Is kava kava bad for you?!

Is kava kava bad for you?

It is also known as awa in Hawai`i.

The difficulties with Kava Kava are two that I know of:

1) Most people are not of the ancestry which has used it for generations. These are the polynesians who have benefitted from it. People of other ancestry can have mild allergic reactions to it. A native american friend living on Maui broke out into a rash for the first 3-4 months he was drinking it as part of Hawaiian ceremonies he was involved in.

2) The original growing & harvesting done in Tahiti - by what I heard in either 2001 or 2 when I lived on Maui - was that european companies jumping on the kava kava profit scale, did not bother to research what is truly the useful part of the plant. The top green/red parts are toxic. The root is what was peeled, pounded and then soaked in water by traditional people. The modern production companies just chopped the tops off, dried, ground them up and popped them in capsules. A carpenter friend on Maui ended up with one step back from liver failure because the kava (bought at a reputable health food store) he was taking for his nerves/sleep needs was not harvested properly. His condtion was treated in Honolulu and the medical staff there said they were seeing lots of this sort of problems. They traced it to the bad practices of improperly harvesting Kava.

I have consumed powdered dried awa root, prepared in a ceremony on Maui, and consumed with others, as a drink without much consequence to my body. General feeling of mellowness, nothing like being drunk. I am of european ancestry and lived on Maui for many years.