Booooo!!!!
I'm leaving this one up though, because I've already gotten 3 individual questions about it.
I've emailed the author of this article.
If you would like to as well, the email address for Lisa Gill is
[email protected]
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Let's break this down.
Liver Damage: I think we’ve beaten this horse well into the grave. There are over 300 kava bars in America, some open for 24 hours a day that serve kava. Knowing kava is being consumed at this much increased rate, where are the toxicities?
Here’s the link to the FDA’s adverse reporting system:
https://www.fda.gov/drugs/questions...event-reporting-system-faers-public-dashboard In the upper left corner click “search” and then type in “kava” and click it. Then type in “Piper Methysticum Root” click it. Now hit “go”. If you then click “list of cases” you’ll see all the adverse event reports reported where kava was involved. Since 2019 you can see there are 5 individual reports. Of these reports in the last 4 years there have been zero hepatic events that can be tied to kava. In fact the last hepatic reports ceased back in 2003. Go ahead and forget cases 21453428, and 21407031. These are the same cases, and it was obviously someone who had overdosed on fentanyl. Hit me up if you want to read the report word-for-word. They try to imply that kava was a causative agent in someone’s death with a latency period of hours. This is quite impossible for even the proposed and unfounded methods of liver toxicity. Toxicity latency (the time it takes before seeing negative results after consumption) even in the days where there actually COULD have been a toxic formulation was multiple days at the shortest. In order for this to happen you would need to be acutely allergic, and if this were the case they would have presented immunologic type events, but they didn’t.
Exacerbates Parkinson’s Disease: This one is all over the place and is what happens when we start applying natural products in lieu of targeted pharmacological therapies. It also comes down to simply misreporting of timing in a vast majority of these reports. There isn’t enough research to actually say this, just a few case reports where kava just happened to be in the mix. I see many places that say don’t combine kava with l-dopa, however I contend the adverse events seen in cases with l-dopa WERE l-dopa itself causing them. With that in mind it should be understood that these "parkinson's-like" effects were found solely with the preparation "Laitan". This formulation is no longer available and possibly caused a range of other issues for people as well.
Impairs Driving: This one you can argue either way and be somewhat correct. I’ve included a number of sources that go both ways. Technically we don’t have enough information to be able to say this officially, although I reserve my own opinions. This one I think I have the least problem with considering the implications of safety. I can honestly say there are limits where I would not operate a motor vehicle under the influence of large amounts of kava.
Sources:
Efron, D. H., and B. Holmstedt. 1967. “Ethnopharmacologic Search for Psychoactive Drugs.” Presented at the Public Health Service Publication No. 1645.
Raziq, Fazal I. 2020. “Kava Kava Induced Acute Liver Failure.” American Journal of Therapeutics, May.
https://doi.org/10.1097/MJT.0000000000001180. (This is the paper that tries to suggest the impossible situation of liver failure after one dose)
Aporosa, Apo. 2022. Improving Road Safety and Health: Understanding Kava’s Impact on Driver Fitness. Suva, Fiji: Pacific Studies Press.
Aporosa, S. 2017. “Understanding Cognitive Functions Related to Driving Following Kava (Piper Methysticum) Use at Traditional Consumption Volumes.” In British Association for Psychopharmacology Conference, A84–A84. SAGE Publications.
https://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/handle/10289/11307.
Berry, Jonna, Ashley Gilbert, and Justin Grodnitzky. 2019. “Cases of Kava Impairment in Iowa Drivers.” Journal of Forensic Sciences 64 (6): 1943–49.
https://doi.org/10.1111/1556-4029.14130.
Fu, Shuang, J. Perl, S. Jennings, and M. Hepburn. 2019. “Kava Influence on Driving Skills: A Case Study.” In Conference Proceedings: 22nd International Council on Alcohol, Drugs and Traffic Safety Conference, 145–48. vpp-seidl.de.
https://vpp-seidl.de/ueber-uns/t2019/content_117567/ICADTS_T2019_ConferenceProceedings.pdf#page=146.
Herberg, K. W. 1997. “Does Kava Extract in Combination with Ethyl Alcohol Affect Driving Safety?” Naturamed, no. 12: 31–39.
Sarris, J., E. Laporte, A. Scholey, R. King, A. Pipingas, I. Schweitzer, and C. Stough. 2013. “Does a Medicinal Dose of Kava Impair Driving? A Randomized, Placebo-Controlled, Double-Blind Study.” Traffic Injury Prevention 14 (1): 13–17.
https://doi.org/10.1080/15389588.2012.682233.
Sarris, Jerome, Emma LaPorte, and Isaac Schweitzer. 2011. “Kava: A Comprehensive Review of Efficacy, Safety, and Psychopharmacology.” The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 45 (1): 27–35.
https://doi.org/10.3109/00048674.2010.522554.
Wainiqolo, Iris, Berlin Kafoa, Bridget Kool, Elizabeth Robinson, Josephine Herman, Eddie McCaig, and Shanthi Ameratunga. 2016. “Driving Following Kava Use and Road Traffic Injuries: A Population-Based Case-Control Study in Fiji (TRIP 14).” PloS One 11 (3): e0149719.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0149719.
Wainiqolo, Iris, Bridget Kool, Vili Nosa, and Shanthi Ameratunga. 2015. “Is Driving under the Influence of Kava Associated with Motor Vehicle Crashes? A Systematic Review of the Epidemiological Literature.” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health 39 (5): 495–99.
https://doi.org/10.1111/1753-6405.12435.
