I'm going to ressurect this thread. I was reading under the 'kava essentials' tab and it said all questions should go here.
I'm curious about the ibuprofen. It said that kava changes how it's processed in the body but I don't fully understand. Help please.
I was reading in this area:
http://kavaforums.com/forum/brdc-do...e-cautious-of-or-avoid-while-drinking-kava.7/
Wow, this thread is old, and embarrassing.
Anyhoo..
The thing about ibuprofen and other medications is that almost all of them are metabolized by various liver enzymes. The enzymes have names such as CYP 2E1, 3A4, 2C9. Different meds are metabolized by different combinations of these enzymes, meaning that those enzymes act in the liver to break down the chemicals so your body can get rid of them. For example, ibuprofen is mainly metabolized by the one named CYP 2C9.
Now as it turns out, kava is also metabolized by these same liver enzymes, but in it's case, many of the different enzymes are involved, not just one of them. And, sure enough, in the case of ibuprofen, that same enzyme named CYP 2C9 is also one of the ones that helps to metabolize kavalactones. What it means if two things are metabolized by the same enzyme is, in theory if, for example, you take a large dose of ibuprofen, that
might "max out" that particular enzyme, so there is less of it available to metabolize your kava, which could have unpredictable results: it could take the kavalactones longer to get out of your body, prolonging the effect. But on the other hand, remembering that kava is metabolized by many different enzymes, not just by 2C9, maybe one of the others could pick up the slack, as it were, and there would be no effect. The interaction can also go the other way: if you drink a lot of kava, it might max out one of the liver enzymes that you need to metabolize some other drug you are taking, which could cause the blood levels of that other drug to be too high. In some cases that could be dangerous. Kava has been proven to have such a "maxing out" effect for CYP 2E1 (not the ibuprofen one) , so those interactions (such as with alcohol) are probably the most worrisome, but that does not mean you don't also need to worry about things like ibuprofen, it's just that that interaction has not been specifically studied, so not much is known about it, except that it is theoretically possible.
Hopefully that helps...
