First kava! Could be better...

[verticity]

Hell, the first time I tried it I ate extract off a tortilla chip and didn't touch it for years after that

Kava extract salsa?

 

[The Kap'n]

Kava extract salsa?

It was awful. An interesting side note though. My roommate, who had excessively chronic OCD disorder said it basically relieved him of all of his symptoms and made everything "clear", so to speak. He was very impressed with it. Had I only gone further with it...maybe kavaforums would have been around a lot sooner

 

[TheKavaSociety]

Whether a kava is tudei is determined by the relative amounts of the different kavalactones in it. Those are the chemicals that give kava its effects. Kavas whose kavalactone profile is dominated by the kavalactones known as "DHM" and "DHK" are known as tudeis, whereas varieties where the kavalactone called "kavain" is more prominent are noble. This chemical profile can be measured, and forum member @Deleted User here has done so for Koniak, and unequivocally demonstrated that it is tudei. See his results here ===> True Kava
I'm not trying to start an argument here, I just feel it's important for people new to kava to get accurate information.
Note, in this comment I'm strictly talking about the standard USP kavalactone test Deleted User does, not about any experimental tests.

@verticity I believe that this is the whole picture. @Deleted User - correct me if I am wrong, but as I understand it, tudei kavas do not only have higher DHM and DHK levels, but also contain an unidentified (yet) molecule that can be detected through the acetone test. Perhaps this molecule is in some way linked to something behind the (very rare) cases of toxicity..

 

[verticity]

tudei kavas do not only have higher DHM and DHK levels, but also contain an unidentified (yet) molecule that can be detected through the acetone test.

This may be true but it is an experimental test that is not fully understood; that's why I didn't mention it here.

There are some indications that this molecule might be behind the (very rare) case of toxicity of tudei kavas..

I am not aware of anything indicating the same molecule is involved in both. We should probably wait till we know what the molecule is before speculating about that.

 

[TheKavaSociety]

Tr

This may be true but it is an experimental test that is not fully understood; that's why I didn't mention it here.

I am not aware of anything indicating the same molecule is involved in both. We should probably wait till we know what the molecule is before speculating about that.

True. Good point. I guess I meant to suggest that it is possible that there is something more in tudei than just high levels of dhm or dhk, which by themselves may not be harmful (but just heavy). But I am just speculating

 

[verticity]

True. Good point. I guess I meant to suggest that it is possible that there is something more in tudei than just high levels of dhm or dhk, which by themselves may not be harmful (but just heavy). But I am just speculating

Right, well tudeis are also known to be high in FKB - but I believe FKB has been ruled out as the mystery molecule in the a-test. BKH claims to have tested FKB in their kavas, but have not released the results of that test for Konaik as far as I am aware, so for the purpose of this thread--helping give the best available information to a newcomer--I just stuck to what we know definitively, which is @Deleted User's HPLC chemotype results.

 

[TheKavaSociety]

... and his acetone test results which apparently demonstrate a 100% correlation between the presence of the mysterious molecule and the kava being a known tudei. (I am not saying that this means that the molecule is responsible for any of the undesirable side-effects, but merely observing that it seems to me that the acetone test is a reliable method of identifying tudei kava)

 

[verticity]

Well 11 Year Waka was a "false positive" so not 100%, but this thread is not the place to discuss this..

 

[TheKavaSociety]

The molecule responsible for the orange acetone test is not suspected as a toxic agent, but more likely as a genetic marker that correlates to kava that is not traditionally consumed in the South Pacific.

Well, has anyone suggested what the toxic agent could be then or why it would correlate with the molecule responsible for the orange acetone test results?