Kava Science A Kavalactone Mystery Solved? Maybe, for me at least...

[kavadude]

Two quick notes. I don't believe the activity of yangonin at the CB1 receptor is known; it could be an agonist, it could be an antagonist. So we cannot assume that it affects us in a way similar to THC. Secondly, I'm not sure it is present in normal water extracts to any significant degree. See this study where quite high temperatures were required to efficienctly extract yangonin.

(http://www.researchgate.net/profile..._kava_root/links/0deec51567d9b3fe60000000.pdf)

Infraredz tried to fix the part where it says "mimics THC" long ago, but it got edited back. If you check the sources of that article, you'll see it makes the leap from yangonin's CB1 affinity to agonism and THC similarity on its own.

 

[verticity]

@Deleted User - The article also mentions removing very small particles because they clogged up their filters. I think maybe the confusion is that the article is using the chemical definition of "extraction" -- meaning extracting molecules dissolved in a solvent -- versus how we commonly talk about extracting kava in traditional prep, which involves creating an emulsion, and also there are always some particles that are small enough to pass through your nylon stocking, but too big to be emulsified, that form the sludge at the bottom of the bowl, and you're consuming all of it, i.e. the whole emulsified particles with all the KLs, and maybe some KLs actually dissolved in the water, but I guess that would be the minority of KLs in traditional prep--because they aren't very soluble in water. So I would not really expect these results to say anything about relative KL concentrations in your actual grog.

 

[verticity]

Come to think of it, a really interesting experiment to do with your HPLC would be the following:
1. Measure the KL profile of a medium grind kava.
2. Prepare some of the same kava using traditional methods.
3. Allow the water to evaporate.
4. Measure the KL profile of the residue of "instant" you have made. Compare with 1.
Actually, since you mentioned you have some Moi instant, you could compare that with the medium grind.

 

[kavadude]

You are correct, I'm just spitballing here. I would very much like to see an analysis of the compounds that make it into a traditional water extract, lactones and otherwise.

 

[TheKavaSociety]

I think that Pacific Islanders never liked drinking the same kava all the time. One of the village elders from Vanuatu explains in "Kava: The Drink of Gods" ( ) that they plant several different varieties of kava as they get "tired" of drinking one all the time and need to switch between cultivars. I am not sure what he means by "tired". I thought he meant "bored", but perhaps he really wanted to say that long term use of a single cultivar becomes somehow less pleasant than drinking different cultivars?

 

[verticity]

Interesting, so basically unchanged. I wonder if this applies to Flavokavains as well. Chris a while ago posted a paper claiming to show that water extraction contains less cytotoxic compounds than alcohol extract, but in that study they centrifuged their water "extract" to remove all the particles.

 

[TheKavaSociety]

As the chart in post #6 shows, the percentages are virtually unchanged between instant/micro/medium grind, so any additional extraction is caused by the solvents used in HPLC. I've pondered this before, one way would be to develop an HPLC method that uses nothing but water/buffer, which is possible. But it still doesn't represent what our body actually extracts from the brew... Any ideas?

Testing urine?

 

[verticity]

Hmm, to estimate what your body is actually absorbing, you could extract it with simulated gastric juice, 0.1 M HCl & other stuff. If I recall from Lebot's book, KLs are soluble in gastric juices.

 

[verticity]

Well, if the HPLC method is any good, which I think it is since you are following the established USP method, what you see in the HPLC output should be a pretty accurate representation of what is in the sample. So for the gastric juices experiment, for example, you would extract some powder with HCl and centrifuge. Then maybe if you neutralize the pH, the KLs would precipitate out, then centrifuge again; and to make sure you get all the KLs, extract the now neutral solution with a non polar solvent like hexane, let that evaporate, combine with the precipitate from the previous step. Then you could do HPLC as usual, and get an accurate picture of the "digested" kava.
Edit: extracting with hexane could be problematic, because it would leave water soluble stuff, maybe better to just let the "gastric juice" evaporate.

 

[Deleted User01]

@Deleted User, anytime somebody connects Kava to the Cannabinoid receptors then it basically blows my mind. Back in the day, freaking out after doing Cannabinoids basically meant high anxiety. Like Kava, grass can have heady effects or not so heady. Some people can get anxiety and others don't. It depends on how many cops are cruising your neighborhood. Here is my solution. Do Moi in the afternoon and then do a dose of something like Nene or even Boroguru Micronized to settle everything down before you go to bed or even at 5 as your last shell of the day. Do the Ying and the Yang. Then let us know if that helped or not.

 

[verticity]

But the problem is that "HPLC as usual" means the solvents in the mobile phase could cause further extraction.

I don't understand what you mean by "further extraction". Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't you first soak your sample in the solvent mixture. This gives you a solution containing your analytes. You then put the solution into the HPLC, and the solutes are separated by their differential affinity for the mobile and stationary phase. There is not any "extracting" going on at that point.
And presumably the solvent mixture was carefully chosen to guarantee near 100% extraction in the soaking phase (or else it wouldn't be a very good analytical method)

 

[verticity]

Here's a link to the method, scroll down to HPLC: https://hmc.usp.org/monographs/piper-methysticum-root-and-rhizome-powder-0-2

The initial extraction is methanol/water, mobile phase is water, phosphoric acid, acetonitrile, isopropyl alc. My point is that even though we are dealing with specific analytes, their proportions could vary drastically compared to how they are extracted by the human body.

That is correct, but I think we can safely eliminate the HPLC extraction solution as a factor, and assume that it extracts all, or close enough, of the KLs from any given sample. In that case "pre-processing" with gastric juice might give a good indication of exactly how they are extracted by the human body. Even if you are still worried the HPLC solution may not be getting everything, the difference between the solution from plant material, and "digested" would still be meaningful.

 

[blindy107]

I was gonna say something borderline insightful about 7 posts back but then I kept reading and realized I have nothing to offer.