Kava and Heart Rate (A Short Study)

[Kojo Douglas]

So I'm a big sports fan, who sometimes enjoys a drink or two while watching a game (or sometimes many more than that!)

I always get horrible sleep when I've had alcohol, and after getting an Apple Watch I downloaded a sleep monitoring app.

I have been doing an experiment over the past few weeks to measure sleep with alcohol in my system, sleep with Kava in my system, and sleep with nothing (including no late night treats).

The results are impressive.

With alcohol, I get about 3.5 hours of "restful sleep" even though my total sleep time stays about the same. However, my BPM hovers around 85 - which is quite alarming. Your heart rate should dip about 15-20% while sleeping.

With nothing in my system, my BPM is around 65-75 and I get 5 hours of restful sleep.

And with Kava, my BPM goes down to 55-60 with SIX hours of restful sleep. A dip in 27% from my waking BPM.

I have repeated this multiple times with almost exact results. I think it speaks a lot for both the medicinal value of Kava as well as the dangers of alcohol.

 

[Kojo Douglas]

Sleep with alcohol in my system (above)

Sleep with Kava (above)

 

[The Kap'n]

This is great!

 

[Kojo Douglas]

Yeah, I'm going to do an article about it on my blog. I think it's really quite noteworthy

 

[violet]

Very cool experiment @Kavasseur, thanks for sharing it with us.

Out of curiosity, how does kava affect your heart rate (and BP, if you have a way to check) just after you consume it? For me personally and several others it can have temporary effects of increasing heart rate and BP. While it could feasibly be a totally separate mechanism of action, I wonder if the later effects on stages of sleep could be similar to what you are experiencing.

Looking forward to more data, and now you've got the guinea pig in me thinking this could be an incredibly helpful endeavor for any of us, sleep is so important.

 

[ThePiper]

How many trials does each dataset represent? I would think you need at least 3 nights of each to have any significant data, preferably more. You say you've repeated it several times, you should average those and record the result. If we could get like 5 people who have apple watches to do this (with or without the alcohol part) for three or more nights in each variable we could have some nice data

 

[kilakila]

My sleep is still not great even on kava - think it's residual effects from getting off the benzos (I've been off for 5 months now and feeling great - other than lack of sleep!). Haven't done a sleep self-study, but my heart rate is around 60 when I first wake up in the morning, and my blood pressure ranges between 113/73 to 121/81 (in the morning). I thank the kava for pretty much everything! Just need to get sleep sorted out, but that's been a problem my whole life. Maybe I wasn't meant to get much sleep!

 

[Kojo Douglas]

How many trials does each dataset represent? I would think you need at least 3 nights of each to have any significant data, preferably more. You say you've repeated it several times, you should average those and record the result. If we could get like 5 people who have apple watches to do this (with or without the alcohol part) for three or more nights in each variable we could have some nice data

Sounds like a solid idea.

 

[Krunkie McKrunkface]

Very cool experiment @Kavasseur, thanks for sharing it with us.

Out of curiosity, how does kava affect your heart rate (and BP, if you have a way to check) just after you consume it? For me personally and several others it can have temporary effects of increasing heart rate and BP. While it could feasibly be a totally separate mechanism of action, I wonder if the later effects on stages of sleep could be similar to what you are experiencing.

Looking forward to more data, and now you've got the guinea pig in me thinking this could be an incredibly helpful endeavor for any of us, sleep is so important.

I had great BP and pulse before kava and kava made it a little bit better, especially if I use small amounts of kava before and during strenuous exercise or work.

 

[Dr.Krunk]

I also have an Apple Watch! Are we about to conduct a collective community study? That would be awesome. I am also someone that likes indulge in a few alcoholic beverages from time to time. Kava unfortunately can't offer a flavor similar that to a fine scotch.

If others are interested I'd be all for participating. As ThePiper stated I do think that more time is in order. Also would have to determine the peramiters of the study to follow for any individual partaking.

 

[The Kap'n]

I think I can finally justify buying an Apple Watch.

 

[ThePiper]

The only issue with including quantity of kava as a variable is everyone has individual sensitivities and tolerance, even method of prep. So the study would be at best only partly scientific. But I think you could probably decide what your "average amount" of kava is in an evening session and stick to that for each trial. Say If you usually use 28g divided into two shells for your night dose then you had better stick to that for every trial. Some people like to get more krunk than others but going by your personal average would at least have some validity in that we will be able to somewhat find out what effect our natural inclination for dosage has on sleeping patterns. You could also add another variable for trials by separating trials with your personal "light dose" and your personal "krunk dose" and see how sleep is affected in each. If I had an apple watch I would participate in this, but sadly I dont.

Going further into the insidious nature of confounding variables, One would ideally have all participants drinking the same strain of kava so that chemotype is not a factor, but that's a bit too much bother lol. However each individual using their same personal choice of strain for their own trials consistently each time that would help. And then taking care not to perform trials on yourself when you are already sleep deprived or unusually stressed.

This was a fascinating idea, kavasseur. Thanks.

 

[Kojo Douglas]

I was just noticing these trends, but it indeed would be fascinating to track these numbers across different types and quantities of Kavas. Yesterday I drank over 1 liter of strong batch Stone. It was actually a bit exhausting, and I drank enough to lose my appetite and skip dinner. For me, this is a strong indication of being krunked. I slept well (I usually don't reach eight hours) and you can see the data below. But I will note my heart rate didn't dip all the way to the 55 level that I seemed to reach from a more anxiolytic Fijian Kava.

 

[Kojo Douglas]

Come to think of it it, it's almost exactly the same. From 59 to 61 is a pretty narrow margin of error. I'll keep this experiment going!

 

[Go Krunk Yourself]

The alcohol number is entirely fine. I dealt with 120 BPM resting rate for the entire day after serious alcohol binges and it would not budge. Any hint it would budge was immediately stopped by my anxiety. Alcohol really does screw up your body, excites your nervous system pretty significantly when you're detoxing. Keep in mind, this is some HEAVY drinking. On some more moderate - high drinking its more like 100 BPM the next day. As for mild, I haven't noticed a huge difference.

Alcohol has the effect of lowering your heart rate when you drink it and bringing it back up overdrive when you're not. Body doesn't like being put out of wack. Always fights back. Kava is one of the only thing's that comes close to not having that effect.

 

[ThePiper]

I had never known this about alcohol, but it makes perfect sense why I could never sleep for more than 4-5 hours after late night drinking. Agh, it's a horrible experience to walk up at 4:30 in the morning dehydrated and achy, tossing and turning because you can't get to sleep. No thank you!

 

[Krunkie McKrunkface]

After a hard two hours of tennis this morning I was 104/74 with a pulse of 65. Not bad for an old man.

 

[Madams]

Without knowing your sample size there is no way of knowing if these differences are statistically significant, can you share how many times you tried this and what those #s were? Then I could tell you if they were statistically different. And to figure out if they are meaningful we need to compare to how much other people’s bpms and hours of sleep fluctuate on average. That would begin to tell us more about if this is working for you and if it might work for others but without data from others we can’t really know but more if your data is essential to making the claim that it helps you sleep. I’d be psyched to learn more!

So I'm a big sports fan, who sometimes enjoys a drink or two while watching a game (or sometimes many more than that!)

I always get horrible sleep when I've had alcohol, and after getting an Apple Watch I downloaded a sleep monitoring app.

I have been doing an experiment over the past few weeks to measure sleep with alcohol in my system, sleep with Kava in my system, and sleep with nothing (including no late night treats).

The results are impressive.

With alcohol, I get about 3.5 hours of "restful sleep" even though my total sleep time stays about the same. However, my BPM hovers around 85 - which is quite alarming. Your heart rate should dip about 15-20% while sleeping.

With nothing in my system, my BPM is around 65-75 and I get 5 hours of restful sleep.

And with Kava, my BPM goes down to 55-60 with SIX hours of restful sleep. A dip in 27% from my waking BPM.

I have repeated this multiple times with almost exact results. I think it speaks a lot for both the medicinal value of Kava as well as the dangers of alcohol.