and they're like, I can't believe that you can talk as well as you can talk. Because this scan is comparable to what I see in 80 year olds with dementia because they treat a lot of elderly people with dementia, hyperbarics, where I was at. So, yeah, it was crazy. So I basically Started on this odyssey of trying to rebuild my health, rebuild my brain, my psyche, my neurological function. And also I was in a situation at that point that I was just, I was deteriorating and I was kind of falling apart because I was just tanked metabolically and I was becoming more toxic and my gut was wrecked. And so it was just like this complete disaster. But it started me on this long, like 10 year sort of journey where I basically did nothing for this entire time but scour medical and scientific literature, travel around engaging in medical tourism, basically exhausting the rest of the allopathic model. Medications and stuff just got worse. Ended up in the functional medicine paradigm, just talking to doctors and researchers and scientists and going in the country and abroad trying different therapies and eventually got hooked up with some different networks of doctors. One Dr. Dan Pompa, who you've had on the show, who's, you know, one of my closest friends now, who really helped me to sort of put, you know, together and assimilate a lot of these pieces that I had already sort of found into kind of a systematic plan not only for detoxification, which really helped a lot, but also to kind of, you know, approach this from sort of, you know, fix the cell to get well, approach it at its, at its base. And, you know, so that was how I eventually got my life back through combination of ancient healing strategies, detoxification and all these different things with the microbiome and stuff fasting, but then also layering in these modern day technological strategies like stem cells and peptides and hyperbarics and PEMF and different things like that. But how Kava came into it though was in the middle of this process. I had deteriorated to a point and actually it was right after I met Dr. Pompa.

And by the way, I should mention, for those of you not familiar with Dr. Pompa, I've interviewed him a few times. And the show notes for the show you're listening to right now are at BenGreenfieldFitness.com KavaPodcast K A V A podcast and I'll link to my interview with Papa now. I think it was actually at one of his events where I met you, now that I recall.

Yeah, I was, yeah, we were there and it was at the Cava bar there in Vegas. Yeah, so right. Kind of smack dab in the middle of this process. I was several years into it and I was pretty much at my lowest point. Whenever Dr. Pompa and I met, we were introduced through someone and I had reached out and we Got to talking, and he had taken on a lot of extremely complicated neurotoxic cases. And it was a really bad situation because I was at a point where I had developed this kind of sensitivity spectrum syndrome as a byproduct of this autoimmunity. And this is becoming increasingly common today, where you have people that are basically in a form of ptsd, a spectrum of ptsd, where they're so neurotoxic, liver toxic, their guts are so wrecked, they have such systemic autoimmunity that they start to develop prime both nervous system and immune system reactions to a host of things in their environment as part of the body's process of trying to protect itself from being so traumatized and essentially confused and the gut being leaky and a bunch of this stuff. So I started developing severe reactions to, obviously, medications, but, like, supplements and even foods, and got to the point where I was reacting to almost everything that I was eating. And they started kind of mild, but then ended up in a situation by the time I got hooked up with him where I was having seizures from almost everything that I was eating. Like, I would eat a food, and I would go into a full grandma seizure, or I would go into anaphylaxis. I would have different reactions, you know, based on different things. And I got to a point where it just became absolutely terrifying. Not only could I not think, and I was having trouble functioning and stuff, and I had to move back in with my parents and couldn't walk. At one point, I even got to the point, right whenever Dr. Pompa and I met, where I even started reacting to water, which I didn't even know was possible. Meaning, like, literally, I was in this clinic in Dallas, Texas, that was basically like a hub, basically, for some of the most chemically and environmentally sensitive people in the world. Autoimmune diseases. It's called the Environmental Health center, and people come there from all over the world, and they're basically quarantined. I had to be quarantined because if I got exposure to, like, certain things, like, even, like, fragrances that people would wear, or, like, just chemicals, cleaning products, I even got a whiff of some of that stuff, I could go into a seizure, and it became so maddening that, like, I had to be quarantined in, like, these tile rooms, and I had to wear masks and stuff, which is kind of funny, because that was like, I was, like, everyone in this community was wearing masks and was quarantined back before, you know, the world was, like, years before.

That you got your practice early.

Yeah, exactly. But I ended up in this situation and, you know, for whatever reason, it's like I got to a point where I would literally, you know, we had bought every water, like bottled water on the market and was like trying all these. And some I would react worse to than others. Different mineral composition, I don't know. But I would put. I got to where I could put a drop of water on my tongue and I'd go into a seizure. And this is just something that completely blew my mind. I had no idea that that would even be possible. I was so reactive to almost everything. And so it was just this crazy situation. And so obviously that became dangerous. And, you know, by the time he and I met, I ended up in this long forced dry fast where, you know, Dan basically told me, he's like, well, you have to fast, basically. And I had no choice to and to fast could help to stabilize the situation and calm down the nervous system and stuff. And I did it. I ended up going multiple days without water and almost died from dehydration. And that's not something that you, you just recommend people do without medical supervision. But it was an extremely scary. I had delusions and hallucinations during that time. I even had a near death experience that was very similar to what I had experienced from psychedelics. At times it was pretty crazy. That was my lowest point. But during that period of time I was having such violent convulsions that I was put on these heavy doses of benzos. Xanax and Klonopin were the two that I was put on to try to control them. And I was even reacting to them. So I was reacting to the drug, but then it would kick in and that gabonergic effect would sort of, you know, at least reduce them.

Gabonergic effect. Just for people who. And you might hear that term thrown around a couple of times in relation to Kava. Gamma aminobutyric acid, like an inhibitory neurotransmitter. Same thing that gets released when you have a nice glass of wine or take. You know, there's some GABA precursors like passionflower extract or lavender, things like that can increase GABA. But GABAergic, that. That's basically what you're referring to when you throw in that term, right, Cameron?

Absolutely. Yeah. This. You just kind of think, whenever you think GABA or gabaminergic, you just think like calm the brakes of the nervous system, basically things that just sort of pump the brakes, allow you to relax or shut down. An excitatory response like that's going on in a seizure. And seizures are primarily driven by the, by the neurochemical pathway glutamate or these NMDA like receptors that are like the most excitatory. They're like the equal opposite to the gaba, right? You've got GABA and glutamate and that balance is very fine tuned by the intelligence of the body. And whenever it gets, you get favored in a sympathetic mode from stress and trauma and neurotoxicity, you start to get this over erratic expression of glutamate that damages the system basically through a process called excitotoxicity. But anyways, so I ended up in this situation where I was having seizures from everything and I was on these benzos. And the problem was, is I knew this because I had been down this road with Adderall. I knew that this was a very dangerous situation because I was so fragile that if my seizures got any worse, they were going to become lethal. And they already were very close. I was going to them multiple times a day, just getting weaker, knew that benzos elicit tolerance relatively quickly. And if I kept using the benzos, eventually they were going to lose their effectiveness and then I was going to ricochet in the opposite direction. My seizures were just going to explode. Because again, you're not creating any more gaba, you know, with these compounds. You're basically just using up your stores and expressions and you're getting a downregulation. The body says, oh, this is unnatural. We've got too much of it, we're gonna go in the opposite way. And that's a problem, a huge problem. And so I was in this situation where I actually started working with Dan as a client. And you know, we both were talking through this and just saying, I can't do any of the strategies, I can't do detoxification, I can't do the fasting, I can't do anything unless I can get these reactions under control. And so I've got to find a way off of Klonopin and my life depended on it. I had a very short window of time for this. And good thing I had already delved into all this for years and delved into the ethnobotanical world. And so I had like a good sort of database of information to draw from. So I went back to scientific literature and I'm like looking, okay, I need a plant based or natural analog or an alternative that could bind to those same receptors to kind of prop them up to allow Me to safely transition off of these benzos and hopefully keep these seizures under control. Honestly, I didn't think I was going to find it because I didn't think I'd find anything in the plant kingdom that would really meet that power. Obviously you named some of the more subtle compounds, valerian root, passion flower, lemon balm, and even taking straight gaba or theanine or taurine or magnesium. All of those things affect that pathway. But all of those things in the situation I was in was a little bit like trying to shoot a BB gun at a freight train. You know, those things are great, but I was so out of balance. I was withdrawing from this drug. It just wasn't enough. So I was looking and obviously I had come across kava before and I had tried what I thought was kava, you know, multiple times from multiple different supplement suppliers, even, you know, sort of high level, you know, physician grade like formulas that had forms of kava in it under a form called kava kava, which is what most people who have heard of kava think of it as. But this term, kava, kava is actually not kava at all by definition in the sense that from a South Pacific Islander standpoint, where kava comes from, kava kava is an extract. And that's a name that was given to it in the United States basically, and other places around the world where they use solvents to extract it. They apply sort of modern extraction methodologies.

I was commenting on the extraction technologies because that's, I think one of the big issues when we look at a lot of these, like sacred medicines from around the world. It's pretty easy to bastardize them, especially using harsh solvents or extraction processes that can oxidize them. Or sometimes, I know you wind up not getting the full spectrum of alkaloids in the plant, which can be difficult on the liver. But yeah, I think that's a huge issue with a lot of these medicines is the processing and the extraction is.

Just, it's subpar, it's massive. And for some, for some plant compounds, you know, some, you know, plants, you know, and fungi and all of these different, you know, biological organisms are exactly that. You know, they're, they're, they're living organisms. They're much more biochemically complex than a drug that's just one singular molecule that's isolated, usually ripped off from a plant or, you know, synthesized from a plant. And it has one linear mechanism that pushes the body in a direction very powerfully. But these plants are living organisms like humans are Living organisms that have hundreds, if not thousands of active constituents that all work in sync and harmony. Like, in each active constituent is like, say, like an instrument in a musical orchestra that you can isolate one instrument that, say, plays the melody, that sort of plays front and center, the most powerful ones, and you'll get effect. But if you have the entire orchestra, you'll get an experience that's much more full and has more depth. Depth to it and therapeutic value. Right. Some medicines, though, extract better with solvents because they have, you know, more of their overall effects, comes from just a few compounds that you can extract with a solvent. And so you can get more of those therapeutic effects and not bring it too far out of balance. And there's a lot of herbs that extract, okay, you know, with ethanol, kava is not one of those. You know, you can use ethanol or other egregious solvents like acetone, which are, like, really bad. But kava is one of those that has a very, very unique composition that when it's extracted with solvents, you actually lose about somewhere between 80 and 90% of the depth of the overall effects profile. And so you end up with something that's just a small shade of what kava really is. And so that's why, by definition, all of these products that are called kava kava, virtually all of them, are either, one of two extraction methods. They're ethanol extraction methods or CO2 extraction methods. CO2 is a little bit better, but it does not capture the full array of active constituents in the plant. And kava very much relies on that entourage effect. What I thought at the time, whenever I first came across and I was in this dire situation, I thought, well, I've tried kava. It doesn't really do much. I'm not going to waste my time with it. Until I reconnected right in the middle, serendipitously, with, you know, a friend of mine who I had met, who was a south, you know, Pacific indigenous islander, who is from Vanuatu, which, you know, Vanuatu is like where kava has been used the longest. Its usage has been traced back 3,000 years. That's where most of the world's kava supply comes from. That's where our farms are and everything. But anyways, I. I asked him about this, or no, no, he actually brought it up to me. He said, well, how come you haven't tried kava? I said, well, I have. I tried this. He's like, okay, what'd you try? I told him, and he kind of snickered. He laughed at me a little bit because he was like, that's not real kava, man. Like that's kind of a joke to us. You know, it's like we've that that.

Was one of these like, like westernized extracts that, that had the extraction method you were alluding to. And I know a lot, a lot of these, like a lot of these kava products that are imported that you'll find in a lot of like health food stores. It says kava kava, like the capsules and the liquids and the past and the tea bags and everything you find. Because I started to look into this like you've got mold, you got mycotoxins, you got industrial chemicals, you've got a bunch of low grade varieties. I think you told me how a lot of them and you kind of alluded to this just now. It's non root aerial plant part. So you don't get all the different parts of the root. And I think that's why a lot of people have noticed nothing from kava. And then I don't want to totally derail your story, I want to get back to what this guy told you, but just because it's something that I get asked repeatedly and again, I don't want to derail your story, but this is important, I think. What about the part about kava being bad for your liver in terms of increasing liver enzymes or cases of liver toxicity? That's probably the question I get the most about kava. And one of the things people are.

Most concerned about that's totally relevant because the situation with kava and proposed liver toxicity or reported liver toxicity was basically one of these issues that totally revolves around ignorance and misperception. And it's a context issue. So everything that we've been talking about so far with kava and the spectrum of quality and the spectrum of the effects profile that you can get from everything from the kava kava solvent extracts with toxic plant aerial parts and solvent extracted and mycotoxins. The whole thing versus like your full spectrum drink elixir that's made through traditional preparations of only the root material that's been drank every day by 90% of the population of Fijian Vanuatu for 3,000 years with no reports ever in the anthropological accounts of deleterious effects on the liver or even on the body. It's seen as one of their most sacred medicinal substances that they use daily, they use certain strains daily. But anyways, this whole belief system around liver toxicity is something that if you Google kava or kava kava, it's starting to get better. A lot of the work that we're doing and others, it's starting to get better through Google, but you'll still find a huge number of articles of people who claim this proposed danger on Kava and liver toxicity. Every one of these claims is all quoting the exact same source and the exact same origin of this particular story. Again, it was a context thing. Basically, what has happened is back in 2001, there was a series of small studies that took place that was funded by one pharmaceutical company in Germany and a couple in Switzerland. And at the time, Kava was at the precipice of a huge boom because people were really starting to realize this was this sort of untapped commodity that could be as big as coffee, that it was like this really amazing medicinal substance and it was starting to be put in capsules. And of course, people didn't know how to deal with it. Westerners were kind of doing their thing, not paying attention to the traditional preparations, trying to do what they do. And, you know, pharmaceutical companies were trying to do what they do as well, too. They were trying to create patentable forms of it. So they were trying to use aggressive extraction methods, you know, solvents and things, to isolate what they considered the single compound or the series of single compound, the kavalactones, as they're called. And so they were trying to make a patentable drug out of it. And it ended up in this. In this series of studies that was. That was carried out actually, of all types of people on, you know, people recovering from alcohol addiction, so people already who had very compromised liver functions, high liver enzymes. And most people in these studies, actually, when the investigation was gone back and sifted through, were on high doses of acetaminophen and other things as well, too, that increased liver enzymes. So there are a few factors there. But, you know, this is one of those things that has been fully unpacked and is really not even a dispute in the scientific community anymore. Even the who, you know, is a lot of times behind on things has taken a full position after reviewing all the scientific literature on this subject. And over the last 15 years, these series of studies has been fully unpacked, and the conclusion has been very clearly demonstrated that it was completely a quality control issue. So what happened was, is that this one pharmaceutical company was just looking for Kava and they were looking for kavalactone specifically. Like a few of the actives, they're trying to isolate them, and they went and they didn't know what they were looking for as far as cob material, they didn't pay attention to traditional methodologies that, that the indigenous people have always utilized with. They were looking for just kava material. They bought up some of the cheaper cob material they could find. Some unscrupulous large scale farmers in the islands were selling them what we now know as aerial parts of the plant. So waste product that still contain kavalactones. Because the full plant of kava contains kavalactones. Right. But the indigenous people since for the last 3,000 years have only consumed the roots of the plant.

Right. And the aerial parts, from what I understand, even though they're less concentrated in a lot of the beneficial compounds, that's like less expensive for a manufacturer to actually harvest and sell. So it's kind of like, you know, it's almost like when you get an expensive supplement and you read that it has something really nice in it, like I don't know, let's say nad or something like that. But it says proprietary on it. They don't utility amounts and they're legally allowed to whatever in the industry is called fairy dust. Like a very, very small amount of that into the product. Kind of reminds me when people are using like plant medicines like this and using just the aerial leaf parts of a similar type of problem.

Exactly. And you know, they're, they're much cheaper because they're in the islands and in Vanuatu and Fiji and the other islands they're considered waste product. So they'll, they'll sell, you know, unscrupulous farmers, which now there are much less of those than there were because, you know, smart farmers understand that's bad for the whole industry because it perpetuates negative reputation in this non contextual type of discussion. But there's still a lot of people doing it where they'll, they'll sell their waste product for like very low cost and you know, next to nothing. And they'll grind it up. So you can't tell because they'll grind it up with some root product. So it comes to you in just in this powder form and you can't tell the difference unless you do a specific type of testing that we do called chlorophyll testing where you can test to see if it has any of these aerial parts in it. And you know, so basically this pharmaceutical company wasn't paying homage to either, you know, the source material, which, which, okay, so the aerial parts, the reason why you're not supposed to consume them is because the roots are the underground portion of the plant. So they're not exposed to, you know, the deleterious attacks and effects of, like, you know, animals trying to pick away at it and pests and things. The aerial parts, over generations, obviously, of the kavas of, you know, kava's lifespan as an organism in the South Pacific, it's developed these plant defense compounds in the aerial parts to defend itself from being attacked. Right. And it plays a protective role in the environment. It's very protective. That's why it has protective effects. But the protective effects are at a degree, into a level, and have certain chemical compounds that we see as these plant defense compounds. It's the same conversation that we see around, like lectins and some of these things, except for these are very egregious alkaloids. There's one called Piper methastein that's in the leaves of pipe of kava that is essentially a mitochondrial toxin. It's not something that you're gonna get a hormetic effect off of. It's something that it actually hasn't even been shown to be like.

It's called Piper methastein.

Yes.

Okay, well, that's important because I think, like, the actual name for kava is Piper methastycam. So that doesn't. Like, if you see Piper methastycum, that just means it's kava. But what you're saying is if it's very concentrated in this Piper methastein, that could be problematic for the liver, and that's what you see in a lot of, like, these leaf extracts.

Yes, exactly. You know, and that. That alkaloid is only present in the leaves and in some of the stems. It's not present in the roots. So the roots are, you know, below ground. So it has no, you know, from an evolutionary standpoint, from an adaptable standpoint, has no reason to, you know, develop these plant defense compounds for something that's. For a part of the plant that's underground because it's not being attacked. So, you know, so basically it has a full, vast array or the highest level of kavalactones in the active medicinal compounds in the plant, but it has none of these toxic alkaloids. And it has some of the. Certain strains, even of the roots have some of these other compounds, these chalcones that actually are medicinal, but in high dose just can cause some side effects. That's why certain strains that are in a certain range of even these flavocavanes that are in the roots are the ones that are considered adequate for daily use. And they're not toxic. They're actually medicinal. But you can get certain more wild strains that aren't for daily use, more acute medicinal use that have high levels of these flavocavians, these chalcones that are highly, highly medicinal, but in high doses they can cause stomach upset. And some things that people associate with high doses of kava that actually aren't a kava issue, they're more of a specific strain issue. But you definitely don't want the aerial parts. So. So there's a lot of context to understanding how to form a relationship with a plant, right? It's like certain plants have to be prepared in certain ways. There's certain plants like rhubarb that you can eat a certain part of the plant and make a pie and the other part is toxic. Right? There's trace amounts of cyanide like compounds in apple seeds and different things people know about. And it's like, and there are plenty of, there are some, you know, mushrooms that you can take and they'll help to modulate your immune system, like reishi and cordyceps and lion's mane. And there are some mushrooms you pick up off the ground and they'll kill you in a half hour. Right? These medicinal plants, it's, it's, you know, it's learning basically which ones you can form a relationship with and then how to facilitate that and which parts of the plant to use. And so this, this pharmaceutical company obviously wasn't taking any of that into account. They ended up purchasing a lot of aerial part material that that also wasn't these daily use strains and things. Then on top of that, they applied acetone extraction, which not only do you get a percentage of acetone, this toxic solvent, in the final extraction, but you also get this isolation and this concentration. So these alkaloids like Piper methastein are like 10 times more soluble in ethanol and especially in acetone than they are in water, which is what the traditional extraction is. So then they ended up with something that by definition was not kava at all. It was a kava like drug basically that was totally taken out of its natural context. It ended up listening only even a couple dozen, two or three dozen cases of liver toxicity, a couple cases of liver failure and people coming off alcohol. And so basically it was a disastrous situation that then got a bunch of media press. There may have even been some pharmaceutical tinkering of. There are people in this industry that truly believe that a few of these companies were trying to take a shot at kava. That may or may not be true. But anyways, it led to countries being scared and just parroting this story over and over. And this entire belief system that spread around multiple countries, there were bans all over the place, was all stemmed from this one situation that if you look at it from a service level standpoint in Vanuatu, Fiji in the South Pacific, the traditional preparation of the brew has been consumed by 90% of the population for 3,000 years as a regular food with no anthropological reports of this. And it's never been demonstrated that traditional kava has any deleterious effects on the liver. In fact, clinically, we've used it on hundreds of patients and seen improvements in liver function many times. So it's a very interesting thing of. It's very similar to what happened to tryptophan in the early 1990s is just kind of one quick point on this point that, you know, back in the early 90s, tryptophan was banned because there was one group that basically synthesized a version of it that wasn't chemically tryptophan that had neurotoxins in it because it was a quality control thing and it hurt some people. Then the entire industry banned tryptophan the United States for a period of time until they realized, oh, there's context here. Right, right. It was that thing. The WHO has taken position on it. After reviewing, you know, the literature, it's not even really a debate anymore. It's like, you know, telling this story about the difference between CBD and marijuana. Right. There's a difference between kava, kava extracts and traditional kava.

So basically with the liver issues, what we're looking at is some pretty rare instances when individuals consume contaminated kava products, like the toxic above ground aerial parts of the plant, these non noble varieties or kava extracts that get denatured through solvent extraction. That's the biggest issue when it comes to kava. And you were talking with this guy. What was the name of the island you were on again?

Vanuatu. Okay, so Vanuatu is an island chain. Yeah.

Okay, so I interrupted you when you were talking about what this dude on Vanuatu was filling you in on when he told me he'd used kava and not noticed much. And what was he saying to you?

Yeah, so basically he was like, he was like, well, this is like an obvious try for you, you know, because like kava is like our most sacred substance. It's like this, you know, in its traditional form, it has like these entheogenic effects that are almost psychedelic. It's used as the core foundation of the social fabric of our Country. It kind of holds a social fabric together. It's used for weddings, funerals, spiritual ceremonies, social gatherings. And I had read a lot about.

It's like beer in America, but better.

Exactly. In fact, in the islands they have kava bars. And Vanuatu in Fiji they have 20 times as many kava bars as they have regular bars. Because they prefer the experience, they prefer the community atmosphere that it creates because it, it puts you in this kind of state of calm, enhanced focus where you're, you're opened up, it kind of opens up the heart center. It has some of these, what I kind of alluded to as subtle psychedelic effects. I'm starting to call it like the sober psychedelic because it kind of gives you this background psychological sort of underpinning effect of like fully integrated systems thinking where you can kind of sort of, you get this sort of left, right brain hemisphere interaction or hyper communication where it allows you to kind of like look at things from a more broad spectrum, big picture perspective. Like people experience with psychedelics where they can kind of zoom out and kind of like look at the, at the circumstances in their life on a broad spectrum timeline and they can reflect on kind of the big picture instead of being in sort of a stress induced beta state where you're kind of locked into what's right in front of you in this fight or flight, which that's where people kind of are their lowest animal self. This puts you in more of kind of like this alpha state that allows you to kind of relax and reflect and open up and have deep, authentic conversation with people. It just creates amazing environments, allows people to connect. It induces empathy amongst people.

Yeah, it reminds me of like a little more chill, laid back version of like a microdose of psilocybin. And you know, I've kind of been messing around because I know you're now producing like you've got these shots, you've got even like a canned drink, which I love, that's my favorite. And I don't think it's available yet, but you're working on, you've been sending me some betas and I absolutely love that. And then you've got the tincture. And honestly sometimes I have no clue if this is kosher or not, but I'll sometimes if I'm at a restaurant and I don't want to order a cocktail, I always have a bottle of your tincture in my fanny pack now and I'll literally just order some bitters on ice with club soda and I'll put a few dropper Fulls of the kava in there. And it's basically like the same cocktail feel again with none of the acetaldehyde or alcohol based toxins or anything like that. So it's kind of like a, a way to, to squeeze in a cocktail at a restaurant without actually having an actual cocktail. It's, I mean, it's super versatile stuff. I love like, but I also could have taken some like right before this podcast and been fine, you know, not, not feel like I've had a couple martinis or anything like that.

Absolutely. And that's one of the best things about it and why they prefer it and why there's 20 times more kava bars in these islands as there are regular bars is because it gives what most people are seeking from the alcohol experience without the drunkenness, addiction, deleterious effects, and kinda the suppression of human consciousness that you can get off of taking high doses of alcohol.

Which is why it's also kinda, kinda good for getting off of alcohol, you know, or even if you just like. Well, let's say you have two or three drinks in a day now and you wanna cut yourself down to one, just like have one and then switch to kava. And I mean it's, it's remarkable as far as that goes. But there's like some other stuff that you were filling me in on with kava that goes beyond like the focus and kind of like the mental clarity combined with the social lubrication effect that's similar to what you might get with alcohol. Come out with a nootropic or like a plant based psychedelic or something like that. For example, it's got some pretty good anti inflammatory effects, kind of similar to cbd. Right.

So kava is actually one of the most well studied herbs like in the scientific literature. It's just one of those things that it continued to be aggressively studied to try to work out this enigma of why this claim of liver toxicity had come about. And outside of cannabis, ginseng, reishi mushroom and a couple others, it has a pretty large body of literature around it that have looked at and established multiple mechanisms. And so basically what kava has been known for or its signature from an energetic standpoint or from an organism standpoint, in the natural ecology, where it grows and where it's used is kava is known as a protective substance that's kind of like its identity. Right? It plays a protective role in the natural ecology. And so therefore its signature as a living organism, it's developed a broad spectrum of biochemical adaptive processes that have led to almost like a complete subset of biochemical compounds and molecules that elicit adaptation and protection basically against all forms of stress. And so then whenever you take this organism into your body and form a relationship with it, it transfers that adaptability to you from a biochemical standpoint. And you feel, it almost feels almost like this biochemical shield that allows you to adapt to stress and reduces the limbic system and different things. But because it's a full living organism, just like the human body's living organism, it doesn't just hit on one neuroprotective mechanism. It seems to hit on almost every neuro and tissue protective mechanism that we know of to some degree and some more than others. Right. So the GABA effects are what it's most known for because that's what gives you the illicit feeling, you know, and so that, you know, reduces glutamate levels and excitotoxicity, calms the limbic system, puts you in a parasympathetic state. It's very protective in that sense. But it also has effects on ion channels, so, you know, sodium calcium channels, which is the same mechanism that anti seizure drugs work on. It's in, you know, obviously even, you know, in discussions about, you know, the possible deleterious effects of exposure to like electromagnetic radiation with Martin Paul's work and looking at the activation or influx in thesethese calcium channels, you get this influx of calcium into the cell is part of kind of like the inflammatory toxic response that could be happening there and leading to hydroxyl free radical production stuff. And it appears to definitely block this. And actually I was EMF sensitive too during my process. And that was one thing that I noticed. I could tolerate a lot more exposure to things, you know, and recover. But aside from that. So it helps to calm those systems down, you know, and sort of calm the cell and, you know, you know, calm the systems around it. It also is a Coxcox 2 inhibitor, which is, you know, very similar, the same as nonsteroidal anti inflammatories, but without the toxic effects on the gut lining and the kidneys and things. And so we see a reduction in inflammation. It has, you know, powerful hormetic effects on, you know, NRF2, you know, NRF2,' which is, which, you know, which is, you know, the antioxidant response that stimulates kind of the production of glutathione and, you know, catalase and, you know, superoxide disputase and those things. And so neuro and tissue protective mechanisms and then also has really amazing metabolic effects too. It has effects. It's a really powerful AMPK activator. So, you know, AMP kinase, you know, it's basically the fat burning cellular autopsy pathway.

Okay, so. So there, there's like a little bit of like an anti aging longevity component too, as far as cellular cleanup.

Yes, absolutely. It certainly appears so. And actually some of the most exciting study around kava right now and has been for the last while. And what the. In the scientific community, what it's most exciting, like, looked at as far as excitement, even more than its nervous system effects, is the effects that it could have on the process of developing and managing cancer. Because not only does it have this effect on really powerfully suppressing MTOR and activating AMPK and the cellular cleanup of senescent cells and things, but it also has selective apoptotic effects to senescent cells that can adapt to these flavocavanes that I mentioned earlier. So in the highly medicinal compounds of kava, these are actually seen in the scientific literature as like natural chemotherapy agents that actually control unnatural or unhealthy cell differentiation within a plant. And so you take those into your body and it appears to have some of those effects, and there may even be powerful antiviral and antimicrobial effects from them as well too. So it has kind of this one, two punch. And there is, you know, there are studies that range across almost every form of cancer that we know of right now with flavocavanes isolated and with a combination of kavalactone, 1, particularly called yangonin, and these flavocavanes as well, that has this one, two punch that kavalactone was shown to help to sensitize bladder cancer cells against the apoptotic effects of the flava cavanes, which then in an apoptotic mechanism. So it's very fascinating. And those mechanisms, I mention all that because that's another protective mechanism too. And so we see a pattern here of this recycle mode of the body. Right? There's this kind of seesaw, like you either go into this kind of recycle and repair would be like mtor, right? Like growth or autophagy and stuff. Putting the body into this recycle mode is a protective mode that helps you survive during times where there's not food present, clears out bad cells that become harmful to you, toxins, and then the other detoxification and cell stabilizing effects. It's all neuroprotective.

Yeah, yeah. You even told me about some recipe for accelerating the fat burning and autophagy pathways. With kava, you were like mixing stuff in with. I think you said you had like a little bit of coffee, the kava, and was it like C8 or MCT oil to amp up the effects?

That right there is an amazing. That's an amazing stack that a lot of people who we've done promotion podcasts and different things with have started to really take to.

Yeah, well, I'm, I'm gonna, I'm gonna step it up a notch because what I've found to work really well is if you go to like HVMN or ketone aid or any of these folks that have like ketone esters. A shot of ketone esters with kava. And I've actually been throwing a little bit of kratom in there as well. That is just like, for like hyper focused productivity in a relaxed state for a long period of time. That is an awesome combo. It's like the 3Ks, right? Works perfectly. Kava, kratom and ketones. That's a really, really good stack if you haven't tried that before.

Yeah, exactly. And you can throw a little bit of. There' sthere's a lot. You can go all day with this stuff. I mean, you can throw. There's a similar story around another plant called kanna that actually is really synergistic, you know, with kava.

But I haven't used kanna forever. We sound like druggies, but yeah, kanna is interesting. I've used that for plant medicine ceremonies before.

Well, yeah, yeah. And I don't want to go off the rails too much with that. But it basically is another one of these plants that is highly dependent on the source. And you can get really weak kanna that doesn't do much, or you can get really strong kanna that you can use in smoke blends. And it actually has some antigenic effects that affect, you know, the serotonin pathway as well. And it's, it also suppresses appetite. And it's a, it's a PDE4 inhibitor. It's, it's, it can be a nootropic.

Kana reminds me a little bit of, of salvia divinorum. Kind of, kind of falls into that same category. Like, either of those are pretty nice. It's kanna spelled two n's right. It's K A N, N A, I believe.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Scolidium tortuosum. It's a, it's a South African plant. It's a flower that's been used even longer than K actually. And that one's another one of the up and comers that is sort of in this wheelhouse of like things you can use to, to taper off of, off of antidepressants and other kind of, you know, compounds as well too. But like all these things and you know, the kava MCT coffee combination is a really easy one that almost everyone has access to coffee and MCT now, especially like your listeners. Of course, the good thing about that is not only do you get a sort of compounded fat burning sort of cellular autophagy effect and nootropic effect, but both MCT and caffeine also act as amplifiers or facilitators for the absorption of kavalactones into the brain. So MCT acts as kind of like this like lipid carrier, right, that can like sort of like, you know, you know, push things. It's like it's an amplifier, it's a facilitator in caffeine because the effects it has on blood flow and things, you know, you know, to the brain that it's. You get a noticed increase in the euphoric hit that you get from kava when you mix caffeine with kava for sure. So those two things together are really, really nice and really, really good, you know, whenever used together. So the oil goes well like in like a bulletproof style coffee, that caffeine MCT thing.

Right. Because of thetheathe GABA effects too. You know, a lot of times I'll recommend people to wake up in the middle of the night and can't get back to sleep. Like I've recommended like Quicksilver Scientific's Lipo Calm as a GABA precursor or even like a chamomile or a passionflower extract. Kava also falls in that category. Like if you have like your tincture works well for this, you can keep it on your bedside. And if you wake up at like 2 or 3am with ruminating thoughts and can't get back to sleep, you do a couple dropperfuls of that, hold it on the tongue for like 60 seconds. Seems to work pretty well because of that GABA component then. And I haven't found kava to deleteriously impact sleep architecture at all. If anything seems to help it out.

Quite a bit tremendously. That's one of the things that it's best for and what we see in the studies. But also I've gotten the opportunity through, you know, the network of doctors that I, that I work with you know, total work with several thousand around the country. And I've gotten the opportunity to see a lot of clinical observation and anecdotal accounts that too, just from things that haven't been looked at super thoroughly. We definitely see in our patient populations with the doctors that are using these products, that we definitely consistently see improvements in both deep and REM sleep in a large percentage of people who take it. And it definitely. I. I've really never seen a case of it interrupting sleep unless someone has a bad reaction to it, which, you know, people could react to anything. It's one of those things that, unlike cannabis, definitely not cbd, but like marijuana or alcohol that both can, like, knock you out but then kind of screw up your sleep cycles. If you measure it with an oura ring or something, you know, kava has an amazing effect on sleep and you'll actually get more vivid dreams. A lot of times whenever you take high doses of kava because of. Cause of the improvements in the. In, you know, some of those cycles. That's something that's really nice about kava, for sure.

Yeah. You're basically taking kava. Are you somehow sourcing it in a way that's getting rid of a lot of these issues that we discussed earlier? Where do you actually get this stuff?

Well, actually here in a second, I can go back to the rest of the progression of my particular story, but this is.

We got to finish your story. I know we're getting long in the tooth. We don't have ton of time, so I want to make sure you get a chance to finish that story.

Yeah, exactly. And it's all interwoven together, so it's all relevant and, you know, my experience to it and exactly how, you know, this stuff was demonstrated to me. But anyways, I spent, you know, about seven or eight years developing a supply chain and, you know, relationships in the South Pacific, you know, with the indigenous people. And I felt like that I needed to if I was going to do this. I mean, I became extremely inspired through my process to just. Just invest in full immersion into the historical context of this plant so that I understood it. I understood its particular role not only in the environment, but potentially in modern culture. I wanted to pay respect to the indigenous people that have helped to facilitate the development of these strains of this plant and the origin home, not only from an environmental soil standpoint and everything where it comes from. I wanted to make sure that I was going to do this right and that we could produce product that we could scale to the masses, because I believe from the beginning that eventually, with the work that us and others that are doing in this industry, that kava can eventually become as common as a cup of coffee if the supply is scaled to the degree that it can be. Because it's a commodity that really has some of the best effects of alcohol, coffee and CBD wrapped into one, like we discussed. So I've been developing this. This supply chain that's scalable in mass for the last however many years here, actually get a consistent, standardized supply of a good combination, balanced combination, from an effects profile standpoint of strains that we can produce at scale, that every batch is tested not only for biological but industrial contaminants. Everything is grown organically, although we don't have the organic certification yet because it's grown in Vanuatu. But. But, you know, everything is grown without the use of pesticides or anything. And everything is tested for mycotoxins and mold.

So you say you are growing it there in Vanuatu?

Yes.

Okay.

And so we've, we've secured and, you know, developed harvesting and drying methods, you know, as well, too, that prevent mold growth. And we're even working on some in the future that'll take the potency up a notch that we're looking at stabilizing fresh kava, which right now, this is traditional kava, but it's traditional dried kava. Fresh kava is even more potent. Like if you pull out a plant like in Vanuatu and make it right there, and it still has all of the fresh active enzymes in it, even above all the regular active constituents. It has a next level of immediacy that's undeniable, that can be to five times stronger and everything. So we're working on a method, fresh kava, and a more premium product line that will be more as an alcohol alternative and less of a standard retail product. So there's multiple tiers to this of what we're working on. But the supply chain has been very, very important. And we had to control every step of the process and we had to have full transparency available at every step of the process because. Because it's so subject to contamination because of the strikes to Cava's reputation. If we were going to do this, we had to do it right. We've been working with regulatory agencies who, Codex. There's an international quality standard that, you know, that, you know, we're in a group that's. That, you know, sent a proposition for, or a proposal rather, that's set to be inducted this year into Codex that outlies this series of criteria. You Know, for Kava, you know, for it to be classified as of food, if it meets these criteria, then we'll be able to get food classification just like coffee. And so we've done a lot of stuff with the regulatory agencies to create a framework to where we can help usher this into the modern world and into, you know, American life in the most credible, transparent way, you know, as possible to protect it from any of the, you know, of the negative misrepresentations, basically. So, yeah, our sourcing is incredibly important. Important in that, in that sense.

Yeah. And I think what's kind of interesting too is the idea that with like, and I've noticed this with yours, and it's kind of back to the whole issue with the psychedelic component is this idea that, I think you described it to me as like a systems based thinking approach that through the chemical pathways that Kava seems to be targeting, you get almost like this hyperconnectivity and communication that's enhanced between the left and right hemispheres of the brain. So for creativity paired with productivity, like, for me, because I've been doing a ton of writing and for some reason, because this is like the second podcast I've done, I think in the past couple of months about Kava, it's just become like one of my go to's really. I absolutely love it for especially like long, deep work sessions or nighttime relaxation as alternative to cocktails. Like, like something about. It just, just works. Just, just. And maybe it doesn't agree with everybody, but it seems to just shift me into this alpha state for maximum creativity and then learning new information and, and I, I don't know everything that's going on. You know, it's probably multifactorial, but I'm, I'm pretty stoked about my, my use of. Especially now that I know I can get access to a source. It's not gonna be bad for my liver, for example.

For me, I always describe it like this. I've worked with almost every powerful and subtle plant medicine that's available. I mean, no one's worked with everything, but I've worked with a lot. I've worked with all of the heavy psychedelics, all the tryptamine based psychedelics, psilocybin, the DMT based compounds, lsd, all of those. And I've worked with all the standard adaptogens that have very subtle effects and that are more for the body and less for the psyche and the spirit and the mind. And Kava has this amazing balance that it captures a lot of the effects of a Lot of these things, while not knocking you off your center or compromising your faculties or your functionality. Meaning that it kind of gives you. It has, you know, probably the greatest therapeutic effect to drawback ratio of any medicinal plant that I've come across. Meaning that there are some that are stronger, right? Like psilocybin mushrooms. High dosages will take you into a completely altered state, which has its time and place, but needs to be carefully, you know, facilitated. And you can't use it every day in those dosages, of course. But, you know, kava, something that, you know, sometimes the best medicine is not the one that hits you over the head with a hammer, but it's something that can be taken regularly, that can be controlled, that can really be used and integrated into your life in a regular way. And kava allows people to sort of grasp what they're trying to get from microdose, opening up the mind and allowing you to access more of who you really are as a person, and opening up the heart and allowing you to socialize, but without taking you into an altered state, compromising your faculties, making you drunk. And so it's this amazing alcohol without the drunkenness, but also elements of the entheogens. And so what. And this is what I'm so excited about with kava, is that I see this as much more of an important project than just supplying something that just relieves anxiety on the surface or something, which it does, and that's how a certain percentage of people understand it. But if we look at any culture from an anthropological standpoint, from a historical standpoint, some of the highest values and inspirations of any given culture are largely contributed to by the altered states of consciousness that they use to connect with each other and form the basis of their community and their perspectives. Right? And a lot of times that involves plant medicine, rituals or other rituals, but it usually has some form of altered state induced by plant medicine. So some ancient cultures, indigenous cultures, use more psychedelic like compounds like ayahuasca as part of the core fabric of their culture. Some cultures, like the west, have embraced alcohol more. And you see that reflected in the collective mind, the perspectives, the behaviors, because they help to shape how we look at reality, how we look at each other and connect with one another. Because the quality of the time spent connecting with other people and with ourselves and reflection dictates the quality of how we develop as humans. Right? And so when you talk about something like kava and possibly sort of integrating it into the culture, it could possibly have really a large scale, positive net impact on the collective mind or perspective of the culture. Michael Pollan wrote a book. He was on Rogan's podcast not too long ago. He was talking about how coffee helped to shape the collective mind of the US like, during.

Yeah, he has a really great, like, little short book on. On Amazon about. I think it's called, like, caffeine or something like that. But yeah, his. Yeah, his writing on. On coffee is really interesting.

No, exactly. And what it helped to do is it helped us, you know, shape this. This productivity side of us. Right. That's where coffee breaks came from, is, you know, your industry wanted to give coffee breaks to. To get more productivity out of their workers. So they would give them, like, these times where they could be put in this state where they'd be more highly productive and elicit certain kind of cognitive function that help to sort of create the framework for how people function and can have its pros, but can also have its cons, where you end up in this sort of beta induced, sort of rat race type of mind. Sometimes if you go too far in that direction. Kava offers something that I think that we need in the culture. A perspective, a state of mind, a state of being, an alternative to dangerous substances. It can help to shape new forms of a social fabric that look like they do in the islands, where you see very, very high levels of psychological health and mental illness and low instances of depression in the places that have used it in the islands. Actually in these villages, in some of the more rural parts of the islands, where the chief still has final say over everything, if there's a dispute among two parties in the village, even like a marital dispute or a dispute between two villages or something, the chief will force the two parties to sit down and settle it over kava. Right. Because. Because it's seen as that good of a strategy for conflict resolution and stuff.

Yeah. Probably easier for them than MDMA too, I would imagine.

Yeah, exactly. Because it's tolerable. It's. Anyone use it? Yeah.

Wow, that's crazy. It's. It's just so cool how. I mean, your. Your story of being on random, buying sprees and addicted to benzos and buying exotic animals and. And recreating your life to be Ace Ventura animal Detective. And what kava did for you is actually pretty cool. And just because I know people are gonna be interested in getting their hands on some of your unique formulations, you've got basically, like, you've got the tincture, which I think is available right now. You've got like these little Shots, I keep them in the fridge, actually. I like to dump the shot into a little bit of sparkling water. And then I also like doing some of these mixes that we've been talking about, like blending it with a little bit of. Of coffee or MCT oil or ketones, et cetera. But basically what's available for people right now is they can get the. From your Tru Kava website and I'll link to it in the shownotes, folks. Go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com KavaPodcast is they can get the little tincture and the shots. Right? Those are the two main things that you got available, like the oil and the shots.

It's so important because with our product line, we kind of have, and this is kava in general, from a traditional extraction standpoint, it has sort of a tiered, sort of staggered spectrum of effects that are all relative to concentration. And what I mean by that is that There are like 200 different strains of kava, just like with cannabis. Some are more sort of heady, nootropic, entheogenic, some are more heavy, sort of sedative. We wanted to create, and we wanted to keep it focused, you know, to avoid confusion, especially in the beginning. And so we created mixtures of strains that are really balanced, that don't put you to sleep and that are not overly activating at the same time. That sort of give that calm focus that allows for the best effects profile that most people would be looking for to get this balance, this activated, calm sort of focus and engagement that people are looking for. The oil is our baseline product, and that is the one that it's basically a good sort of entry point for people just getting into.

It's like a tincture and there's two different strains. Right. You have one that I noticed you've got one that you market as a nootropic version, and then one that's kind of like the regular version. Is the difference between the regular and the nootropic. Just the strain that you use.

Yeah, exactly. So the strain that we use in the regular one, the main strain, is called Baragu. And it's a really balanced strain that's sort of the broad spectrum effects of kava. That's the core product. And the kavaplex is actually pressed, you know, with a specific, specific pressing method that gets the full spectrum of kavalactones, but at a concentration that's more subtle than the drinks. Right. Meaning that it gives effects that we wanted to be most versatile and tolerable at Any time of the day for all ages, even kids. We have kids taking the product for multiple applications. That's a good entry level product that is almost an all purpose, like food. You can add it into, you can put it on salads, you can put it in your coffee, you can take it any time of the day with. And it's just so versatile and very, very smooth. The other oil is that same concentration but just a different strain that's from Tonga that is more sort of euphoric, more of that dopaminergic effect that we didn't really get to touch on. But that' sthat's where the actual engage part of kava comes from. That non addictive, non depletatory dopaminergic effect from the monoamine oxidase inhibition. So those are the base products and that's what a lot of people really, really, you know, start with to kind of dip their toes in the shot and the drink. The drink isn't released yet. It will be in the next two to three months it'll be made available. And that's the one that we're going retail with. But the shot and the drink are the same product. It's just they're made at the shot concentration and then there's more liquid in the drink. But they're the same product, the shots just more concentrated into like almost what you know, would equate to like a five hour energy shot except for the calming effects of kava and things. But it's going to be that next tier that's more of what you'd find off of like a more subtle dose of what you'd find at a, at a kava bar. More of the euphoric effects, more of the social enhancing, you know, effects that you get off of the shots and the drinks.

Okay.

And you know, we wanted it to be at a concentration that's pretty controlled. You can continue to consume those for higher effects. So.

Okay, cool. So and then we've also got a discount code for people on these. It's a, it's BenGreenfieldFitness.com TrueCava T R U Cava. Not with an E, just T R U Trukava. And the code, I think it's Ben 10. Doesn't it save like 10% for people?

Yeah.

Okay.

Yep. Ben 10. Yeah, 10% off.

So Ben 10. I'm serious, if you're listening, try like combining it with some stuff like we talked about and I'll try and put a few of the favorite recipes in the show notes. Or Cameron, if you have anything else you want me to add to the show notes, I will. As far as some cool kava recipes. And if you guys yourself have used kava and you're listening in, or you have your own tips to add, or the ways that you've found to really synergize or amplify the effects, feel free to drop into the comment section@bengreenfieldfitness.com KavaPodcast K A V a podcast and leave them over there. Cameron, it's so cool though that you figured out a way to get this out there and make it healthy for people. So. So I appreciate you coming on the show and sharing all this stuff with us. And again, if folks want to, if they have follow up questions or anything like that, just go to BenGreenfulFitness.com KavaPodcast and leave them there. And I'll link to some of the other stuff we've talked about too, like my previous interview with Dr. Pompa and the True Kava website and a whole lot more. So Cameron, anything else you want to share? Just while I've got you on the.

Call, just a quick kind of couple little notes here because a lot of people ask about this and there's so much to cover. I didn't totally finish the story of my progression.

I know we never finished the whole story, but it's totally fine.

I mean, people get the gist of it, but basically it allowed me to get safely off of benzodiazepines in a very short amount of time with little to no withdrawal symptoms, which is miraculous. And a couple of months, normally it takes a year and a half. And it was miraculous for me then. That opened me up to being able to tolerate all the other things, all the other therapies, and eventually get my health back. And so it really did come in as kind of, you know, a saving grace for me. And we get this question all the time about people who are withdrawing from drugs. Obviously we can't make any recommendations or tell people to come off their medications. You have to consult your physician for that. But as an interesting anecdote, we've seen this clinically so much, and this is where a lot of the research is going, that and PTSD as well, because of the perspective kava puts you in that we talked about. It helps you over time to sort of get in this reflective state that allows you to reflect on past experiences from a place of complete, calm, limbic safety, which helps to rewire the brain over time. This is why the indigenous people always thought as a psychological medicine. And a lot of the research is being looked at with PTSD as well too. And I had both of those things, so those things were very powerful for me. We see those a lot clinically and I'm really excited about the ushering in of a lot of these plant medicines right into not only the biohacking sphere, but into the general public. And. And Kava's one of those that I think, unlike some of the stronger ones like psilocybin, that everyone, including grandma, can even tolerate. And so it's exciting for me that there are natural compounds and then there are tools and strategies that work with the intelligence of the body that can be used in times that are so necessary that we need every strategy that we have against stress and trauma and toxicity. And so it's another one of these really powerful tools that I really see as being part of the future of this industry.

Well, awesome. I'm super stoked about getting this out to people and making them aware of its existence. I just think it's really cool what you've done and I'm super grateful for you adding a little thing to my pantry that's just made life just a bit better. Cameron, thanks for coming on the show and for all you listening in again, shownotes are going to be at BenGreefulFitness.com KavaPodcast and until next time, I'm Ben Greenfield along with Cameron George signing out from BenGreenfieldFitness.com have an amazing week. In compliance with the FTC guidelines, please assume the following about links and posts on this site. Most of the links going to products are often affiliate links, of which I receive a small commission from sales of certain items. But the price is the same for you and sometimes I even get to share a unique and somewhat significant discount with you. In some cases, I might also be an investor in a company I mention. I'm the founder, for example, of Kion llc, the makers of Kion branded supplements and products, which I talk about quite a bit. Regardless of the relationship, if I post or talk about an affiliate link to a product, it is indeed something I personally use, support and with full authenticity and transparency recommend. In good conscience, I personally vet each and every product that I talk about. My first priority is providing valuable information and resources to you that help you positively optimize your mind, body and spirit. And I'll only ever link to products or resources, affiliate or otherwise, that fit within this purpose. So there's your fancy legal disclaimer.

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