I got Dermopathy and Dry Eyes and New to Trying kava!

[August West]

A lot of folks make their grog, double strain, and allow their grog to settle. Some stir it up before each shell, and others siphon it off carefully while not drinking the sediment. Do you drink lots of coffee, caffeine, alcohol? Do you get out in the sunshine? Are you prone to psoriasis or dry skin in the wintertime?
Edit: how's your diet? A solid hydration regimen, remembering to eat enough earlier on in the day along with a vitamin seem to be very important for me. I really feel kava makes me pee out all the stuff my body needs to remain homeostatic, and I have to replace it daily.

 

[Adriano]

I had to stop kava for several weeks due to side effect. I used noble kavas but still had eye and skin problems that are still not fully cleared up. I believe that it has to do
in large part to the body's ability to remove the kava. When the kava builds up faster than the body can eliminate it,, that's when problems start. I suspect that for people
like me who are older and more sedentary (disabled) the metabolism is slow and that causes problems. I've found that drinking lots of water throughout the next day after kava helps. I'm trying to be more active and started using my dry sauna again and this helped tremendously. Working out and sweating regularly will help a great deal I believe. Also if you take other medications and have chronic health conditions, this probably interferes with elimination. I did also notice that kava interferes with medicatons. It just sort of cancels them out its so powerful. Now I enjoy kava only 2 or 3 times a month since I realize that age, metabolism and other factors inhibit my body's ability to clean out the kava. And I can tell you that I sure do not miss the dry cracking skin at the corner of my eyes, crusty ears, red patchs on my skin and the extra hard bugers that are quite irritating (all symptoms of a kava clogged system.

 

[August West]

I've gotten three seperate clogged tear ducts in my eyelids from kava. All three of them happened while I was consuming kava regularly. It's been two months since my past one and you can still see swelling in my eye. My sinuses also get extremely dry and swollen if I drink two days in a row. Sorry to hear you're dealing with negative side effects so quickly, that stinks.

I've had every side effect you is speak of, but it takes about a week straight of somewhat heavy daily consumption for that to happen.

 

[24601]

I find kava really exacerbates my allergies, but it depends on the strain of kava. The stuff I was getting lately from my local vendor didn't seem to cause the reaction at all, but I'm not sure if that was because allergy season has passed or not. Usually I get really sore, swollen skin around my eyes. Every doctor I've seen confirms that it looks just like seasonal allergies - but before kava, I never really had seasonal allergies.

It seems like heavy consumption brings on the reaction within a couple of days, but if I space it out and only have a couple of shells in the evening and use hydrocortisone cream as a preventative measure, I can keep the reaction from happening.

I haven't gotten dermopathy yet though. My hands get really dry and the skin starts peeling, but it doesn't happen anywhere else on my body.

 

[kavadude]

I haven't gotten dermopathy yet though. My hands get really dry and the skin starts peeling, but it doesn't happen anywhere else on my body.

Sounds like dermo to me. It tends to present in the extremities first. A closer examination of your torso (armpit area particularly) might reveal some of it that you haven't noticed.

 

[24601]

Sounds like dermo to me. It tends to present in the extremities first. A closer examination of your torso (armpit area particularly) might reveal some of it that you haven't noticed.

I just figured my hands were getting dry from kneading the kava without gloves. The same thing happens in the winter, without kava. It's never spread beyond my hands.

 

[kavadude]

Oh yeah, not using gloves will also screw your hands up.

 

[ta-va]

Started on my hands about 5/6 weeks into drinking equivalent of 2 or 3 shells a night. Dry skin, white lines in all the creases, almost looked like a residue on the surface in these lines (but wasn't). Now I have kind of shiny old man hands. Wrinkles on the palm side as if I've been sat in a bath for a couple of hours.
I've been getting it on my torso lately. Looks like stretch mark style patterns (I have also been losing weight since giving up the booze and fitting kava into a nightly routine that has definitely meant that I eat less, if anything, in the evenings after 6pm). Making sure that I eat healthily and enough during the day.
Skin flaking off (very small flakes) in various parts of my body especially down below armpits and down the side of my torso to my waistline. Some on my thighs and calfs. Had dry lips for a while and really dry eyes that wept in the corners.
Still, with some E45 cream and Optrex eyedrops, it's all been manageable so far to the point where none of the above symptoms will put me off drinking the root. If it gets substantially any worse, I'll have to think about cutting back or laying off it for a while. It does seem to move around the body. The eyes and lips are fine now. Lots of moisturing with E45 cream seems to have held the skin flaking to a stalemate. Lots of hydration, of course and I've been taking fish oil (which I take anyway along with garlic tablets - I love garlic anyway so there's usually plenty of that in my system anyway.)
I think I've had the full range that dermo has to offer but so far I've been able to keep it manageable and not too severe. If I start looking like lizard man and pain gets involved then I'll call it a day for a while.
For me, staying off the beer and the subsequent weight loss and the general well-being and better sleep is still far outweighing any of the slight inconvenience of any of the above.
I'm just going to monitor it and not worry too much about it. Slightly inconvenient but nothing at this stage that is going to make me stop.

 

[August West]

Dermo can get worse. The crummy part is that for me, even after cessation, it'll take two or three days for it to even start getting better. I can feel it coming on now, basically when i have chapped lips for two days straight, and just back off or stop drinking for a day or two and I'm good.

It only happens when I drink more than one session a day. If I drink just in the evening, luckily I won't get it